Diebold launches dealer program

ANAHEIM, Calif.—Diebold was front and center on the ASIS International show floor this week, but its biggest news may be of more interest to integrators and installers than to the end users who've flocked here: The 150-year-old company has launched the Diebold Advanced Dealer program, looking for integrators and installers interested in reselling the company's video monitoring, managed access control and energy management capabilities, among others.

“We've been a proprietary monitoring center,” said Steve Ipson, director of Advanced Dealer development at Diebold, “but we realized we've really got a good thing going here. We've been central station of the year with CSAA, won Frost and Sullivan's monitoring provider award, along with the fact that we've been doing a lot of the more advanced services—we've been doing video since 2001; it's nothing new to us. So we decided that what we do is different than what the other guys out there do, so let's leverage that.”

Diebold operates UL-listed, CSAA Five Diamond-certified monitoring centers in Uniontown, Ohio, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Ipson emphasized, however, that these are “advanced services, and we're looking for advanced dealers. They understand IP technology and managed services.”

Dealers in the program will be able to promote the affiliation with the Diebold brand as Diebold Authorized Dealers, as well as take advantage of the $3 billion company's buying power. The program will confer volume discounts from suppliers of both security products and things like vehicles and insurance.

“We're giving them the power that a big company can have,” Ipson said.

Ipson also believes he's designed a program that's dealer friendly. “I've heard bad things about dealer programs,” he said. “I've heard people say things like, 'I feel like I'm selling my soul to the devil.' Maybe they've got quotas or they've got to sell their accounts. And that takes the wind out of their sails. We're taking the high road. You can maintain your own identity. We don't want to buy your accounts.”

Interested companies can apply to the dealer program through the Online Dealer Center at www.diebold.com/dealer following the close of the ASIS show.