Security Sales & Integration recently brought together three leaders from the integrator/installer community whose experience and deep industry connections positively distinguish them.
In this exclusive Q&A with three Resideo CONNECT 2025 attendees, SSI presents the unique perspectives, professional journeys and candid insights of Tyler Couch, Paul Romanelli and Josh Dice.
Couch serves as the senior director of design and engineering at Mereo Fiber, a bulk-rate internet and low-voltage systems provider for multi-family and high-density residential communities.
With nearly two decades of experience, Couch specializes in intrusion alarm, access control, surveillance and audiovisual systems. Mereo Fiber operates across 37 states, managing more than 80,000 doors under contract.
Romanelli, president of Suffolk Security Systems, has been a trusted name in high-end residential security on Long Island’s East End for 26 years. His company caters to a high-end clientele that includes second homeowners, providing tailored solutions to protect properties that might well be vacant for much of the year.
Dice, president of Security Alarm in Salem, Ill., represents the third generation of his family’s business. With roots dating back to 1977, Security Alarm serves both commercial and residential clients across southern Illinois.
Dice, who grew up in the industry, has been at the helm for 15 years, continuing a family legacy of innovation and customer service.
The following Q&A, which we’ve broken into two parts, touches on economic/market conditions, industry trends and changes, integrator strategies to optimize their businesses and reflections on the past year.
Security Sales & Integration: How would you say economic anxiety is affecting the industry right now? Do you sense that anxiety in the industry? And if you do, what are the concrete effects it’s having on your business and your clients?
Josh Dice: For us, the last five years have been extremely strong. Coming off the heels of COVID, there was a lot of cheap money flowing around — free money. A big chunk of our revenue comes from the education and healthcare markets, and over the last five years, we have seen a tremendous amount of growth.
Josh Dice
This year has been a little softer, kind of like a stabilization. We haven’t seen the significant increases that we were seeing in the last five years. The market we serve is largely rural and many of the other businesses in our footprint are seeing similar things. Some of them are even seeing a downturn in their sales activity.
For the last five years, each year has been difficult to predict. Each year has started with a question mark surrounding our growth. So, this year, what we’re experiencing on the ground seems to be a kind of stabilization.
This year, we have barely been hitting our sales goals, and we are not seeing the wild growth that we’ve seen over the past five years. That’s what we’re experiencing today.
Tyler Couch: Obviously, the three of us are in different verticals as far as where we focus. With Mereo being in multi-family, we’ve almost seen the inverse of what you’re seeing, Josh, with the interest rate hikes.
Tyler Couch
A lot of our business is coming from new development in multi-family, such as new apartment complexes and new condo complexes. And with those interest rates, the build cycle for these projects was so long that they were planned for many years — maybe they even acquired land — and then the interest rates went up. So, the build-and-rent economics no longer made sense for them.
We had over 100 projects in Arizona specifically that were put on hold because of the financing. So, we had to flex our retrofit muscles a little more and go after more of the brownfield projects. “Let’s figure out how we can overbuild these sites if we’re pulling infrastructure into the site.”
We’ve gotten better at that and we’ve kind of been forced to, which in the long run will strengthen us as a company. But the interest rates dropped a little bit and every percent, every half a percent, makes a difference to investors.
This year has been our best year over the last two or three, and we feel like we’re on an upward trajectory in multi-family development.
Paul Romanelli: I would reflect somewhat of the same. We’ve had tremendous growth from COVID right into the beginning of this year, as well, but we could see a little bit of hesitancy coming. Some projects that were in the pipeline were either pared back a little bit, made smaller or not started at all.
Now, we did the same thing that Tyler just stated. We looked around at our upgrades. Clients with older equipment — we started aggressively going after those clients [and] recommended some of the new stuff, like what Resideo came out with, and have kept our guys going. No layoffs to anybody.
Everybody’s still working, which is great, but we definitely are seeing some slowdown in the market. I have some projects on the board that aren’t going to happen and I’m not seeing the plans coming through like I was before.
SSI: Do you think the future of the integration industry lies in software tools and software-based deployments? If so, how do you think that’s going to affect your own business’ profits?
Dice: I can definitely say that today, almost everybody has an app on their phone that controls their alarm system. Ten years ago, that wasn’t the case. Every product we’re installing, short of fire panels, has some kind of interactive app or web interface software — and this is going to continue to grow.
