Integration and Access Are a Lucrative Combination

The security industry still op-erates as a collection of suppliers specializing in product categories where there is great resident expertise. Even as consolidation changes the landscape of the industry, suppliers continue to operate
in that manner to one degree or another.

The same pattern exists in the IT industry where companies specialize in producing certain types of hardware and software – and also in the home networking and automation industry where audio, home theater, security, lighting and HVAC products are produced by individual factories.

Yet in all three industries, users are clamoring not for product specialization but for product integration. They don’t want to fret and worry about every little subsystem that contributes to their overall protection, information assets and home technology systems.

End Users Want Integration

It falls on the systems integrator and security dealer to create what the user wants by bringing security products together into a single network that can be operated in the simplest possible manner. So the integrator and the dealer are in positions of control over the types of integrated systems that users buy today.

This is only important if the integrated systems business means something to the installer in the form of expected revenue. In the case of security, IT and home integrators, the expected revenue from networking know-how means everything. With a security dealer, this may not be the case yet, but trends continue to bring new opportunities to security dealers, and this is certainly one.

Access control systems are the backbone of integrated security systems. But more than half the access control systems sold last year were involved in system integration, so the revenue being generated by access-supported integrated security systems is substantial and growing.

At the same time, there is also a new trend developing: Integrators are more interested in providing monitoring services for their customers as additions to their sales “packages.” This presents a potential revenue impact to dealers who have specialized in this area since the birth of the digital dialer.

Video monitoring will develop over time, so knowledge of integrated access and video systems networked with today’s data monitoring model and tomorrow’s video monitoring model can be a strategic winner. Naturally, the customer gets what the customer wants, whether dedicated or integrated access.

Integration Builds Future Revenue

But being capable of the whole package addresses user needs more accurately every day as shown by the difference in the sales prices of dedicated access control systems vs. the sales prices of integrated access control systems.

There is a need to protect monitoring revenues while preparing to build new ones for the future, and it’s important to know three things: Because the integrated access business is growing significantly, the smallest integrated security system projects generate seven times more revenue than the smallest access projects; medium-sized integrated projects generate three times more; and the largest generate four times more.

Now, the only question left is how to seize this opportunity.

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