Integrator Connection: Commitment to Innovation Raises the Business ‘Bar’

While economics remains a major influence in today’s integrator market, systems integration company Advance Technology remains top of their game. Although the need for upgraded technology and solutions coupled with tight budget restraints remains Advance Technology’s greatest hurdle, they continue to bring the latest technological advancements and offer unique solutions to their customers. Headquartered in Scarborough, Maine, Advance Technology has grown from a small, two-person business consisting of owner, founder and CEO Jesse Abbott and one technician to a midsized company serving several states across New England. Established in 1994, the company operates throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont and has expanded internally to over 40 employees, offering highly experienced technicians and a variety of solutions in critical infrastructure, financial, healthcare and higher education markets among others.

Shift to cloud hosted services

Advance Technology offers a range of solutions including access control, audio/video, video surveillance, intrusion alarms, RFID infant abduction and patient wandering systems and recently shifted their focus hard and fast to cloud-based technologies and proactive service and maintenance.

“Many of the systems we’re installing today focus on cloud-based solutions. Rather than the customer making an investment on servers and software, we’re moving those types of systems into a redundant data center where the customer is basically renting the solution,” explained Rob Simopoulos, president of Advance Technology.

The customer pays a monthly fee and the software and server in the data center can be accessed remotely through the cloud. He said these cloud-based solutions provide the customer with cost-savings because they don’t mandate the large capital investment in server or software maintenance and also eliminate the need for extra IT support. Cloud technologies and hosted solutions are the leading trends in the industry and Simopoulos commented that system integrators are realizing they can bring additional recurring monthly revenue (RMR) opportunities to the table.  

The concept of simplification has carried over into other aspects of Advance Technology’s business as well.

“A new part of our business that we’re growing tremendously is where we allow the customer to do their job, i.e., what they do well while our engineers support their systems for them,” he said.

Simopoulos said the company’s philosophy and key to success is not in selling product, but in providing unique solutions to the customers to meet their needs, offering affordability and lending expertise.

“A unique thing we’re doing is proactive managed services where our remote engineers are going in on a regular basis into customer sites and doing health checks on customer systems,” he said.

Technicians routinely check the status of all the equipment, making sure everything functions properly and checking reports for anomalies, providing this service to their customers to ensure that their systems are running properly as expected.

Advance Technology’s philosophy is about “asking a lot of questions, finding out what the customer’s challenges are and solving the problem with solutions,” Simopoulos said. “It’s not about selling parts and pieces, but providing a level of solutions that solve their issues.”

Simopoulos emphasized that any dealer could give the customer off-the-shelf products, but it’s another thing to customize solutions.

“One thing that separates Advance Technology from other dealers is the fact that we are providing remote and proactive services and cloud-based solutions that are unique in the marketplace,” he added.

Cloud-based, wireless and managed services are becoming more popular among dealers, yet Simopoulos commented that many dealers are lagging behind the current trend, still relying on old-fashioned servers and software solutions.

Just as Simopoulos takes pride in the company’s commitment to providing unique solutions, he also emphasized their promise to deliver top-notch customer service. Simopoulos remarked that customer satisfaction has greatly influenced the success of the company, a system of checks and balances in the form of evaluations and survey processes by the customer keeps up the high standards; after all, referrals from satisfied customers are what keep the company going strong.

“Our level of customer service,” he said, “we take that seriously. We have a strong process put in place from the first customer meeting to the end of the installation, all the way through to how our service department runs and we’re always doing checks and balances.”

As a result of Advance Technology’s commitment to quality services, the company continues to rack up awards, recently placing number 27 on SD&I magazine’s Fast50 ranking and best practices program and winning other high-level industry awards as well.               

Simopoulos mentioned that finding, hiring and retaining new employees is definitely a challenge, and unfortunately, careers in security systems and electronics don’t seem to be garnering as much attention in the academic community as they should be. “One of the challenges is that we have really good people going to school looking at career paths and not recognizing that studying IT is a stepping stone for them to become security technicians or to go into the security or systems integration industry,” he said, adding “we’ve been trying to meet with colleges to educate them that there is a path to security from those courses and that when they graduate, students should take a look at the security industry because it is a promising career path.”

Simopoulos spoke briefly about the future of the company, saying “we want to continue to grow throughout the New England area, in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and we want to be a leader in cloud and managed services solutions in the market place.”

Ariel A. Cohen was a 2013 summer intern for Cygnus Business Media, SIW and STE and SD&I publications and is currently a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology studying Science, Technology and Culture.