Devcon and Pinnacle to share services

OREM, Utah and BOCA RATON, Fla.—They've had the same private equity owner—Golden Gate Capital—since 2009, but traditional model company Devcon Security and summer-sales model company Pinnacle Security have always maintained separate operations, until now.

At a Nov. 11 employee rally in Orem, Utah, executives from both companies announced that the two companies will have a much closer relationship starting in 2012.

“What we're announcing is a shared services agreement, where we'll start leveraging the strength of each organization,” said Robert Farenhem, CEO of Devcon Security.

While both companies will retain their names, Pinnacle's door-knocking sales force will begin selling “Devcon-branded accounts.” That means that the accounts will be serviced at Devcon's customer care center in Dallas, and Devcon's local branch offices will provide backup service and support to Pinnacle's sales force.

Pinnacle was acquired by Golden Gate Capital in 2008 [http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/pinnacle-acquired-management-golden-gate-capital] and Devcon was acquired by Golden Gate in 2009. Golden Gate executives have said that they were interested in taking advantage of synergies between the two companies, but until recently, there were not a lot of obvious ways to do that, Farenhem said.

However, in the past year Devcon has rapidly expanded from a super-regional security company to a national company with more than 50 local branch offices [http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/devcon-goes-national].

In addition to utilizing Devcon's service and technical support, Pinnacle salespeople will now be able to tell customers that the company has a local presence anywhere that Devcon has a branch office.

That is an important advantage, Pinnacle CEO Kelly Walker told Security Systems News. “The local presence and year-round sales and service branch offices will add strength to our offering,” he said.

Devcon will now have access to Pinnacle's “industry-leading IT platform that Pinnacle and Kelly have spearheaded over the past year,” Farenhem said. The platform has a slick onboarding process, the ability to manage several branch locations' automated payrolls, and licensing and training components, Farenhem said.

“Pinnacle has stress-tested [this IT platform] in the summer program and it will dovetail nicely with Devcon's expansion,” Farenhem said.

While Devcon has central monitoring stations, Pinnacle will continue to outsource the monitoring of its accounts to CMS.

Pinnacle has 165,000 accounts. Devcon has 125,000 accounts, two-thirds of which are residential.