How Vision Technologies Went From Small Cabling Company to Integration Powerhouse

Find out how Vision Technologies is delivering virtually any systems-based solution – security included – to just about any commercial or government end user with an IT network.

When you look at cybersecurity, are certain verticals trickier to deal with?
STUART: Healthcare is a strong vertical for us, and they have additional concerns with accreditation requirements such as HIPAA. In the financial world, you have FISMA requirements as well for protecting information.

There are certain verticals like that where it is more of a driving factor.

SAXON: Back to your initial question, a leading challenge I see is keeping people focused on their roles and responsibilities. We have a phrase here, “Chasing shiny balls.” It’s very easy to chase a shiny ball and be distracted from our core mission and focus.

People don’t chase shiny balls just because. They have the best of intentions, but it’s making sure everybody understands our mission, their role and responsibility, and how it dovetails into the overall mission of the organization.

And, to use a football analogy, you have to make sure everybody plays their position to the best of their ability. In doing so, we get a tremendous output from our team.

When working with clients within business units, how do you expand the relationship into other segments?
STUART: We divide people into hunters and farmers. We have our traditional sales organization soliciting new opportunities. They’re developing relationships. Also some are on major accounts, things like that, but those are our hunters.

The farmers are the project managers and even foremen, and some of the other people within the business units like our solutions architects who are also talking to our existing customers and looking for those opportunities.

vision technologies started as a small cabling company

We have incentive plans in place that encourage them to do that. That’s been a culture that works very well.

We have subject matter experts who can go out alongside an account executive and become a team that approaches those types of things with a customer, what you would call cross-selling. We just call it providing a complete solution.

SAXON: We’ve developed a methodology we’ve trademarked as Integrated Technology Delivery, or ITD. We’ve found if we’re able to get in with a customer early and design the technology systems, we’re able to take advantage of IP convergence and deliver a much more efficient network than if you had three or four companies designing each subsystem independently.

We’re able to take advantage of the backbone, the network systems and pathways. We’re also able to coordinate much better with the other trades and new construction.

All in all, we’re able to save the customer money. And if we’re in the design capacity, we also guarantee to the customer there won’t be any change orders. If we’re designing and engineering the system, we can’t come back to them and say we didn’t know or you didn’t tell us.

By eliminating the change orders, they might pay a higher price upfront, but overall they’re going to invest less in that technology project because it’s going to be done right the first time. That’s a huge competitive advantage for us.

Does the company subcontract? Do you bring in wirepullers, for example? What aspects of a given project would be performed in-house vs. outsourced?
SAXON: Typically, our work is self-performed. If we’re working outside of our home geography, which is the Mid-Atlantic, we will subcontract the infrastructure installation, the cable pulling, to a local partner.

Over time, we’ve developed our Vision Partners Program, or VPP. It includes about 600 local contractors – cabling companies, AV, security companies.

We have these companies under contract so when we have a project in their neighborhood, we have somebody we can go to quickly that is typically a trusted partner.  About a third of our business is outside our geography.

In the Mid-Atlantic, Rick will use our ITS cable-pullers for projects. In essence, he’s subcontracting within the same company.


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Can you give me an example of how Vision Technologies’ associates are working smarter and being more efficient?
STUART: As you become more sophisticated in what you offer to your customers, there’s a broader range of skills that are necessary. We’re beyond trying to have my field team be experts in everything.

The security team focuses more on the head-end, programming, integration, training the customer, and the delivery from that aspect. We have other resources around the company that we can bring in for the other things.

So one of the ways we work smarter is to leverage the different qualifications around the company that we have.

vision technologies started as a small cabling company

How about in terms of tools or software?
STUART: We have tried to focus our product offering. We don’t want to be all things to all people. We do an annual planning process here with all of the middle and upper management that’s pretty extensive. We go offsite for three days.

Part of that process is focusing o
n the vendors we’re going to support and the technologies we want to be experts in. I’ve coined a term I call “coopertition.” If somebody in our area is a VAR in a product we don’t support we will talk to them about why it makes sense for us to partner up on projects.

That works for our competitors because we have a broader offering than they do. As an example, a spec comes out with a product I don’t support, and so I go to the VAR for that product.

They may say to me, “I’m already bidding this job directly to the EC [electrical contractor] or GC [general contractor]. What do I need you for?”

So I say, “We can provide you a number on the cabling that’s going to be done better and for less cost than what you can do internally. Also, if you give me a number and I put it into a package that encompasses all of the low voltage we have a very good chance to win that way. If you win, you win. If we win, you win.”

If they win on their own number and we don’t, we still capture the cabling part of the job. But if we win the whole bundle, then we bring that other competitor along with us. It’s a model that took some convincing but one I have been able to selectively bring people into our offering or portfolio. And it’s been successful for us.


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About the Author

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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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