Subscriber Discussion

Who Does Mobile / Vehicle / Bus System Installs?

UE
Undisclosed End User #1
Nov 24, 2015

I'm curious to see how many integrators out there work with school busses and other vehicle systems. What vendors do you use, how did you get started, etc.

I have some experienced from the product side on this, but I'm interested to see what other's experience is. Based on school RFP's that I've seen, there is money out there in this area. What am I missing?

JH
John Honovich
Nov 24, 2015
IPVM

I've only encountered this from time to time but my experience has been that the money is terrible. The 'integrator' is more like an installer who is expected to bang out bus after bus. Not much money, very little smarts involved and a lot of hard work.

Part of the reason I saw was that these go to the lowest bidder, so the systems proposed are usually real cheap and the labor dollars committed are minimal.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong / that my experiences are the exception.

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UE
Undisclosed End User #1
Nov 24, 2015

The reason I say 'there is money to be made' is because almost all of the RFP I've seen were for several hundred busses at a time (usually an entire fleet). But, as you said, most schools are going to go low bid so the profit dollars may get tight. I'd love to hear from someone that works on these projects

JH
John Honovich
Nov 24, 2015
IPVM

Yes, and I have seen a number of such multi-hundred bus / fleet projects and the total dollar amount can be impressive but once you break it out, it is not much money per bus / per install.

Also, I have directly witnessed repeatedly manufacturers selling direct for such projects and then subbing out install to a local tech company.

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Nov 24, 2015

I have had the "Pleasure" of providing some quotes for systems like these - and yes they are low profit projects. My experience was soured as once I provided my bid with products requested - I find out that the manufacture quotes directly to the end user and does their own installs - low-balling every proposal I did provide.

Very upsetting - and a waste of my time and money!!

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JH
John Honovich
Nov 24, 2015
IPVM

"I find out that the manufacture quotes directly to the end user and does their own installs - low-balling every proposal I did provide."

I am not alone then :)

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UE
Undisclosed End User #1
Nov 24, 2015

Ironically enough, I had this also happen to me. One of our vendor contacts randomly dropped in to our office once. He said he was 'in town' which was surprising since he was based in another state. Come to find out after chatting, he was in the area to support an enormous bid project that they had won in the next city over that we knew nothing about and they had gone direct on.

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Ethan Ace
Nov 24, 2015

In my past integrator life, we won a school bus bid. There was a tech that had recently come on who used to work for the city comm center installing radios in police cars. So he could get buses done fairly quickly and there wasn't a ton of profit, but it was healthy. I think it's gotten more competitive since then. This was in the late 2000s.

I've heard of another integrator who hired a car stereo installer to do all the rough work, since those guys are more suited than typical techs. Plus they generally are low paid, so anything more lucrative they jumped at. The integrator did the config in house, installer ran cables and put up cameras, and they came out and did a final check on each bus.

I do think it's a shame that so many of these go to the lowest bidder, though. They're big projects that end up being standalone instead of part of a school or city's overall security plan.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #3
Dec 15, 2015

Who are the major products players usually? Surprisingly, and not surprisingly, it doesn't seem many of the big players have a well designed solution for this.

Who were the products that ended up selling direct?

JH
John Honovich
Dec 16, 2015
IPVM

Not an expert in this space; One name I have heard regularly, though, is Safety Vision.

UE
Undisclosed End User #1
Dec 16, 2015

SEON and Angel Trax are other big ones.

There's a growing number of Chinese products coming in. Hardware is ok, software is a bit flakey and lacks a lot of advanced features that people are asking for. WiFi offload is a common request... which isn't overly hard, but the software/server back end is less than elegant from what I've seen unless you spend big dollars

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Luis Carmona
Dec 16, 2015
Geutebruck USA • IPVMU Certified

That seems to be the big problem, as usual. I don't think anyone wants to spend the development dollars to do it right and cleanly unless they are practically guaranteed a return on investment, but customers don't want to make a commitment in dollars unless they can see something that is actually in existence.

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