Q: What are your thoughts on Verifier reaching such an important milestone?
How time flies! That’s the first thought I have!
As pioneers, we’ve had to go the hard yards of being independent, and it’s been tough because we’ve had to feel our way around the different market segments, but all in all there’s a sense of achievement knowing we’re one of the top players in the country. I think, as the pioneers to a large degree, we’ve pioneered LPR into the corporate space, and we are now the biggest LPR and managed service provider into corporates, retail etc.
But the 15-year mark also indicates you’ve hit a level of maturity. We have to take a more mature approach to not just chase turnover, but to make choices to take sticky, profitable business. So as much as your ego doesn’t want you to turn away any customers, you reach a level of maturity where you have to.
Q: What are the biggest personal/ professional challenges you and Verifier have overcome?
The interesting part has been learning to let go and let others run with things, but at the same time I know that I’ve done a good job as CEO if I can go away for a few weeks or a month and things keep running without a blip, and probably even better than when I’m here!
So for Verifier as an organisation, we still see challenges like the increase in new entrants to the market. The bulk of them have limited experience, so they think if they can do alarm monitoring they can do CCTV monitoring etc, but they don’t really understand the requirements.
We’ve been through that pain, we monitor our own performance and gather metrics down to minute levels, and keep up with the constant learning and constant training required to ensure the quality of service needed to effectively run an off-site monitoring company.
Q: What keeps you interested in the security industry after all of these years?
The industry is still one of the fastest growing industries in the country, and the off-site monitoring sphere is the fastest growing in the security industry, so with failings in the public sector, there’s opportunity in the private sector.
The challenge now is to get international expansion, so that’s something we’re really targeting. South Africa is still a priority, we’re aiming to saturate as much of the local market as we can, but then we’ve definitely got our sights on foreign expansion. We’ve already been doing work in Portugal for a number of years, and that is something we see growing over time.
With everything becoming inter-connected, South Africa is sitting in a perfect position. With call-centres proliferating, if we can just keep our government and economy running as is (i.e. not worse) the private sector will step in. There’s simply too much to lose.
In the corporate sector our growth sits at 25% per annum, and this year we’ve already hit that target within the first two months, so that is significant! We’d love to hit 100% growth, but the challenge would then be to ensure consistency and quality at scale. That’s ultimately the strength of our approach to controlled growth.
Also, we’re definitely motivated by the impact we have! It’s great to know the ‘Verifier Effect’ is felt by our clients, as we’ve had a number of positive interactions where the client pretty much says they’re not always aware of everything we do for them but they can feel the positive impact it’s having on their business.
There are so many other reasons security and the work we do draws people in. Some people in Verifier are driven by the likes of technology, others the impact, some by the fast pace of business growth, and others are captivated by the innovation and future vision of where the off-site monitoring industry is going.
Q: What elements within Verifier have led to our longevity?
I think one of the key factors to our longevity is the way we’ve been able to pick up amazing business partners, and people in-house, who are at the top of their game. So really our success is directly because of their success. It’s about surrounding yourself with people who are much better than you, that’s the objective.
Q: What changes have you seen at Verifier over your time here?
What hasn’t changed is our fundamental core values and our commitment to service, so our underlying core mandate is felt throughout our business. And they’re not just ‘blah blah blah’ values, they’ve been there from the start and have emerged strongly over time. The seeds were sown and cultivated with care.
We’re a service company so we’ve got to service to the best of our ability. That’s what has led to our referral success, most of our corporate clients have come from referrals. That growth is sticky growth. Looking at what has changed, it’s really just normal organisational changes to accommodate growth and new appointments, different positions, industry changes and the like. Organic growth and refinement you would have over 15 years.
Q: What changes have you seen in the broad security industry in the past decade-and-a-half?
What has really changed is the market! Every small business is trying to come in at dirt cheap pricing with free software and technology just to keep the other services they are already providing their customers, or to gain ever-decreasing market share that way. We try and stay away from the heavy churn. After COVID, for the first time in our business (12 years old at the time), we had to factor in churn into our business decisions.
In light of the political and economic situation in the country, Our corporate clients have to prioritise survival i.e. sustainable energy infrastructure like solar, renewables, so we’ve had to pivot our service delivery to accommodate their needs, far beyond old-school CCTV monitoring. So our ability to assist with cost reduction and systems optimisation through technology has worked in our favour.
We’ve gone through a heavy exercise in reducing overactivity into our control centres, so in this regard it’s made a massive, massive impact! These things take time and money to do, but once they’re set up and operational, you’re set and just need to keep a handle on it.
Q: What piece of technology do you believe has been the biggest game-changer? (Hardware, software, a use of technology etc.)
Since we started, we were the first off-site monitoring company to adopt A.I. From the days when ‘VideoIQ’ came into the country, we adopted A.I. from the get-go, literally two or so years into our business. We incorporated A.I. into our business as soon as it was commercially available, it was massively expensive then, so it was only sold into the upper LSM category. We’ve known, monitored, checked, tested just about all the A.I. products available in the market through the years, and we monitor now over 15 different A.I. platforms.
We’ve invested in the best commercially available single-platform system in the world to coordinate all of these integrations. That has been a massive undertaking for us as well, but it allows for bespoke set-ups for clients, allowing all the efficiencies that we need. You get a verified event, with video, knowing what has caused an activation, and you know whether it’s a human or not, and can act accordingly. Traditionally you had to rely on passive beams and sensors, which had a massive false alarm ratio of +90%! So A.I has allowed us to only bill for real activity, giving the customers a huge bang for their buck.
Q: Where do you see the industry heading in the near future?
I think the Off-site monitoring industry (with CCTV, LPR, A.I. and IoT all thrown in together) still has some maturing to do. We’re fifteen years in, but our closest large competitor is only around 6-8 years in, some smaller operators may be 10 years old. But the number of new pop-ups has caused a disturbance in the industry. They often don’t know what they’re doing, so customers may end up believing that off-site monitoring doesn’t work, or is more hassle than it’s worth.
New entrants struggle because they don’t realise how executively intensive it is! It’s not just as straight-forward as selling and monitoring alarms. A.I. can do incredible things, but only if you have an incredible team of knowledgeable, well trained and engaged people to back it.
And then IoT is starting to kick in. You’ve had Business Management integrations for 20+ years already, but if you have a look, you’ll quickly see the majority aren’t centralised. They stand alone, still sitting isolated at that mall, building etc. So, we are starting the push to get all of these separate systems to talk to us so that eventually our clients can get proper actionable data out of their existing systems.
So to sum it all up, the industry, and our company is morphing at the rate of knots, and we can’t wait to see where we’ll be in the next 15 years!
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