Keeping You Safe
Security Systems of America protects homes and businesses of all sizes
When he started Security Systems of America in 1972, Art Beaver says the residential security business was really non-existent.
“The few clients we started with were all from the country club set,” he says. “It was an expensive proposition because the tools were not as good as they are today, and the product was not as good as well. So, we could often spend a week in a house with a two-man crew wiring every window and door, hiding the wiring, and subsequently patching and plastering. It was a challenging job to install a security system in an existing home,” Art says.
Fifty years later, the family business that Art started in Pittsburgh with just with three or four employees has grown to a team of about 70 professionals, with a branch office in Johnstown. The firm now serves all of Pennsylvania and the tristate area of Ohio, Maryland and West Virginia. Revenues reach $7 million to $8 million a year. Art is CEO. His son Brice Beaver served as President until his untimely passing in July. The company hopes to name a new president by the end of the year. His daughter-in-law Julie Beaver is Vice President and grandson Brendan Beaver is Media and Advertising Manager. At 82, Art is looking at moving more into a consulting role and expects family members to take over the company sometime in 2021.
Security Systems of America today operates in three segments—fire alarms, and residential and commercial security. The firm has expertise in burglar alarm systems, fire alarm systems, cameras and video surveillance, panic alarms, access control/door entry systems and 24-hour monitoring. “We have special teams in each of those categories,” Art says.
“One of the things that we do, which is different from some security companies, is that we do security systems and beyond,” he says. The “beyond” focuses on the company’s effort to build long-term customer relationships by “continually providing information on new technologies, add-ons and upgrades when appropriate at very affordable prices,” Art says. “Our experience is that customers prefer this local touch as it creates a more personal experience. We commit to being accessible via phone, email, social media, text and chat. We regularly survey customers through our call center, central station, consumer review sites, etc. to continually improve our service. We conduct surveys after service calls via a customer review platform called Podium.”
A Top 100 Security Firm
Security Systems of America was ranked 74th this year on SDM (Security Design and Marketing) magazine’s list of the Top 100 U.S. companies providing electronic security systems and services to both residential and non-residential customers. The SDM ranking is based on recurring monthly revenue or RMR, an industry standard.
“That’s not bad for someone who never planned on owning and running a security system business,” Art says. “When I decided to go into the business, I knew that I really wasn’t a particularly electronic person, and I knew none of the courses I took in college had really prepared me. But essentially, I found that the opportunity presented itself, and I decided to come through the back door I guess you’d say.”
With residential security, there is not a lot of difference from one home to another in terms of design and implementation, Art says. But there can be a lot of difference with commercial customers, and Security Systems of America deals with all sizes of commercial businesses and a wide range of customers. “We have an international client in Pittsburgh that has five or six buildings, and we provide the entire organization, several thousand employees, with access control in each building as well as security and monitoring for fire,” he notes. But Art says he finds that the smaller companies, the mom and pops, are often ignored, and his firm provides those businesses with the same service and skills that it brings to large companies.
The company’s fire alarm business includes upgrading and renovating older alarm systems, as well as installing fire alarms in new construction. “For new construction we will often work with the electrical contractor who actually installs the system,” Art says. “What we provide are the components that make up that system, the final connections and service and monitoring under a service contract. But on renovations, we are able to take the project 100%,” Art says.
The Security Systems of America team is proud to build long-term relationships with clients. “We’re not like some industries when you have a client and you do a service for them, and you just do it and it is ended,” Art explains. “When we provide a service for a customer, it is just the beginning. It’s the beginning because we provide a lifetime service arrangement. We have several dozen clients for whom we installed systems back in ’72 and ’73, and they are still our customers,” he adds.
Long-term employees are key to nurturing those on-going client relationships. “We had two employees retire last year,” Art says. “Our service manager has been with us 35 years, our branch manager in Johnstown 30 years. And even among the technicians and operators, we have people who have been here a long time. We are not a turnstile in any way. We are interested in keeping people. It helps with the continuity of the business and the continuity of customer relationships.”
Protecting an American Icon
One of those long-term relationships and one of Security Systems of America’s most noteworthy clients is the Frank Lloyd Wright house Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. Built in 1935 for prominent Pittsburgh businessman Edgar J. Kaufmann as the family’s weekend retreat, Fallingwater has been called the “best all-time work of American architecture” by the American Institute of Architects, and since the mid-1960s the house has been a major tourist attraction. It is owned and operated by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
“The building and grounds required security,” Art explains. “Tourists were walking through the building and there were artifacts that had to be secured through wireless technology. Even some of the statues on the grounds needed to be secured, and that was very challenging. The conservancy is still our customer today, and we are very proud to have gotten involved with that early in the game.”
System Security
Security Systems of America installs systems from national manufacturers and then provides monitoring in Pittsburgh. But that monitoring has changed dramatically over the years with the telephone companies going away from the old copper wire infrastructure. Communication between the home or business and the central monitoring station is now largely accomplished over cellular service, Art says. But that has its own problems because the cellular network providers are now going to 5G, and that means millions and millions of cellular communicators, the devices that link the alarm system to the central monitoring station, have to be upgraded.
But those changes have also allowed Security Systems of America to use an innovative product that has been very successful for his company, Art says. “We now have a frequency assigned to us through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and we are able to install a communicator as part of the alarm system, specifically for fire alarm systems, that requires no phone lines or cellular communication. It works over the radio network.” Typically with a fire alarm system, the National Fire Protection Association standards require that a reporting device send a test signal every 24 hours, Art says. Security Systems of America’s wireless communicator sends a test signal every three minutes, and it reports to the central monitoring system in about a second.
With older technology, when an alarm goes off in a building a central monitoring station is going to get that signal in a little less than a minute. “Our central station receives that signal in one second. So it cuts down the alarm’s communication, and it doesn’t rely on outside technology such as cellular or digital communication,” Art says. “This will never need an upgrade. It will remain UL listed and compliant forever. Even if the UL decides to want a test signal sent every hour instead of every 24 hours, we already comply.” Security Systems America has done a thousand buildings in Pittsburgh with the technology.
The security industry has grown threefold over the last 20 years ago, but Art doesn’t think bigger is necessarily better and feels that it is a great time to be in the security alarm business. “We still find that there are a host of companies, businesses and homeowners who prefer to work directly with us and have their systems customized the way they want it.”