All of these services have significantly increased the need for in-house support over the last few years. These internal people help customers with their software apps, program systems remotely and fix lots of other problems from their desks. So, how we service, how we troubleshoot, how we install — those things have changed drastically for us.
The trend is going to be not necessarily as many boots on the ground on-site as it is boots on the ground in our office. So, I think you’ll still continue to see a shift in that model.
There’s always going to be hardware on-site but having that internet, that IP connection, has drastically changed our industry in terms of how we service them.
As far as profitability is concerned, it is important to know what our true cost is to provide that service. Unlike traditional monitoring, add-on software services increase the need for in-house support, and that support has to be figured into the cost.
Figuring that out can be complex and tricky, but it is very important in determining how to charge for those types of services. On the surface, those software services may appear more profitable than they actually are.
Romanelli: Yeah, there’s no question about that. We see that, as well. Over the last couple of years, we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time teaching consumers about the app itself, mostly over the phone, some hands-on.
Paul Romanelli
I probably do more customer service work on app-related issues than I do on actual alarm-related issues. It used to be you could rattle off a couple of commands they had to put on a keypad and fix the problem or send a truck if you had to.
But now, with some people on iOS, some people on Android, and some people who have no idea even what their Apple ID is, trying to get all of them resolved and get on apps has become a big part of what we do.
But that being said, it’s also, in the long term, way more profitable for us. We don’t install a system today that doesn’t have an app attached to it with additional RMR (recurring monthly revenue).
And for the sake of all that, it’s worth every penny of time we spend keeping them on that app and keeping it sticky to make sure they can use it and add more features to it.
Couch: Yeah, Paul, I agree. There’s been a big migration. I would say even prior to five years — five to 10 years back — there was a shift from on-prem hardware and little to no remote management to now pretty much everything being installed has some sort of cloud management capabilities, which ties into your remote support, Josh, like you mentioned.
It’s very hard to scale if you don’t have those remote-support tools there; otherwise, you’re adding trucks every time you add another project. That remote support, which then ties back to the software, has been a change for developers, managers and homeowners to get used to those additional fees for a system that historically didn’t have them.
Maybe you had your monitoring fees, but there weren’t these software management add-ons that they’re now seeing. So, it’s been a shift in how you sell and how you educate your clients on the value of those fees.
So, there’s definitely a move toward software. I think in this industry, as the guys mentioned, there’s always going to be hardware on-site. And I say “always,” but who knows? Maybe not.
A lot of our sales are in smart home. You have your Resideo panel, but you have your door lock, your light switch, your thermostat. More and more of these devices are being connected to Wi-Fi. So, you now have the hardware as far as the device, but you may not have a panel or something they’re tying to in the future.
So, they could be standalone devices. You’re always going to have a door contact, a motion sensor, a thermostat. There’s a physical action going on there, so there’s always going to be hardware.
But I do agree, I think we’ll hit a threshold. There’s going to be a point where it doesn’t make sense to push more to the cloud, more to software but they’ll be less dependent upon the hardware.
Romanelli: Just really quickly on Tyler’s comments, as well. They’re obviously very much into connectivity. We are the same. We often try to own the network in our clients’ homes today — sell them Wi-Fi…sell them the backbone network.
The cable company doesn’t do the job. They drop their cable modem in the worst place in the house, they can’t get service and everything else like that. So, it’s in our best interest, particularly for video, that they have the most robust Wi-Fi or backbone network in their home to make these apps just work as smoothly as possible.
There’s nothing more frustrating from our standpoint than having somebody complain about our products and services because the internet infrastructure in the house is not set up properly.
Couch: Yeah, Paul, that’s a good point. It hits close to home with us being a bulk-rate internet and managed Wi-Fi provider in these multi-family properties.
Just that coming from the low-volt side, you’re trying to deploy these systems that are dependent upon your Wi-Fi and/or network connection and having to rely on two or three other people just to get it to communicate because of the firewalls or different people involved.
And so, that was one reason when they combined our companies to make who we are now, they did think about that. We’re an internet provider, but we’re also able to provide low-voltage services, and now we can control both sides of that.
So, like you mentioned, Paul, if you can take ownership of that network in the home, it’s one less variable that’s out of your hands. You can control that. You now provide a better experience for all the other systems, as well.
In Part 2 of this Q&A, our panel of Resideo CONNECT integrators look at the top trends in the security industry, the state of the security industry today and hot takes for 2026 and beyond.
