ADT expands its footprint in commercial security

With its non-compete clause with Tyco officially coming to an end on Monday, ADT announced that it is expanding its footprint in commercial security and is rebranding its ADT Small Business division to just simply “ADT Business.” Specifically, the company will be expanding its service offerings to mid-sized businesses with commercial solutions in the top U.S. commercial security markets including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, the New York metro area, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Seattle/Tacoma, as well as the states of California, Florida, New Jersey and Texas.

According to Luis Orbegoso, president of ADT Business, as a part of the separation agreement between ADT and Tyco, ADT was limited to offering security services to businesses that were 7,500 square feet or less in size. Additionally, the company was also prohibited from offering any type of fire installation services as part of that agreement.

“In effect, ADT will now be able to target any business that we would like and we are also free to expand our services to include fire,” said Orbegoso. “The ADT Business unit will have a small business sales organization, which is what we’ve had in place for a while and we will also have a commercial sales organization as well."

Orbegoso said that the company has identified “key markets” where they are going to begin targeting their newly expanded set of service offerings. These markets include retail, office buildings and food and beverage establishments.

“The expansion and our ability to go beyond 7,500 square feet with our existing small business sales force is something that we are excited about and our ability to target mid-sized commercial customers – those that are looking for solution sets that are a little bit more expanded, such as expanded intrusion, expanded access control, expanded video, and fire monitoring - these are all things that mid-sized commercial customers are looking for,” said Orbegoso.  “We feel we can offer these things very effectively and in a manner that provides the best services possible in the industry.”

Although they don’t expect their sales to “go through the roof” by having this new market opened up to them, Orbegoso said they have anticipated this restriction being taken off of the company for some time and that they are going to take a calculated approach to how they expand in the commercial space.

“In the short-term, this is all about small business and expansion of small businesses services. We see the commercial opportunity as more of a mid-term growth, so we’re going to build it up methodically and we’re going to make sure we do it right,” explained Orbegoso. “You’re not going to see a shotgun approach  where we go after all of the commercial accounts out there. We’ve been very methodical, as I mentioned earlier, of picking some of the key markets that we feel give us the best ability to not only capitalize on the opportunities, but also leverage the existing infrastructure that we have.”

Orbegoso pointed out that ADT already has about 500,000 customers in the small business market and that the expiration of this non-compete clause will only give them something to build upon moving forward.

“We’re focused on providing the best security solutions out there and I think that the key advantages that we have is the fact that we’ve been in the industry for 140 years. No one else can say that,” added Orbegoso. “We know this space, we’ve been working in the space for a very long time, so this is basically an adjacency of that space as it relates to small business. On the commercial side, ADT also used to do commercial, so we know that space pretty well and we have a lot of people that are familiar with it. I think when you combine the reputation, current infrastructure, the fact that we are by far, the largest provider of small business security in the U.S. today, and given that we also have a good level of expertise and knowledge in the commercial space from our previous experience, you put all of that together and it’s a pretty powerful combination.”