A quick search for school security on Google or browsing through our school news section at www.SecurityInfoWatch.com/education reveals about as many solutions as there are incidents. Even cash-strapped school districts across the country continue to earmark dollars for security upgrades; in fact, in SD&I’s annual Fast50 survey, the school security market was cited as the fastest-growing for security dealers and integrators’ business.
While the growth of this market is difficult to dispute, properly serving this market can be a little tricky for security service providers. Many K-12 schools probably have a security officer or two in place, but very few have a dedicated security director who knows the ins and outs of school security. On the fliup side of the coin, college and university campuses are often chock full of security experts — from campus police, to IT security experts, to security directors themselves. Thus, becoming a trusted advisor is a key component for security integrators in the education vertical — perhaps more so than in any other market.
SD&I brought together six integration firms to get their perspective on tight margins, sales and deployment strategies, outside-the-box RMR opportunities and more in this exclusive roundtable in print...here’s what they had to say:
Meet the Panel
- Bill Cariota, Director of Client Services, iS3 Tech Services of Atlanta
- Zach Delsman, Lead Supervisory Project Manager, Low Voltage Contractors of Minnesota
- Chris Gilbert, President and founder, Security Pros LLC of Indiana
- Tim Ferrian, VP Sales & Marketing and Employee Owner, Pro-Tec Design of Minnesota
- Michael B. Lohr, Senior Director of Marketing, Red Hawk Fire & Security
- Tony Varco, VP Security, Convergint Technologies
SD&I: In the past, the margins in the K-12 market have been tight for integrators. How have you overcome this obstacle?
Zach Delsman, Low Voltage Contractors: As our work in the k-12 education business increased, we found that we were able to perform more work in shorter amounts of time by building a team whose primary focus is schools. As work is done repeatedly, our team is more efficient. When we can, we also try to plan projects in a way that allows us to buy equipment and supplies in bulk, saving us money.
Tony Varco, Convergint Technologies: There are several ways to overcome the downward margin pressure many experience in the K-12 market. The first, and most obvious, is to continually examine and scrutinize your installation costs to ensure all product, direct labor and any contracted labor are all properly positioned from a cost perspective. Integrators must fully tighten-up their costs from top to bottom in order to compete in the K-12 market. Second, as it relates to project installations, integrators must challenge themselves to find creative ways to reach higher-level quality and on-time installations — for less! For example, can designed services be standardized and centralized to be able to product a quality submittal for half of the normal costs? Another example of this involves leveraging manufacturing or distribution partners to help reduce field installation labor by testing and addressing IP devices, such as cameras, before they arrive on the job site. Finally, one of the best ways to limit downward margin pressure is to work directly with the school district and/or consulting engineers during the planning stages.
Michael Lohr, Red Hawk Fire & Security: One way to overcome the obstacle is to look at the project from a holistic standpoint — material, labor, inspections, deficiencies, break/fix and central monitoring. We try to ensure that the higher margin deficiency work is identified during an inspection and submitted within 48 hours to the customer. We promote preventive maintenance and inspections on any material we sell because our techs have the most expertise on that equipment and keeping the systems operational is critical. Aftermarket services are usually two times the margin percentage of a project.
Chris Gilbert, Security Pros: By taking a consultative approach to our sales effort we have been able to maintain our profit margins. We typically avoid open bidding and keep our focus on providing our solutions and service at its highest level. This yields referrals and continues to drive our business forward.
Tim Ferrian, Pro-Tec Design: We try to look at the overall opportunity with the client — project, service and support work — and evaluate the margin over the life of a client rather than on a project-by-project basis. Considering the higher margin on service and support work helps us remain competitive on project-based work while maintaining an overall healthy margin with the client.
Bill Cariota, iS3 Tech Services: We have bundled our solutions to secure an increased scope of work to offset lower margins. They include mechanical locking systems, installation of access control, intercom, and electrical services, such as provisioning and installation of conduit and power circuits.
What is the best strategy to have as an integrator when you are sitting across the table from a school administrative staff?
Lohr: The best strategy is to understand what their pain points are (what is keeping them up at night), what budget they have to work with, what their priorities are and then try to co-author a solution for them. The solution needs to be collaborative and not something pushed down by the integrator.
Ferrian: Become an expert in their market. Participating in local associations and events establishes credibility and is a great way to engage with them in their “community.” When it comes time to sit across the table from them, it becomes a very natural and personal type of sale which leads to great results for everyone.
