How Integration And Global Expansion Will Help The Security Industry Succeed In 2018

Economic recovery has enabled companies to continue global expansion efforts. We’re seeing substantial growth with our enterprise clients – 45% year-over-year increase – and sound growth with our local markets – 14% year-over-year increase.

Both existing and new clients are upgrading their current security infrastructure and investing in the development of long-term solutions. Convergence of physical security and IT security continues to trend. Threats, vulnerabilities and pain points are different for every end-user, which compels us to be even more agile with large-scale solutions and evaluate how we engage existing customers on this topic.

However, the path forward is still undefined for every integrator – most are not being honest about the uncertainty.

Continuing Mergers In The Industry

Our industry will continue to see mergers and acquisitions. Traditionally these changes lead to failures and take quality integrators out of the marketplace, which drives end-users to evaluate existing solutions and ultimately increase opportunity for nimble companies, like Security 101.

Good economies make talent recruitment more and more challenging

Conversely, good economies make talent recruitment more and more challenging. Security 101 is making a greater investment in the future now by focusing on our people with career development programs. Additionally, we are recruiting new talent from outside of the industry and identifying individuals with key skill sets that can be developed internally with stronger training programs. I think you will see more integration companies mirroring our approach.

Winners And Losers

Our industry will continue to see more technically complex products and a greater emphasis on standardized solutions that address physical security and IT security needs. End-users are looking for more integrators with IT centric training and certifications.

The winners will be the companies who actively invest in developing their internal teams to include these technical qualifications and capabilities. The losers will be those who fail to identify and prioritize this need.

Our biggest success has been continuing to maintain and grow a great team, which has allowed us to drive new business and continue to be consultative with a customer-centric approach.