Ray Dean joins MSA Systems Integration

NEW YORK—Ray Dean, who was most recently with Stanley Security, has joined MSA Systems Integration here as SVP.

“I'll be involved with business development, working with consultants [and] manufacturers as well as with trade shows,” Dean told Security Systems News. “Most of all I'll be advancing MSA SI's continued commitment to customers, [by working closely with] technicians, project managers and other people in our [MSA] companies,” he said. “I hope to be working across all sectors where I can bring value to MSA clients.”

MSA SI has grown rapidly in the past few years. Last September, MSA SI president Jim Hennessy told SSN that he had a five-year plan to take MSA SI to $50 million in revenue.

Adding Dean to the team is part of that plan, “Ray's knowledge and experience in the industry … providing customer service on a national basis, as well as his relationships with manufacturers, will help us to move forward,” Hennessy told SSN in an email interview.

In September 2013, Hennessy expected 2013 revenues to be $25 million. He projects 2014 revenues to be $35 million. The company had six offices across the country one year ago (LA, Houston, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, N.C., Philly). “By the end of 2014, we will have nine offices including New York City and New Jersey by the end of 2014. A Boston office will be added by September,” Hennessy said.

In addition, the employee headcount has grown from 90 one year ago to 103 today.

MSA SI is part of the MSA group of security companies that provide a number of different services, including bomb-sniffing dogs, threat and risk assessment, counter terrorism threat and intelligence analysis and remote x-ray screening through its “SmartTech Technology.”

Hennessy said, “Cross-selling across divisions has had a major impact on growth across all regions.” And Dean said the fact that there's more to offer beyond security integration is one of the things that piqued his interest in MSA SI.

Dean's security industry pedigree includes being the founder of PEI, a systems integrator in New York which was acquired by Securitas in 2007 and later by Stanley. He is past chairman of ASIS NYC and the current chairman of the ASIS trade show and serves on the board of directors of the Security Industry Association.

He said he “wouldn't be interested in just any job.” Most security companies, he said, “just don't get it about the customer. As companies grow they move away from the great customer attitude they started out with. That's just the way it is. It's something you really have to work at.” MSA SI “gets it,” Dean said. And it's the right place to, as Dean put it, to “bring a different kind of morality to the customer experience."