Advanced Cabling Explains How Employee Happiness Leads to Success
Placing a familial atmosphere above all else lies at the heart of a business that has enjoyed double-digit growth since its inception 20 years ago. See how Advanced Cabling balances amusement and awesomeness.
To swipe Disneyland's slogan, when it comes to security integration North Little Rock, Ark.-based Advanced Cabling Systems just may be the happiest place on Earth.
Next time you’re at your place of work take a moment to cruise around the offices and common areas, and ask yourself did you encounter some of your best friends?
Are you eager to take on each business day because it means you will be spending collaborative time with associates who you have a keen kinship?
Most employees dream of such an environment and while companies often preach teamwork and camaraderie, seldom does it rise above superficiality – and rarely does it exist organically to define a corporate culture.
“Advanced only hires people who we would want to hang out with after 5 p.m. We are a true family in the sense that we are more than coworkers, we are friends,” says Michael Kennedy, president of Advanced Cabling Systems (ACS).
“From the day Advanced was established, the mind-set was to work hard and have fun doing so. We believe we don’t have to be your stereotypical corporate type company to be successful. Employees feel a sense of home and connection to their coworkers because we show support in both their personal and professional lives.”
How well is that approach working out for the North Little Rock, Ark.-based systems integrator? As the firm celebrates its 20th year in 2017, it also marks a history of 22% average growth during that span – including the recession.
Since the turn of this decade alone, helped along by four modest acquisitions, Advanced Cabling has more than doubled its revenues to a projected $31 million for 2017.
Including its headquarters, ACS’ 178-strong staff supports the needs of 6,000 commercial customers through five Mid-South locations, with customers spanning 20 states.
Initially founded as an offshoot for an electrical contractor, the company had a mere three employees and $200,000 annual revenues.
The business offers access control, A/V, fire, infant protection, intrusion, paging/intercom, structured cabling and video surveillance systems to business, education, gaming, government, healthcare and military clientele.
To get the inside line on Advanced’s integration celebration, Security Sales & Integration joined in on the party with Kennedy and ACS Senior Vice President David Roberts, both of whom have been with the integrator since 1999.
Among other things, they explain why they don’t believe in sales commissions.
Advanced Cabling had steady growth around 22% annually, even during the recession. How did the business maintain its success during that daunting time?
MICHAEL KENNEDY: It’s a combination of several things. First and foremost, when we saw it coming, we gathered our group together. We have a pretty lean and core group of guys. We said we’re not taking the recession as an excuse.
We’re going to put our head down and work harder, coupled with a bit smarter. And it really worked out. We were blessed to be able to diversify the business a bit, not only with different vertical markets, but also into some adjacent technologies.
So if maybe the structured cabling side of the house was down a bit during that time, we really ramped up the audio/video side of our house.
We also found in our markets, which is the central U.S. and especially Arkansas and Oklahoma, even though from a recession standpoint a lot of businesses were downsizing, they were actually ramping up security because maybe they had less people working and so they had a bigger building that was less populated.
There were some concerns and fears among our customers about safety for their employees. Even though their spend was less from a human capital side, they were actually spending more money on security and access control during that downturn.
Surely Advanced Cabling streamlined some things, improved efficiencies, maybe implemented new tools, practices or software. Can you expand on how the business evolved?
KENNEDY: As I touched on, when a lot of companies were going out of business or laying off key employees we took a different approach and said this is a perfect time for us to gain market share.
Instead of cutting those ancillary services or corporate overhead kind of positions, we invested. We created an engineering department. We ramped up the CAD department.
As other companies were getting leaner, cutting corners and trying to hold onto their business or maintain their business, we flipped it. That was a huge turning point in our business.
DAVID ROBERTS: We have always operated from a corporate overhead standpoint pretty leanly in the big picture. We have far less salaried and overhead employees than we do field technicians, and that’s always been a big driver for us.
Other companies staff up when they have big jobs, lay people off, then rehire them, and operate like your standard construction-type company. We’ve always vowed not to do that.
We make sure we have plenty of work for all our people and that it is somewhere they can come and make a career. That was really put to the test in the time of the recession when everybody kind of went into protection mode and started putting up the fence to protect what they had, and getting real lean.
