March 24, Las Vegas—For most of those in the security industry, this year’s ISC West is not the first of these types of security trade shows. And in some cases, such as last year when the economy felt the hard impact of the recession, it’s quite easy to foresee how a show turnout may be. But this year is a whole other ball game and to be quite honest, it was refreshing to feel that renewed sense of energy in the air.
Sure, we all want to showcase our new products and it’s nice to mingle face-to-face with folks that we connect with virtually on a daily basis. But let’s face it—with thousands of products targeting the different components of the security industry, it can get downright intimidating trying to compete against a hundred other companies out there that offer a very similar product to yours. And for us media, well, what we want to know is what is your company offering that we haven’t already seen before? What is it about one provider of video surveillance technology that differs from the guy at the booth next to you? And hears the bottom line—it’s not just about price anymore and that realization seems to be spreading across the showroom floor more so now than ever before.
And that’s exactly one of the major points that business strategist, Rowan Gibson talked about in his
"Trends and Strategies for the Electronic Security Industry" seminar, presented by the Visonic Group, Tel Aviv, Israel .
Among the impact that communication technologies such as IP/Broadband, GSM/GPRS have on the industry, Gibson spoke on the aspects we need to focus on in order to continuously reinvent the business.
“The real issue is how do we change?” Gibson asked. “As technology becomes cheaper and more in place, for the future, we’re going to see competition coming from those big box retailers.”
Gibson spoke about the threat of not having that added value anymore—and one of the main questions that security providers need to continuously ask themselves is: what is being done to add recurring monthly revenue (RMR) to my own company? What I am doing to differentiate myself from the competition?
One of the ways that Visonic is leveraging the process of adding that RMR to their product line is with their Powerlink solution. Powelink is an Internet-based solution for advanced home security and control which enables service providers to leverage the full power of Internet connectivity to take their home security, safety and control services to the next level and also offers an optional feature that allows the end-user to access Web portals to add RMR. Service providers can use PowerLink as a fully managed Web services platform by enabling its built-in secure Web portal and providing end-users with Web control, notifications and surveillance services. It also offers a plug-and-play broadband IP event notification solution for alarm central stations via Visonic's IPMP IP service management platform and can be expanded with up to 14 cameras placed around the premises – creating a comprehensive IP-based video alarm verification solution.
Stay tuned for more coverage to come in SD&I’s May issue. It’s a crowded market but the opportunity is there for those technology providers that see the big picture.
Natalia Kosk
Security Dealer & Integrator
