Day's full-building operation

VICTOR, N.Y.--How does an integrator grow 85 percent in a 2008 that saw many companies flat or shrinking? Eric Orban, president of Day Automation, said he capitalized on the poor economy by emphasizing the cost savings that can be had by putting building controls and security on the same IP backbone.

As TAC's largest reseller, Day has leveraged the company's Continuum product line for both security and HVAC controls, “so you don't have to duplicate the costs of the infrastructure,” Orban said. “It's a nice package for a lot of our customers. Being able to go sell to our existing HVAC customers and sell them the security entity as well - there's been security growth across the board, and our traditional customers have expanded their installations where we did very little before.”

Day has been in building automation since 1978, started dabbling in security in the late 1990s, and then established security as a business unit in 2004.

“We used our existing customers for new growth, and we gained new customers with security,” Orban said, “and then we did such a good job there, we were able to gain the HVAC business as well.”

However, Orban said the company has not focused on service revenue for growth: “Our volume comes from doing projects; the service business is a small part of the business.”

That doesn't mean service isn't important for Day, though. “What sets us apart is that we strive to not only have our customers happy, we want them to be elated. Our people just do a tremendous job of providing exceptional service. A lot of our sales are done through customers telling their friends that we're the guys they need to work with.”