By Karen Evans
CEO of Sielox

Trends, Topics and Technologies

Regaining Access to the Market

Sales activity appears to be picking up as security professionals across the market look to carefully navigate their way into the impending post-pandemic world. No doubt it was a rather bleak and relatively flat year of sales activity for many professional security suppliers and their systems integration partners in 2020, but those who survived will be stronger. Perhaps it’s still a bit too early after the first half of the year to start making industry predictions and reforecast sales projections, but so far 2021 appears to be looking up for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, the recovery has little to do with real stimulus from the professional security industry, but rather the root of the problem itself – the COVID-19 pandemic. As global vaccination programs continue to expand toward herd immunity and we collectively work toward achieving the long-awaited state of herd immunity, businesses and organizations across all verticals, as well as schools and universities will continue to gradually reopen. This is especially relevant to SMBs who may have suffered the most financially, and who make up a rather large percentage of pro security customers and sales.

Some of the new and impending stimulus programs may also make new funding available to private and public organizations. The American Rescue Plan, for example, will pump approximately $130 billion into K-12 schools to help ensure they are safe for students and faculty. A portion of those funds can be allocated to solutions that support social distancing, safe access and compliance, much of which can be accomplished with core access control and surveillance solutions. Herein lies new business opportunities with existing and new clients in need of immediate solutions.

Discussions with system integration partners across the country seems to indicate that they are starting to gain more access to customers’ facilities, which was previously limited to emergency maintenance and service at many facilities over recent months due to self-imposed or government-mandated occupancy restrictions. We are also hearing that many project proposals that have been dormant since the pandemic took hold last March or were initiated during shutdowns in anticipation of budget freezes, are resurrecting for discussion. These are all good signs that we’re headed in the right direction.

Another stimulus driving re-engagement with customers across every vertical is the need to audit and update access and surveillance systems to help better protect employees and facilities from infection, and to comply with new health safety mandates. Simple measures like implementing automatic N-man occupancy features that may already be built-into advanced access control solutions, but never activated, provide a fast and effective remedial solution without incurring additional costs. More aggressive but not necessarily difficult measures to implement can entail replacing standard access card or proximity readers with mobile phone readers or integrating readers capable of automatically detecting if an individual is wearing a mask or has an elevated body temperature beyond acceptable thresholds. These solutions can integrate with access control to automatically prevent individuals who may be sick from entering a healthy facility, so they can be redirected to an alternate location for further screening.

Another relatively simple and inexpensive measure is to implement simple cost-effective touchless solutions like wave switches and auto door openers to limit individuals’ contact with potentially harmful pathogens on push plates and door handles, and to prevent potentially spreading their own illnesses to others.

Maintaining engagement with customers and partners over the past year has hopefully put us all in a better position to capitalize on the unfolding recovery. We may not be out of the proverbial pandemic woods just yet, but we can see there’s light at the end of the tunnel.