New president, new growth plan for Security Partners

LANCASTER, Pa.—Security Partners, a wholesale monitoring provider based here, has brought aboard a new president and initiated a new growth plan to help alarm dealers take advantage of an expanded line of products and services.

Michael Bodnar, a 20-year industry veteran, joined Security Partners at the end of March. He will oversee operations, sales and monitoring at the company's CSAA Five Diamond-certified central station, with a focus on providing more dealers with access to the latest technology.

“I'm still in my first month, but I'm very excited about my discoveries to date,” Bodnar told Security Systems News on April 19. “I am committed to having Security Partners recognized as the benchmark for service excellence for the industry in the future, and we have a group here who will help me get there fast.”

Before joining Security Partners, Bodnar worked for SecurityLink, ADT and the Intellicare Network. His most recent experience was with VRI, a medical alarm monitoring center in Franklin, Ohio.

“I was in an account management role,” he said. “It allowed me to get a good feel for the PERS side of the business, of which I was in prior to that as a manufacturer representative with Kelly Alarm and then Bosch.”

Bodnar said Security Partners' new plan for growth emphasizes products and services that go well beyond its traditional monitoring business, including remote video monitoring and guard tours, managed access control, and the latest in PERS technology. Security Partners is the exclusive mid-Atlantic distributor of the LifeBeacon, a mobile PERS device with GPS and two-way voice communication.

“We're a big proponent here of making sure we stay on the cutting edge of technology to increase services and increase opportunities for our dealers to generate additional recurring revenue,” he said. “We are bringing new products to the table and we've already increased our service offering to include GPS mobile tracking products, managed access where we're actually taking care of the back-end support for card access systems for our dealers, card management, video verification of folks coming and going into a facility, all kinds of new services that open up new doors for our dealers to bring in new sales.”

All of the company's products and services can be customized to meet the needs of dealers, who will also benefit from “a concerted effort from all of us here” to put targeted sales and marketing materials in place, Bodnar said.

“Security Partners is already known as a 'boutique' central that provides customized packages and support to our dealers,” he said. “I want to expand on that reputation and that capability with these new products coming on board.”

Bodnar said the company, which has dealers in “strategic locations” throughout the United States, is looking to expand its footprint organically and through acquisitions. Security Partners will have an educational booth at the ESX conference in Nashville in June that will showcase new markets, he said.

“We're here to help our dealers grow their businesses,” he said. “If they grow their businesses, obviously we grow as well.”