Habitec revamps central, moves HQ, implements mobile initiatives

HOLLAND, Ohio—Additional space is only one of the benefits of Habitec Security's move, last week, into its new headquarters here. The new facility's upgraded infrastructure will also enable the full-service security company to roll out more new mobile initiatives, according to Pat Ehrsam, director of operations. 

“[Habitec President John Smythe] has pushed us to be much more technological than we actually were before,” Ehrsam said.

“We set up a support group here to work with the central station to get better support to customers using app-based services, and then we've set up the network structure and the bandwidth capabilities here to facilitate us into the future so we can do all this type of work,” he added.

Habitec, which monitors its own accounts, does business in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky. The company's new central station/headquarters features a host of operational improvements, Ehrsam said. “We updated many of our receivers and totally revamped our central station in a way that was so much more convenient for us,” he said. “There's a lot more data for our operators right at their fingertips.”

Its UL-listed central station became operational from its new location on Oct. 17. The 14,000-square-foot facility represents a substantial space upgrade compared to Habitec's previous headquarters, located in Toledo, Ohio, which had about 9,000 square feet of space.

“We thought it was a good time to get into a bigger building,” Ehrsam said.

At the new location, the servers are contained in a separate room from the operators, an advantage Habitec's former central station did not afford. Keeping the servers in a separate space creates a quieter and more work-friendly environment for operators, Ehrsam said.

“The nice part is that you have all these operators saying 'I wish we could do this,'” he said. “With the new facility we were able to fulfill a lot of their wishes.”

Ehrsam said two related factors also necessitated the relocation: The steady growth of the employee base and an expanded array of service offerings, with a greater onus on “online and app-based offerings for CCTV, alarms and home automation.”