Five Questions: Eric Widlitz, Vanderbilt

Eric Widlitz, VP - North American sales, Vanderbilt, is dedicated to expanding the company's reach in target markets. When he's not leading the North American sales team, he told SSN other things of interest to him.

Are you married? Any kids?
I have two daughters — ages 12 and 15 — and have been married to my wife for 16 years.

What are some of your hobbies?
I love the outdoors. I'm a die-hard fly fisherman — all fishing really — but mostly fly fishing. I also love kayaking, enjoying the woods with my dog and anything outdoors.

How did you first get started in the industry?
I've “grown up” in this industry. Before I joined Vanderbilt, I was in my previous position for 20 years. I'm passionate about it. My favorite aspect of the job is going out and talking to end-user customers, meeting them and truly understanding what their business issues are and help them come up with a solution that's of value to them. There's a challenge in it. In essence, I love the customer-facing pieces of my role, which is part of the reason why I joined the Vanderbilt team.

What trends are you seeing right now in the industry?
There are quite a few trends we are seeing in the market.  To name a few, there is a lot of talk around the cloud.  This is certainly becoming a more accepted platform for access control. We also continue to see a lot of growth with electronic locks and cybersecurity is a big subject these days. We are seeing a lot more larger customers performing their own penetration testing on systems which is requiring more participation from the IT departments. This is a good thing and the end result is smarter, more secure systems.

What do you like most about the industry today?
What I like most is the industry seems to be progressing much faster than it has in the past. As a whole, it has been a relatively slow-moving industry on the technology side. Just within the last few years technology has been moving much faster. I'm not sure if this is because there is more influence from the IT side, but it is good to see and fun to be a part of.