Bold Technologies refocuses on existing customers

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Bold Technologies' president Chuck Speck recently left the company to pursue other opportunities. Speck's departure comes as the company takes a new approach, Bold CEO Rod Coles told Security Systems News.

“Chuck did a fantastic job getting new customers and building our account base. … We're just shy of 600 customers right now,” Coles said. “[In] the last few years, our focus has been adding new accounts, but we're at stage now where we really don't need to do that. …We're putting all of our focus on our existing customer base.”

Speck had been with Bold, as VP then as president, for the past 13 years. He was also the president of Bold's sister company, White Rabbit Electronics, since its inception in 2014. Coles said that operations at White Rabbit will not change due to Speck leaving.

Bold is focusing more on its offerings, such as Neo—the newest version of its Manitou monitoring center automation platform—and NotifyMe, a notification-based communication for consumers.

“A lot of our growth will be in the cloud,” Coles said. Bold released its Manitou Cloud Services in October 2015, which will also use Neo in the future, he said.

When end users click on a NotifyMe notification, an app opens, where they can “verify the alarm or cancel the alarm or view video,” Coles said. “Central stations are really quite excited about this because it puts a lot of control in the hands of the [end] users and obviously that means they'll get less false alarms.”

“Customers will be handling, and filtering, the alarms much more than they currently are,” Coles said. “People want to be more involved and it makes life easier for the central station.”

NotifyMe has a cost benefit for central stations, according to Coles. It sends app notifications at no cost, whereas similar services that use SMS text messages are not free, he said.

Through Neo and the app, operators can open chats with multiple customers at the same time, instead of one alarm user over a voice call.

NotifyMe is currently available and Neo will be ready by Bold's Users Conference, held here Aug. 9-11, he said.

Coles said Bold would look to have another president, but it is not a priority for the company. Speck left the company on good terms, Coles said, complete with a going-away party.