CGL Electronic Security to grow national business

WESTWOOD, Mass.—In an effort to grow its business nationally, security systems integrator CGL Electronic Security, Inc. recently brought on industry veteran John Nemerofsky as president of national programs, a newly created position for the company, and moved its corporate headquarters to a larger, state-of-the-art facility based here.

As a regional integrator with a primary focus on Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut, CGL founder Ron Ludvigsen told Security Systems News, “We felt that in order to grow the business we needed to add a little different facet to it, so we started to leverage some of our existing accounts to do projects with them all over the U.S. and internationally, which we found to be a very nice way to grow the business.”

Ludvigsen has worked with Nemerofsky for many years, including building successful national programs together prior to CGL.

“When I looked at it there was only one person that I thought of to lead this national program, and that was John, just from our previous experience and the things that we had done together,” he said. “By taking this and making it its own separate division, we felt that we could roll it out as a formalized program across the U.S. and internationally to service some of the larger customers and make some pretty nice inroads in the marketplace.”

Nemerofsky has served as a management consultant to many system integrators, manufacturers and industry associations, and previously held the position of senior vice president of sales and global marketing for Stanley Security Solutions.

“I couldn't be more excited to start a venture like this with Ron,” Nemerofsky told SSN. “We have been friends for more than 25 years and CGL has attained incredible growth and has built some unbelievable infrastructure and processes here, as well as a unique facility for systems integrators to really launch this to the next level.”

The larger, 15,000-square-foot corporate facility is complete with a demonstration space, large warehouse, in-house fabrication/testing area, and a top-notch training facility that will be primarily used to train and certify customers on the access control and video technologies installed at their facilities.

“In building the facility out, we really thought about the growth of the business and how we were going to do it, and we made a lot of investment in technology, testing and training, which we can do on-site here now,” said Ludvigsen.

As part of its expansion, CGL Electronic Security also created a Software Support Team to help clients solve technical problems remotely by using diagnostic tools and providing high-level network support.

In addition, the larger facility provides ample room for CGL Electronic Security's expanded fabrication department where technicians can build and configure security equipment in-house and test products before the equipment is installed at the customer's location. The facility “allows us to fabricate our panels so they look the same way every time,” said Ludvigsen.

From a national deployment perspective, “We are a member of Security-Net, so we feel that we have 21 of the best integrators across the U.S. that we can leverage to help perform the installations, allowing us to really service and maintain our client relationship,” Ludvigsen said. Established in 1993, Security-Net maintains approximately 60 regional offices and 1,400 dedicated professionals.

With the right support staff and infrastructure in place, Nemerofsky said he expects short-term growth of between $8 million and $10 million in 2017 for the national program. “Long term, our performance build-out for over a 10-year stretch of national account business shows the business growing to well over a $100 million,” he said.

Overall, Ludvigsen said top-line revenue for the company is up about 5 percent year over year, with RMR up almost 15 percent for the year. “Today our top-line revenue is nearing $10 million, and our RMR is running around $70,000,” he noted.