A few years ago, our team made the decision to invest in membership in Progressive Security and Audio Visual (PSA).
PSA is a buying group for security products. In essence, security companies across country have joined together as a consortium. As a member of the group, we can pay a fee to be a member and can enjoy the buying power of the group.
PSA is tied to security products, and vendors sell through PSA. Many of the brands we represent sell through PSA and now that we purchase through the group, we still get the credit with the individual companies we did before, but many times we’re getting a better price.
“We have great relationships with our vendors and feel their products are the best,” says Jeff Murphy, ECT’s CEO. “Purchasing though PSA allows us to maintain those relationships but also have the best opportunity for the most-competitive pricing for our customers.”
The bigger issue for why being a part of PSA matters for our business is inventory. Like so many businesses, supply chain issues are a big challenge right now. We’ve written about this before. Now, being a part of a group offers more flexibility to available equipment. Through our partners and other members of PSA, we can come through for our customers more efficiently. Now, more than ever, this is critical.
We’re also getting great training for our team members. Last fall, as we celebrated our 40th anniversary in business, several of our team members talked in-depth about how AI and cloud-computing is changing the nature of the security side of our business. With PSA, we’re getting up-to-the-minute training on new products, which benefits our customers. We’re able to speak more knowledgeably about the new systems and provide options for our customers which put them ahead of the curve.
ECT has been a nationally-serving company for a long time now and the partnerships we have built through PSA, again, help us be more efficient for our customers. Many of our customers have multiple sites across the country. Knowing we can sub-contract, when needed, to a fellow member of PSA means we know the level of service will fit in with the expectation our customers have of ECT. Of course, the home office is always involved at the project management level to be sure we’re in the loop, but the sub-contractor serves as an extension of our ECT team.
This year, our Director of Sales, Scott Kohler and VP of Security, John Arnold are going to the PSA conference this year. They’ll attend networking events and key trainings. Their time at the conference will be focused on AI and cloud-based services functions. We’ll take what they learn there and will roll those ideas into ECT’s strategic plan for 2023.
