40 under 40: Jeffrey Sweeney, A+ Technology & Security Solutions

YARMOUTH, Maine—Unlike many in the security industry, Jeffrey Sweeney, General Manager, A+ Technology & Security Solutions, found the company he would stay at early on in his career.

“I started with the company part time while in college in 2003. I am in charge of the Sales and Operations Teams for A+,” Sweeney explained. “I work very closely on a day -to-day basis to help guide the Sales and Pre-Sales teams to help them navigate new opportunities, offer guidance on designs and make sure that our customer requests are being addressed in a timely manner. I also manage our vendor relationships, identify emerging technologies that may help keep us growing in the years to come.”

On the operations side, Sweeney works very closely with our Project Engineering Team, Help Desk and Project Implementation Team. “I run monthly management meetings with the heads of each department,” he noted. “I also join the weekly departmental meetings, we have joint meetings where multiple departments are able to learn from each others successes and challenges.”

He continued, “I took a job with A+ while in college because of the flexibility that the hours offered me, allowing me to continue with obtaining my degree. I started out working with the inventory we carried and eventually went out into the field to perform installations and service. Growing up when I did, and watching the internet and technology continue to become more prominent in our lives allowed me to really understand the work we performed, why it was useful and why this type of technology was here to stay. That made me want to stay in the industry, I believed in it.”

Top Trends

Two major trends that Sweeney is seeing are simpler management and better analytics. “A lot of that is being made possible by the cloud,” he said. “I believe we will continue to see more and more companies and products move to this architecture, it provides a better user experience and also becomes simpler to manage. The only objective is really cost, buy history shows us that will continue to be less of a factor as we move forward.”

He believes that analytics and sensor technology are “the most exciting things happening today” in our industry. “We are seeing analytics and sensors be able to come together to solve problems that used to require comprehensive and expensive systems to address,” Sweeney noted. “We are seeing sensor technology grow tremendously in the wearable and the automotive markets, I believe we have a lot of new sensor technology coming to our industry as well.”

What are your views on the industry moving forward? Like many other industries in the past few years, I think we need to be prepared for a possible monumental shift in who the integrator is and the value the integrator delivers. As technology changes, the integrator needs to be able to adapt to stay relevant and continue to bring the value that our market needs.

Adapting to Change

Looking keys to succeeding right now during these unpredictable times, both personally and in business, Sweeney said he and the team at A+ had to adapt the way they do things.

“The last two years have brought the most unique challenges that I have seen yet in my career,” he said. “Adapting to the new environment and understanding that this environment is affecting all of our team members differently has been one of the keys to success. We have tried to adapt to minimize the affect that this pandemic has had by changing how we operate and I believe those changes have had a positive impact on our team members both personally and professionally.”

He continued, “We have also had to really take some risks as well with regards to navigating the supply chain issues in 2021, we carried more inventory than we ever have as a company and we were forced to move off some of our standards and adapt new lines due to availability in some instances.”

Another challenge during these challenging times is getting more talented, diverse young people involved in security.

“I believe the major manufacturers in our industry can help bring awareness to our industry through their marketing strategies,” said Sweeney. “The security industry has some of the most cutting edge technology in the world, and this technology is used every day to keep people safe, prevent and solve crimes. There is a lot about our industry that should be very attractive to the new workforce coming of age, they just need to know who we are and what we do.”