ASI to expand into Missouri

QUINCY, Ill.—Full service security company ASI (Alarm Systems Inc.) expects to be up and running in a new market, Columbia, Mo., by the middle of April.

“It's a vastly underserved market. There are no Honeywell companies there,” Ronald Haught, president and CEO of ASI, told Security Systems News.  ASI is a Honeywell HIS dealer. “Our style of business is different [from other providers in the area] and we will be able to capitalize on that,” he added.

Today ASI “actively markets in a 75- to 100-mile radius of [its base here in] Quincy and we will do the same in Columbia. [The two markets] will overlap about 15 to 20 percent,” Haught said.

Founded 40 years ago by Stephen Havermale, ASI has its own U.L.-listed central station. Its business is 60 percent commercial and 40 residential. Haught purchased ASI in 2012 from Havermale.

Haught also owns called Point to Point Tech Solutions, a telecom company, based here. A service provider for telephone and electrical cooperatives, Point to Point installs fiber as well as wireless technologies for the Internet. “We do 10 different types. My guys help engineer, install, maintain and troubleshoot,” Haught explained.

While ASI and Point to Point are two separate companies, there is much cooperation and cross-selling between the two. Together the companies have 50 employees, half on the telecom and half on the security side with some staff crossover among the field and technical employees.

With the two companies Haught can offer business and residential customers “a range of services. … Business customers need Internet, they need phone, local and long distance, they need an alarm system and a video system. If they're a large chain of grocery stores [for example] they want refrigerator monitoring, or generator monitoring or monitoring of other ancillary things.”

“In the past an alarm was just an alarm, now I look at [the security business] as another layer of convenience and customer service,” he said.

Point to Point has telecom customers in the Columbia, Mo., area and Haught is eager to offer existing and new customers ASI services.

“We have very aggressive growth plans for Columbia and we are actively seeking acquisitions in that general area,” Haught said.

When he purchased ASI, “I bought a company that had been around for 39 years and we brought them 10 years into the future. They had a great customer base and tons of experience,” he said. “We brought in new technology [for commercial and residential customers],” he explained.

Missouri is ASI's first move into a new market, but Haught says that other new markets will follow, as soon as 2016.

“We'll establish ourselves in Columbia and we'll expand out from there,” he said.