But we approached it that if we could find the right people we would figure out how to keep them, and we have. Not only have we kept them, we continue to grow with them.
With that, we did have to get smarter and more efficient with simple things like parking our company vehicles for a little while during that time because gas prices were skyrocketing. So it was kind of a counterbalance.
At the same time, we invested in technology and made sure every one of our employees had smartphones and tablets so they could be more efficient, so when they were in their vehicles and on customer sites, we could get them the information they needed to go to the next site without having to come back to the office.
We spent a considerable amount of money investing in those things. We’re about to deploy an overall software package for our entire organization to continue to streamline not only our ticket routing and dispatch software but job costing, project management software, accounting, just everything under one software package.
We’ve been vetting that since last year to be sure we make the right decision. We’re super excited about it. I truly believe we’re the very best at what we do and the very best technology integrator in our region.
But we continue to try to find ways to improve instead of just resting at the top and saying we made it, and now we can sit up here and just enjoy it. We continue to look for ways to improve.
This year is looking very nice for your business, with quoting activity up 25%. To what do you attribute that?
KENNEDY: It’s a combination of things with maybe some political reasons in play too. A lot of companies are not only retrofitting their existing facilities but we’ve also seen a lot of new growth in new construction, much more so than we have in the past couple of years.
I serve on an advisory board for Honeywell, and it’s great to hear that for every vertical market and geographical area acros
s the U.S. growth seems pretty strong. It’s pretty strong in healthcare, high-rise commercial construction and a lot of government work and school work.
It seems across the board everybody is singing the same tune right now.
We talked before about the hardship to find low-voltage technicians and the need for more formalized and wide-spread training, but beyond that what are some other top-of-mind challenges operationally for Advanced Cabling?
ROBERTS: Because there’s not a standardized training process there are no obstacles to get into our business. We’ve seen the past 10 years that not only the structured cabling side but also the physical security side of the business has become pretty saturated.
So one of the biggest challenges is having consultative meetings with clients and explaining to them why they should choose you instead of one of many competitors that can also, at least from a presentation standpoint, do what we do as a company.
Getting in front of those people and explaining the technologies, explaining the serviceability and really convincing them why we are the best fit to partner with them has been one of the challenges we face.
In addition, what you touched on in not only finding good people but trying to retain them when you do find them. We put a lot of focus on that, and the same thing with clients. We look for those clients that are going to be long-term partners.
One of the things we say is, “It’s more than a project, it’s a partnership.” Client and employee retention both are huge for us.
Initially founded in 1997 as an offshoot for an electrical contractor, ACS had a mere three employees and $200,000 annual revenues. This year, the company projects $31 million in sales
Speaking of long-term relationships, you just celebrated the company’s 20th anniversary. Do you still have any original customers?
ROBERTS: We do. Arkansas Children’s Hospital was one of our very first clients when we started in 1997. And we only did structured cabling for them, voice and data cabling. We have five people that report to their site every day, and we do many technologies for them now.
It’s got to be rewarding to have some of those clients so long, to grow with them, help them change and build those relationships.
ROBERTS: That’s exactly right. It’s been a lot of fun, rewarding and neat to watch the evolution, not only of our own company and us as individuals, but also as their companies continue to grow and their people continue to grow.
People’s lives change. People get married and have children. And the companies grow. It’s fulfilling.
KENNEDY: To dovetail off that, this business used to be predicated on codes and standards and selling certain widgets from certain manufacturers.
When we started the company our shift was a bit different in that we decided we’re not selling a product. We’re here to help you solve a problem.
And so let’s listen to what your pain points are and what your issues are, and not talk about product XYZ and why we need to force this product on you. Let’s see if we have some solutions that will fit in there, regardless of the product brand.
It’s about, “We’re Advanced Cabling. We’re here to help make your job easier. Let’s see how we can figure out a solution for your issues on a daily basis.”
That’s been a huge differentiator for us as an integrator, as opposed to your standard integrator that goes in and says, “Use us. We represent product XYZ. It’s the best because it’s got all the bells and whistles.”
It’s more about us, as the contractor and installation company, we stand behind it and service it.
Read on to see how ACS tackles the challenges of the campus and healthcare verticals…
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About the Author
Scott Goldfine
Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].
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