'Solution' Manufacturers Threaten Integrators

John, right on the money!

There is obviously a lot of variability in the market, but in my experience the most savvy integrators embrace and own this, and use it to their advantage.

They bring the manufacturer into the process very early, and their ability to get someone from 'the factory' to visit the customer personally as a show of their pull with the manufacturer.

If the integrator did the design completely on their own, they might use a wider mix of products, but that also takes up time from their own staff, so they let the manufacturers SE's do the design, and push back only if the design has obvious flaws.

Then they present that design to the customer as an "officially sanctioned" system, which reduces their risk if there are support issues. They can lean on the manufacturer to send a tech out to fix things, and also save face with the customer, as it was the manufacturers own design/spec. There is still risk to the integrator if the design totally blows up, and that is why the integrators still have to review and understand things to ensure there are no massive holes.

This method does run the risk to the integrator of reducing their perceived value with the customer, but there is still a lot of work involved in the installation, setup, ongoing maintenance and other items that the manufacturers do not really want to touch, and this gives the integrator room to add value.

I think this trend is also driven by customer demand as much as manufacturer desperation. Customers want to know that the company behind the products they are purchasing has some heft and presence. They also want reassurance that the system is going to work as advertised, so that manufacturer involvement is comforting to them.

Some of the customer-driven side of this may be due to the earlier days of IP, where integrations were more fragile and products overall less robust than current generation products. Finger-pointing between the multiple manufacturers involved, and the integrator, about who should own the solution was not uncommon.

Overall, I think customers want that involvement from the manufacturer, and are suspicious of integrators that try too hard to act as a "firewall" in that relationship.

Yes, as loyalty wanes and integrators are trying to support multiple manufacturer's lines so they can respond to more opportunities, the manufacturers are realizing that they need to do a lot more footwork to either get their product specified (AXIS and Avigilon come to mind) so that it doesn't matter who the eventual integrator is, or the manufacturers are finally taking the bull by the horns and spearheading the time and effort required for providing what the end user wants (from an integrated solutions standpoint), which pulls their own producst in along for the ride.

Long sentence, I know .. lol , but essentially I am agreeing with John.

The days of integrators getting really good at one main product line (Whether access ir video) and selling the heck out of it are starting to become a thing of the past. While this big cloud of dust is being stirred up (With the integrators responding to the pressure to become more things to more people), the manufacturers in some cases are seeing this as an opportunity to slide into the role that John describes and be front and center with the large end users.

By this time, the integrator (who often knows more about the various parts and pieces that make up the overall solution) are burdened with making a non-optimal solution work in order to stay in the race for the end user's business as well as sometimes settle for the installation and start-up labor.

From what I am seeing, the video side is still much more susceptible to the manufacturer threat than the access control side. Access control still has more unique nuances and risk components and there are often multiple approaches to a solution (from a locking hardware and system architecture standpoint).

With security becoming more and more of a commodity, I would not want to be an integrator today. Let's not forget, 60 years ago, you needed to call a professional installer to get a new telephone. Over the years, phones became commodities. Sure, you still have a need for installers and technicians on very large phone systems, but the vast majority are exceedingly simple. Behold the future of security.

A lot of times, this isn't the manufacturers who jump in, but the distributors instead. Especially for inexperienced "integrators".

Its all part of the "race of the bottom". Integrators that operate in a lowest-bidder market must understand that their business is under constant threat by competition willing to do the same work for less money.

It should never be a surprise to find new challengers. Expect them; especially from those that understand the vulnerabilities and have the leverage to exploit them. Manufactures and distributors with deep pockets will always be both partner and contender.

The answer to constant competition is to remove yourself from it. Differentiate by such a huge factor that it would take the competition a decade to catch up.

My examples were extreme, I was trying to make a point. Bringing in a manufacturer on manufacture specific issue post sales is of course not at issue, bringing in a manufacturer on a manufacturer specific feature such as their POS integration pre-sales is not in question. But likewise bringing in a distributor to meet with an end user to discuss bandwidth and storage, a distributor should not be supporting this kind of endeavor. A distributor should not be assisting in troubleshooting a system, this crosses a line in my opinion... My real point is the comic nature of a distributor coming in and telling me about all his resources, that he has available to design, program sometimes and troubleshoot systems - basically performing our function (but no risk).

In my 25 years of experience as a sales professional working for a manufacturer, I have done everything from design to the end until the integrator does the installation. We have eliminated the integrator in the process now, as sometimes the integrator loses site of what the end-user really wants and can make things more complicated. We now have a network of highly trained integrators that do our installations for us and we have added an installation department to our staff as well.

We changed to this model over a year ago now and it has been very positive for the end-user, integrators and for us as the manufacturer. Now we are working with directly with the end-user we have a better understanding what they really want and what they really need. What we have found is even with the right solution it doesn't always solve the internal theft problems. We now have Loss Prevention Serves. Loss Prevention auditing services provide a turn-key Loss Prevention solution. Our professionals function as the in-house Loss Prevention department for businesses that have the same Loss Prevention issues of larger retailers, but do not have the dedicated staff to manage the problem. The LP services is a monthly subscription per location. We have reoccurring revenue every month on services and software subscriptions and warranties. So far this new model is very profitable and all parties involved are happy.