Two industry leaders look forward

INDIANAPOLIS--Perhaps there finally exists in the United States a truly national security systems integrator. Two months after absorbing HSM into the newly created Stanley Convergent Technologies Group he runs, Brett Bontrager thinks he's just about there. "Time will tell," he said, "and we've got to prove out the business model, but it would be our belief that we are the only company that can truly be called a national integrator." This comes just six months after PSA Security president Bill Bozeman launched a national accounts program for his members by saying: "Everybody knows that this is the truth: No one, not ADT, not Siemens, not Johnson Controls, no one is able to provide complete nationwide coverage. And they know it." However, as head of a now-$600 million Convergent Security Solutions business unit, maybe Bontrager knows something no one else does. "Anybody who's been in this industry for a while has seen some people claim that they have the national model," Bontrager said, "and they've figured out the business model. I can tell you that we've taken a very thoughtful approach and are analyzing the two assets we have, Stanley Systems and HSM, and we have had to put a business model together that will work on a national basis. I can tell you that it will be driven by the service excellence that HSM is bringing to the table." "When you look in the past," he continued, "a lot of national integrators have gone out and marketed themselves as having the ability to serve the North American area with a full design, install, service, etc., model, and didn't have maybe the scale and footprint to make that economically viable. With the addition of HSM to what we already have, we truly have the scale to make that model work. We're quickly going to take advantage of that scale to put together a model that will be a success for the customer." HSM's service and management model is so good, in fact, that it will be incorporated throughout Stanley's security business. He didn't go so far as to call it a reverse merger, but it was clear that he and Stanley had no intention of swallowing or subsuming HSM. "I knew we were getting a good management team," Bontrager said, "and what we've wound up with is a world-class management team. What Tim [Whall, HSM COO] has put together is really exciting. The culture that they have for winning starts and ends with providing world-class service; everything else will fall in place. It's a culture we'd like to spread throughout our entire convergent security group ... They put their metrics in place and diligently manage to those metrics and they're based on service to the customer."