Rapid technology advancement a challenge to today’s business leaders

If you don’t believe that the pace of advancing technology is at top of mind for today’s business leaders, just ask John Robuck, Capital One Financial Corporation’s Managing Director of Security Finance. His team conducted a proprietary survey of conference attendees at Honeywell Connect 2018 in Marco Island, Florida this past November. The respondents, which included security system dealers and integrators and other professionals who serve the security industry, believe that keeping up with the pace of technology presents the biggest business challenge in 2019.

“Technology is continuing to have a transformative impact on the security industry,” said Robuck. “As the pace of change continues to increase, we are seeing many security businesses turning to acquisitions to drive additional scale or supplement existing capabilities, while others are looking to sell if they feel that they may not be able to effectively keep up.”

As technology innovation continues to re-shape the security industry, professionals also showed a growing interest in acquisition facilities with 45 percent of respondents selecting them as the type of financing that will be the most important to their organization in the next 12 months.

Taking a backseat to technological change, customer attrition (25 percent) and decreasing margins (24 percent) were also selected as the greatest challenges facing industry professionals as they move into 2019. However, concern around decreasing margins dropped significantly over the past year—in 2017, 43 percent of executives cited decreasing margins as their greatest concern for the year ahead.

Those surveyed maintain an even-keeled perspective regarding specific technology innovations and trends that will be the most impactful to their businesses in the next 12 months. More than one-third of respondents (34 percent) elected video surveillance and managed video monitoring as the top innovation impacting the industry, with interconnected devices following closely behind at 32 percent. Somewhat surprisingly, respondents believe DIY and self-monitored systems (22 percent) will be less impactful in the year ahead.

Underscoring this finding, when asked about competition in 2019, respondents elected DIY and self-monitored systems (16 percent) as posing the least competitive concern. Instead, they ranked local and regional providers and national providers alongside each other as their primary competition (each at 33 percent respectively) with cable and telecommunications companies coming in at 18 percent.

“Security professionals continue to be optimistic about the industry’s financial health overall,” said Robuck. Four-in-five respondents expect better financial performance than today, while 19 percent anticipate it will remain the same.  “Although the industry may be evolving more quickly with each passing year, our team at Capital One is equipped to offer recommendations and counsel that help security professionals tackle key obstacles, like disruptive technologies and competition, and prepare for acquisition-type events that may require extra financial assistance,” said Robuck.