Gilbert: Listen. We are here to provide solutions to real problems and the solutions we are providing have a substantial impact on the safety of the youth of this country. It is our responsibility to bring the best we have to offer to each school we work with. By listening to the issues they face daily and working with partners to develop real solutions, our industry will be looked at as a trusted advisor.
Delsman: We feel the best strategy is to build a relationship that allows you to be a trusted part of the team in the early design stages. Oftentimes, school work is driven by price, which is assumed to be a lesser system. When working with integrators, planning solutions in advance allows schools the ability to get a more robust system at the same price.
Varco: It is often said that the best indicator of future performance is past success. One of the best strategies in working with school administrators is to be consultative and communicate your track record of designing, installing and servicing similarly sized projects. Connecting administrators with other school district personnel you have worked with in the past is a fantastic strategy for success in the K-12 market.
As the integrator, what role do you take with your education end-users - not only in the planning and installation phase but also in the ongoing use and upgrades of the system?
Varco: We have always believed that our biggest competitor is our customers’ ability to learn on their own. Whether it is the internet, publications or other competitors, customers have many resources at their disposal when it comes to gaining valuable information. It is the job of the integrator to take a consultative approach with all aspects of planning, installing and servicing these systems. You must become an indispensable resource for your customers by leveraging your experience and knowledge, and provide a level of ongoing service and support that simply cannot be matched.
Cariota: We have developed and written training syllabus customized for specific systems, which can be used to allow for ongoing administrator education as end-user personnel may change.
Delsman: We take a role early on in consulting with our education clients and stress the importance of having common systems among multiple buildings in their district. We have worked with districts who struggle with operating and training staff in a single district with a variety of systems. We stress the simplicity of operation, ease of training and overall ability of their facilities’ teams to maintain their buildings. We introduce upgrade solutions and ideas, often working for many years to vet new technology through the district.
Ferrian: A trusted advisor is the position we strive to maintain with our clients. We also try to connect and introduce organizations to each other so they can leverage the best practices that we all co-develop. This is extremely helpful as the school environment and technology changes.
Gilbert: As our solutions get more sophisticated and IT staff is reduced or oversaturated, we realize that our role has changed. We now have an obligation to offer management services to maintain the integrity of the installed solution and to ensure its operation when it is needed most.
Lohr: We take the education of our customers very seriously — from what to do when an intrusion alarm is triggered up to and including active shooter training, where we partner with another vendor. As distributors of security and fire equipment, we believe that we have an obligation to advise our customers about new technologies or to have our manufacturers educate them directly.
Service and maintenance is an obvious RMR opportunity in the campus environment...where else have you found success in creating RMR in this market?
Cariota: Through the deployment of visitor management systems and the selling of annual visitor management Software Support Agreements (SSA), as well as the replenishment of credentials and disposable badges for visitor management.
Varco: To create real value and increased RMR, integrators must develop solutions that create true business outcomes for their clients. For example, providing a customer higher-level professional services by integrating disparate platforms to ensure compliance is a great way to add value and increase your RMR.
Gilbert: Inspections, ongoing training and virtual support have all been advances in our services offering.
Lohr: We have found that upgrading of POTS (Plain Old Telephone Systems) to cellular transmission has opened up recurring monitoring opportunities.
Delsman: We have found additional RMR opportunities with monitoring contracts and software.
Ferrian: A few of the software platforms we work with are offering an RMR or Software As A Service model which we participate in.
What video technologies do you have the most traction with in this marketplace?
Gilbert: In the past seven years, we have not provided analog video to any of our education clients — we use IP video, web-hosted access and enterprise-level VMS. We will not compromise quality and resolution in the time of crisis for upfront cost.
Delsman: A lot of our work lately in schools has been converting CCTV to IP video. Analog signals and recording are being replaced by digital signals and magnetic tape is being replaced by high-capacity hard drives.
Lohr: VMS are gaining popularity because they are easy to set up, they are scalable, and they allow users to gain access to live or recorded video from remote sites with no need for network or router configuration.
Varco: Over the past couple of years, we have experienced our greatest growth through IP video paired with proven video management platforms. We are now seeing a significant expansion of video beyond traditional security applications. Customers are beginning to leverage video at an enterprise level for process improvement, quality control, safety, etc.
Ferrian: 90 percent of the video work we do is IP-based — especially in a campus environment, where the system is dispersed and decentralized.
Paul Rothman is Editor in Chief of Security Dealer & Integrator (SD&I) magazine. Access the current issue of SD&I along with archives at www.secdealer.com.
