Success hinges on top talent

THE HUMAN TOUCH: Alliance Security's growth has been driven by its investment in employees, says the company. They include Latrina Crim, a customer service representative at the security and smart-home technology firm's Cranston offices. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
THE HUMAN TOUCH: Alliance Security's growth has been driven by its investment in employees, says the company. They include Latrina Crim, a customer service representative at the security and smart-home technology firm's Cranston offices. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

If the words “home security” bring to mind a cartoonish image of a man in a mask slinking out of a rear window dragging a sack filled with your prized possessions, you are like most people when they first call Alliance Security of Cranston.

Most potential customers call the company to ask about locks and alarms, said Brian Fabiano, chief marketing officer. That gives the company the opportunity to teach potential customers about “smart-home” technology and make further sales.

Smart home – also called home automation – is a mind-boggling array of features that allow a home-owner via phone to monitor comings and goings at home and to operate devices such as lights and thermostats. Apps can give a homeowner a ping if he wants to know when teenagers might be opening liquor cupboards, or when elderly parents might be reaching into medicine cabinets.

Despite this technology, Fabiano said that Alliance Security has grown rapidly in recent years mainly because of its efforts to train and develop its management, sales and technical staff.

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“We put a lot of focus into our people,” Fabiano said. “We seek the right kind of people with the right attitude and put them in the right place. We encourage feedback and ideas. You can accomplish great things if you have hundreds of people thinking about ideas to make the company better.”

The company was founded in 2003. Its first office was a spare bedroom in the home of CEO Jay Gotra, who had previously worked just a few years in the home-security field. A dozen years later, Alliance moved in June from Warwick to a bigger space, in the former Katherine Gibbs School building in Cranston. The company said at the time that it planned to expand its workforce from 300 people to 600 people. In late August, the company had 550 employees, said Joseph Phommasith, a public relations professional who works with Alliance. Fabiano said the company expects to be servicing 65,000 homes across the country by the end of this year, about twice as many as in 2014.

Fabiano said the company has never used the exploitation of fear as a tactic to create new customers. Rather, Alliance salespeople who enter a home to talk about locks and alarms are trained to educate consumers about the entire panoply of ways technology can keep the house and family safe.

Using only one application that allows various products to talk to each other, a customer with smart-home technology can see a video clip of children coming home after school. Customers can get an alert from an elderly parent who is home alone and needs help. (In fact, Fabiano said, 25 percent of the company’s customers are using Alliance-installed technology mainly to track seniors at home.)

When people are home, the technology can even adjust heat levels as people shift from room to room. “Motion detectors talk to thermostats,” Fabiano said.

Phommasith said, “Technology research firm Forrester Research says that half of U.S. households will integrate smart-home technologies by 2020.”

Still, Fabiano insists that smart-home technology is not getting his salespeople and technicians into the door of the company’s burgeoning number of customers.

“Smart technology is not the reason for the company’s growth,” said Fabiano. “It is too new.”

In fact, he added, “We invest time and resources into our people. That is the driving factor that allows us to grow.” n

CEO (OR EQUIVALENT):

Jay Gotra

2014 REVENUE: $53.2 million

2012 REVENUE: $24.4 million

REVENUE GROWTH: 118%

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