Securitas CEO: Crime-Preventing Technology to Boost Market Share, Staffing
Alf Goeransson says new and improved security solutions will help the Swedish security-services giant lower costs for both customers and other providers.
The company is betting that the new products will give it the edge needed to continue to outpace market growth, despite the impact on customer costs and invoicing.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Securitas AB is testing how it can use its data warehousing and data intelligence system, as well as models for coordinating information to provide customers with new and improved security solutions, company CEO Alf Goeransson told Bloomberg. The work includes testing intelligent cameras and other tech-savvy security products in the United Kingdom prior to releasing them across its markets.
Goeransson says the company’s push to develop crime-preventing technology will allow the company to increase sales and staffing even as its new offering lowers costs for clients, and as a result, Securitas’ invoicing.
“This is a big reason to why we’re growing faster than the markets in Europe and North America,” Goeransson said. “We’re lowering the costs for the customer, but we also invoice less. Theoretically this means negative growth, but the reality is different as we are competitive and can win more deals.”
The security business is one of the latest industries to realize the benefits of technology in cutting costs, following in the footsteps of everything from banks to automotive suppliers, according to the article. Securitas says its processes and products can be used to monitor premises and alarms remotely and help stores predict when and where theft will occur by gathering data and then plan staffing, accordingly. That will be key when winning business in the future, Goeransson said.
“The move toward digitalization is very fast, but I think we’re right on time,” he said. “There’s a big change going on in many sectors of the society, and if you’re not part of it you’re dead. The security company of tomorrow will to a much larger degree consist of higher technology and knowledge content.”
The company is betting that the new products will give it the edge needed to continue to outpace market growth, despite the impact on customer costs and invoicing. While the industry as a whole will have fewer employees in the future because of higher technological content, Goeransson projects Securitas will be able to move in the opposite direction and add to its 330,000 employees.
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“Even if the market as a whole will have that development in a 5-10 year perspective, it could be that the strategy that we’re now at the forefront of means that we will be more successful, that we will grow faster than the market and that we therefore don’t have any need to lower employee numbers as we will grow with new projects,” Goeransson said.
Securitas reported its sales jumped 15% to $9.7 billion last year, with organic sales growth of 5%. In its annual report, Securitas said it estimates that it’s growing faster than the security markets in the U.S., Europe and in the Ibero-American countries, “mainly supported by our strategy of security solutions and technology.” The North American and European security markets are growing in line with gross domestic product, according to the company.
To further advance its offering, Securitas plans to buy more technology companies and will target mid-sized firms in each country it operates in, after the purchases of Diebold’s North America security business for $350 million last year and German electronic security firm Draht+Schutz this year.
It’s not just Securitas and its customers that will benefit, Goeransson told Bloomberg. As digitalization aims to detect the risk of crimes before they have even been perpetrated, “we get a better and a safer society the more we take advantage of technology and digitalization, to make it as hard as possible for the criminal clientele to even succeed with anything.”
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