The global security market is fast-evolving. To some security solution providers, this has resulted in a struggle to cope. But not for Pelco, according to Yallouris, who maintains that the key is to retain a strong connection with the customers.
This is a continuation of
a&s’ recent interview with Terry Yallouris, VP of Sales in APAC at Pelco by Schneider Electric.
Click here to read the first part.
The global security market is fast-evolving. To some security solution providers, this has resulted in a struggle to cope. But not for Pelco, according to Yallouris, who maintains that the key is to retain a strong connection with the customers.
a&s: You don't see an obvious slowdown in certain regions?
Yallouris: We see a lot of competition in our traditional space. We do see a slowdown – [but] I can tell you looking forward, I'm not seeing on paper a slowdown for us. We look at the amount of quotes that we're doing - and that's not showing any indication of slowing down. It's just a projection, it's just activity, and it can be subjective, but long-term projection is probably a lot more interesting than short-term projection. Long term you see a lot more opportunities coming around, but short term, we see a lot of projects.
The "lead" time is much longer than it used to be. Projects take a lot longer, from conception to delivery, it's a lot longer than it used to be as well. It might have to do with the volatility, you know the markets, especially when you're talking about those 4, 5 countries, and the competition, and the exchange rate (we are a US company, but owned by the French), so the currency issue is sometimes a concern.
But you know when you start to do oil and gas and the oil prices are at its lowest in many years and the gaming is quite niche, and it's quite down at the moment. City surveillance is an interesting one and airports. Countries are developing and we're trying to catch up.
a&s:
But overall, doing security business is not that easy. Competition gets more serious, takes longer to communicate with end users to get the project done. Isn’t it?
Yallouris: Yes, that's true. You still got the competition effect which you still have to deal with, no matter what. If I wind back 5 - 10 years ago, we have a lot less competition than we have today. And that's factual, you can't change that. But I think everybody has a turn at being #1. When you're #1 everybody wants to kill you, when you're #2, 3 and 4 nobody really cares about you too much.
But it's important to understand that you still focus. The market is growing overall, the global security market continues to grow. The world is not as safe as it's used to be, every now and then we get reminded of that, and we have this splurge of security requirements. But, the overall market is growing, but we just have to make sure we capture and focus on the areas we can be most successful, or most effective, and that's what we've really done in the last couple of years trying to refocus our business.
a&s: I think communicating with your customer or partner is very important. Especially right now, because there's a lot of competition, and you have to make sure your customer understands what Pelco is doing, and what Pelco is good at. So, over the time, what do you think will be the biggest changes/ improvements in your customer communication?
Yallouris: What I say to our team is that we see a lot of evolution of communication. Whether it's been in trade shows, print media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn - we've got them all today. We're almost at a point of saturation, but it depends on what market you're trying to capture.
I still tell my team the most important thing is the fundamentals of what you do with your customers. Whether it's an end user, SI, the most times you get in front of your customer the likely chances are you have a better relationship with that customer, they understand you more. As opposed to what I would call an inadvertent type approach, where we all do the LinkedIn and stuff, but that has an attention span of so little. When you spend your time with your customer, it has a lot more effect. It's about looking appealing to your customer.
We try to work various angles with the end user, because they create the pull through. The SI, of course want to be in the middle of it, and we have to use that medium to make sure they deliver the solution, and of course we have the specifiers, they're obviously very important as well. So you have to try to support everybody at all different levels. If you do the perfect job, it all comes together quite nicely, and you lock everyone else out. But we live in a world today where technology and information is so available to everybody. But to me, it's about the basic fundamentals. Make sure you are visiting your customers, spending time with them, communicating with them. I think at the end of the day, we are all customers at some stage in life. You go back to the business that's nice to you.
a&s: In terms of technology and solutions or product offerings, Pelco has been through a big change. Like the camera itself, pretty much differentiates with others, but now it's more end-to-end solution. So that is the key message to your customers?
Yallouris: Our traditional installation base is end-to-end solutions. Large end-to-end solutions. Back from the analog days with the MATRIX switches, cameras etc. The core components of that, we manufacture. And nothing has really changed in that respect. If we can criticize ourselves, one thing we did well, is sometimes hold your back somewhere else. We are a conservative company, we supported our products through to our 7th generation coming up of SPECTRA, for about 20 odd years. This is a product that's been the iPhone of the industry. It's been an evolution of products, it's been retrofitted, and people know it by brand and understand it. Same with our MATRIX switch, same when we came in the digital era, the ENDURA, which we've been selling for 10 years. Now we've released a new platform, which is an evolution of ENDURA. It's a new platform, but again, we haven't forgotten what our customers have spent in the past.
A lot of people tend to say "cut, that's old. This is the new platform", we still can migrate a lot of our old products. So their investment, when you look at the total cost of their investment over a period of 5 or 10 years, for a lot of our customers, it's fantastic. But the flip side for that is that it sometimes holds you back a bit from trying to be at that leading edge all the time. So, a bit more conservative, a bit slower to react sometimes, but when we get there, we get there with a good product, and we support our customers all the way through. I don't know about you, I don't want the latest and greatest technology all the time, I want the proven technology, and I think that's what our customers would like as well. We can rattle off a lot of customers (end users) who's been with us for more than 15 years. Looking forward, we appreciate the life cycle of products, it's certainly got shorter. Because technology is evolving so quickly now, it HAS to become shorter. There are no 2 ways about it. That's probably caught us a little bit on the hop, but I think we are reacting quite well to it, and we're trying to balance the traditional way Pelco does, that great customer service, total solution provider.