SDM spoke with three companies for its Industry Forecast looking back at 2024 and ahead to 2025 on a variety of topics. The panel included Kathleen Ford, co-owner and CEO of ScDataCom, a Savannah, GA-based security integration company specializing in federal contracts; Chuck Petrusha, president and CEO of Advanced Security Systems, Eureka, CA, a full-service alarm company and past SDM Dealer of the Year; and Greg Parker, global vice president, security and fire, life cycle management at Johnson Controls, Glendale, WI, a well-known large international integration company.

Below the panel talked sales and growth opportunities for 2025.

SDM: What is one factor you feel will most significantly affect sales of security systems by your company this year?

Greg Parker: For us, our service teams and technicians are what make the difference. It’s really the backbone of everything. So when you consider we’ve got over 400 service branches, and about 8,000 technicians just in North America, we’re at least nearby where our customers need us. And whether we’re designing a new system or retrofitting an old one, we need to be there every step of the way for our customers and their journeys to optimize performance, cut costs, and simplify operations.

And those insights from our customers are shaping how we invest within our company. So AI technologies, our service offerings, be it a managed service, other as-a-service, or subscription services, are helping our customers address some of these challenges. And some of these are challenges we hear about directly from customers like staffing shortages, evolving security needs, “How do I keep my firmware up to date or secure at the edge?” I think that if we can stay focused on listening to those customers, that becomes a significant opportunity that will affect sales.

Chuck Petrusha: It’s a little different approach I see for us and our ability to sell security and life safety systems for 2025. And that’s if there is a thriving economy, which tends to drive construction in our industry and our region. Every new building that we touch, we love to offer our complete suite of products. And like Greg said, having a team of qualified security technicians and security staff in our office allows us to be ready for that. And I think we have been.

The security industry has weathered many, many storms. Whether it was the California wildfires or COVID-19, or the housing bubble, a lot of different things have come at the security industry. But we’ve been very resilient. And so being a local provider of services where you see our technicians at the grocery store and our office people down on the ballfields with their kids, that makes us part of the communities we serve. And so being ready for the economy to pick up a bit I think is our strongest opportunity for growth into 2025.

Kathleen Ford: For us, we are pursuing some new contract vehicles that I think will have a big impact on our growth in 2025. That’s on the federal side. We’re also doing some marketing in our local region to keep some steady work with our enduring customers in and around the Southern states of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. Service and maintenance I think are a high growth area we see. There are some up-and-coming things in weapons detection. We’re still seeing quite a few customers interested in that, particularly in healthcare and education.

But I think across the board what I’m seeing is we have an opportunity to meet the customer’s needs for integrated solutions. I think that there have been historically some stove-piped solutions and I think when Greg talked about what JCI’s portfolio of offerings are, I think he’s got it spot on. I think our customers now are demanding those integrated solutions. And that’s a growth opportunity for all of us to be there with the right solutions and help them get all their systems talking to one another so that they can have a seamless solution to their security requirements.