Piechota: Our managed services client base tends to be very large. The way we’ve been able to get into the managed-services aspect of that is embedding folks in for admin and service. We have four people fulltime embedded in one client, on the client side. None of our Fortune 100 or so clients would at this point in time look at having their video go to the cloud or anything offsite. It’s their own infrastructure, otherwise you’re taking away from their security. What I’m really starting to look at is smaller accounts where the managed services can fit in better. I’d say currently we’re well under 10% as far as RMR on that sort of thing and service contracts.

When we started our company we were so confident in our abilities we told clients, “Don’t sign a contract with us. Use us, try us. If you like us, call us back.” That’s how we got a lot of clients. Now our service department billed about $120,000 last month. We’re pretty happy about that. Of that, there’s probably about $20,000 only in actual contracts. We’ve had our salespeople focus more on going and getting new business and new projects, and less on the maintenance side of things. The maintenance and service will come.

Physical security’s migration onto enterprise networks has pushed security integrators to become IT literate. Further complicating this has been the rising cybersecurity risk to the networks themselves. How is that impacting physical security integrators?

Piechota: I know there is some concern about funds being diverted to cybersecurity and away from physical security, but I don’t think that will happen. I think it just makes the CEOs and CFOs more aware of security, which is going to benefit all of us in the long run. Hopefully I’m not just wearing rainbow sunglasses.

What I think is very important for us as security integrators, is to really understand and have an intimate knowledge and experts in IT. A lot of people think they understand IT because they know IP addresses and subnets and switches and so on, but there’s a lot more involved.

We have been selling IP cameras for probably 15 years. The reason we’ve been able to do that is because we’re living on the cutting edge. That gives us a breadth of experience in the industry and we built upon that. Living and working in Silicon Valley, we have to be on top of the IT folks. We invite them in at the beginning of our conversations with a client. Getting IT and working with the CSO is great for us. They understand that we get it.

Franklin: If you’re not embracing IT as a security integrator and drinking that tea every single day, you are not going to be around in five years. We see it with the convergence of Ciscos and Googles and all these other companies that are IT companies getting involved in security because they know where security is going. Every single device that we sell is going to, in one way, shape or form, in the next five years hang on the network. If it’s not on the network, it’s probably not going to be used.

We invest heavily in our IT department and encourage our IT guys to be as smart as, if not smarter than, our customers’ IT department. The IT departments we deal with are typically on the critical-infrastructure side and large nationals, so we’re hanging devices all over the country, even all over the world on their network. These IT guys, you go into the company and they don’t want to look at you because they think you’re not on their level. “You’re hanging devices on here, you’ll do what we say, you’ll host stuff in the direction we want to.” We find if there’s a lot of problems with an IT solution, it’s usually their network. They changed something, invented a patch, did an update, and haven’t notified security because security is the lowly guys that don’t need to know about it.

One of the most refreshing things is coming back and showing them their IT department did a patch last night at 2 a.m. Our technology is smart enough to know you just changed that. We didn’t change it. You start to build credibility with these IT departments and then they realize you’re their ally to work and find the problems and solutions, and to give a better product.

You also mentioned cybersecurity. I hate to think that the security i
ntegrator is going to have to have cybersecurity as part of your role, but I also jump forward and believe if you don’t and you’re connecting to large nationals and they’re going to let you hang devices, you better have a focus on it. It better be in your vocabulary. You better have an understanding of that.

IT is here. Everything we do is IT-centric. You talk about the smaller integrators and whether they’re hanging analog or IP, you’ve got to invest in the IT world. You’ve got to get really good IT people. To me, they’re more important than your salespeople. They are the cutting edge, the leading edge, and the dying edge of your company. And if you don’t embrace that, you’re in deep trouble.

Minner: Media reports of network security breaches do a number of things. They increase the awareness of the importance of security, the threats they’re facing, and I think they increase the attention they pay to the solutions and the capabilities they can invoke in order to protect themselves on several levels. It doesn’t divert their attention from physical security. It is like a rising tide lifting off. Things that are threats to either networks or infrastructure or people are all increasingly being focused on.

That increase in sophistication benefits the good integrator who stays on top of IT capabilities. There’s a lot of benefits to seeing increased sophistication, particularly as we see product margins erode and some things commoditize, we want to be better at providing professional services at levels that are really going to be value-add to the customer.

Stuart: Our company looks at things in terms of how much risk you introduce to the client, and how we alleviate that risk to the client. When we reach the point in the sales process where that risk needle has dropped very low, and they have an inclination and feeling that if they go with us they’re going be very secure. Our risk needle is very low, whether I’m the CIO, CTO or CEO, I’m going to have a high degree of confidence that we can deliver, and that we’re going to provide a high level of security as we touch the network.

We bring our IT guy into our sales appointments. You have to do that, you have to mirror their IT guys. As systems integrators, we have to be doing that across the board if we want to be successful or we will not get the deal. The head of our department is actually a cybersecurity specialist. He comes to an appointment and he’s talking the language that resonates with them, that they need to hear. If that relationship between your IT customer and your internal IT guy is not great, that’s a problem. It turns to a real strength if those two hit it off.

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our FREE digital newsletters!

Related Content