As a businessperson and given the recent and present economic climate, how would you view the opportunity to purchase or invest in an enterprise where the average annual revenues are nearly $15 million and firms earning between $10 million to $49.9 million grew 6 percentage points in 2012? How about an opportunity in which nearly a third of like businesses experienced significant revenue increases as compared to the prior year? What if almost a fifth of those were also seeing significant rises in gross margins in an industry still not yet close to being fully mature? Sounds pretty sweet, right? Welcome to the security systems integration business circa 2013.
That assessment is based on data culled from SSI’s ninth annual Systems Integration Study, which makes a compelling case that security integrators are if not entirely out of the recessionary woods then certainly near the forest’s edge. In other words, integrators still have much wood to chop but are at least wielding sharper axes. In fact, the research shows companies adversely affected to a significant degree by ongoing effects of the recession dropped almost 24% in 2012, and those expressing an outlook of either optimistic or outstanding rose from 65% to 73%.
Some of the reasons for that sentiment include: a 27% gain in new systems installations; reversing a steady decline in access control profit margins; larger access control projects; expansion of managed access services; 31% growth in IP camera sales, with 47% of that being megapixel models; 20% growth in digital video encoder sales; and 40% of video surveillance installations including either video management systems (VMS) or physical information security management (PSIM) solutions.
Conducted in cooperation with PSA Security Network, the International Security Conference (ISC), Security-Net and the National Systems Contractors Association (NSCA), SSI’s 2013 Systems Integration Study was distributed to thousands of security integrators nationwide. Of the 374 completed surveys submitted, 204 met the systems integrator criteria as installing primarily integrated video surveillance and/or access control systems, and the majority of accounts not being monitored burglary/fire alarm systems. Continue on for the full lowdown.
Click here to view SSI’s ninth annual Systems Integration Study.
