ADT splits in two

BOCA RATON, Fla. and DALLAS—To cater to the specific and very different needs of its residential and commercial customers, ADT Worldwide president Naren Gursahaney today announced that ADT would split into two separate organizations: ADT North America Residential and Small Business, led by John Koch, and ADT North America Commercial, led by John Kenning.

Koch and Kenning will continue to report to Gursahaney.

The realignment will “sharpen the focus on the unique aspects and special solutions and services” in the two organizations, Gursahaney said.

This announcement comes on the heels of ADT's acquisition of residential giant Broadview Security, which closed Friday, May 14.

ADT North America Residential will be a $2.8 billion operation. Koch, who will run that organization, has served as president of ADT North America since Mike Snyder left the post in 2005.

Kenning joined ADT earlier this year in the newly created position of VP, commercial ADT North America. ADT's North American commercial business is a $2 billion operation.

Kenning came to ADT from Nortel, a $10.4 billion telecommunications equipment company, where he created a global infrastructure to support sales, assessment, design and implementation of services in 86 countries. Kenning noted that even with the separation of the two businesses, the ADT groups will still be the two biggest security groups in North America. Everyone knows that security technology is becoming more IP-based, he said, but it's also increasingly wireless-based.

ADT's commercial group is “primed and positioned to support our customer base as they transition to the new technology,” Kenning said, adding that SST, which ADT acquired in 2008, is fully integrated into the organization.�

Koch and Gursahaney emphasized that ADT N.A. Residential intends to adopt the customer service best-practices that Broadview was best known for. Three of Koch's direct reports will be Broadview veterans. Shawn Lucht, former Broadview SVP, strategy and corporate development, will serve as group VP of operations. Carole Vanyo will lead a new group customer experience team and Stacey Rapier will lead HR. Former Broadview CEO Bob Allen will stay on in a consulting role.

The Broadview acquisition ups ADT's residential revenue by 27 percent "with over 85 percent of that in RMR," Koch said. It extends ADT's geographic reach to "90 percent of the zip codes in the U.S. and Canada," the distribution for ADT's direct- and dealer channels, as well as its customer service and monitoring capabilties. ADT will now have four monitoring stations in the U.S. and two in Canada.

The IT integration of the two companies "will evolve over the next year to 18 months," Kenning added.

Koch said the re-branding of Broadview will be gradual. "We will continue to look like two different companies for the next 100 days or so," he said. “During the summer and fall you will see a decrease in the number of Broadview ads and an increase in the number of� ADT ads.”

Over the next several months, “the big focus will be on training,” he said, for customer service, technical and other staff. He said to look for the introduction of new next-generation services from ADT, including interactive services and video for the home in coming months.

Koch characterized the planning process for the combination of Broadview and ADT as "structured and collaborative" noting that since early March, cross-functional and overlay teams met "frequently in Dallas and Boca Raton."

The active integration of ADT and Broadview dealers will begin this afternoon with a conference call between Koch, his team and dealers across the country.