Integrators Survey Results on Increasing Sales/Revenue

An SSI survey [link no longer available] examines various factors impacting sales and profiability of integrators including technology selection, obstacles faced, market selection and margins achieved.

Technology Selection

Of all security products, video surveillance dominated the technologies selected with a comined 51% selected as the products to generate more non-recurring revenue. SSI broke it down into 10 categories with 4 video surveillance related: IP based systems, video surveillance, megapixel cameras, wireless networks. Interesting, video analytics was not offered but at least a few integrators wrote it in.

Obstacles Faced

Training consistently ranked as the #1 or #2 in both generating new revenue or in reducing costs. While I agree of its importance, this is somewhat surprising as training is not as frequented requested or discussed by industry people.

Market Selection

Government and healthcare dominated the preferred markets for integrators with respectively 33% and 20% of the votes. By contrast, commercial sector only received 5%. This is sensible for US integrators given that government funding is holding up the economy currently.

Margins Achieved

Integrators reported actual margins of only 24% despite tageting margins at 34%. While the poll does not specify, I would assume that these are gross margins and calculated for the entire job (the most common way of doing so). Only 13% reported 40% margins or higher.