FE Moran poised to take on national accounts

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—FE Moran wants to be the new player on the national accounts stage, and its president Brett Bean said the acquisition of Synergy Systems will enable the company to quadruple its national accounts business in the next four years.

“We're aiming to make a big impact in national accounts soon,” Bean told Security Systems News. “We've kept a low profile, but we've been quietly building our capability across the country.”

Synergy is located in Monroe, Conn. Terms of the deal were not announced. “We want to take our national account business to $20 million in gross revenue within the next five years,” he said. That will mean growing that business segment four-fold. As a longer-term goal, Bean wants to be among the top 20 security companies in terms of RMR within 10 years. “I want to be in the top 20 by 2020.” With RMR right now around $550,000 that will mean quadrupling RMR within ten years.

As important as the accounts that came along with the Synergy acquisition, which are resi, commercial and national accounts, were the two former owners, Mike Madden and Matt Ernest. Madden is focused on business development and coordinating national accounts on the East Coast and Ernest “is taking over a big responsibility in operations for national accounts,” Bean said.

How can FE Moran—which is headquartered here and has small offices in Effingham and Northbrook, Ill.; Greensboro, Ga.; Las Vegas; and a larger office in Fraser, Mich.—compete with the likes of ADT, Protection 1, Vector, and Carter Brothers, all large companies that have all been talking recently about national accounts?

Bean said he's spent the past several years building an infrastructure to support national accounts.

The FE Moran national account model is similar to Vector's, Bean said. It has offices in certain areas of the country, but will use a network of partners across the country. “We have a number of quality companies across the country that we are confident can undertake [national accounts] work for us.” FE Moran's partners must meet “rigid quality control and project management requirements.”

Bean also said he's spent the past two years undertaking the licensing aspect of becoming a national accounts provider.

In addition, the company moved to a new headquarters and opened a new central station in October of 2009 and January of 2010 respectively. “As the IP side of things has become more prevalent, we've invested a lot in in-house IT professionals and technology in our central station.” They're doing managed access, for example, and “IP video back-up storage for customers with extremely critical recorded video.”

Bean said there's a lot of opportunity in the national accounts business right now, but “we don't necessarily consider every national account a good account for us.”

The acquisition brought with it “more complicated systems ... logistics companies for example, that are looking for enterprise systems ... and with the retail accounts we are poised to capitalize on the EAS market.”

Bean described the Synergy customer base as including the “full gamut from burglar alarm, to access control, IP video accounts and EAS. The one missing component is fire and FE Moran is very strong in fire. They have some of what we lack, and we'll fill in on the fire side. There's a lot of synergy with the Synergy acquisition.”