RS2 steps into the spotlight

MUNSTER, Ind.—Following the ACRE acquisition in 2019, RS2 Technologies is finally stepping into the spotlight as a leading access control software company, after spending decades successfully growing the business and making a name for itself within the security industry.

“Our growth since the ACRE acquisition in 2019 has literally been off the charts,” RS2 Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing David Barnard told Security Systems News. “For the past 10 years, except for one year, we have had a very steady and solid growth pattern of more than 15 percent year-over-year. Most of the time it has been in the 18 percent range and we had a couple of years where we were above 20 percent.”

RS2 National Sales Manager Jeff Bransfield said that one of the “big drivers of this growth” is through new partnerships, noting that the company added more than 75 new authorized integrators to the RS2 partner network in 2019, an increase of 17 percent over 2018.

Bransfield spearheaded the growth of the company's regional sales team, including the restructuring of territories to include nine regions, and expanding the company's reach in the West and Northwest as well on the East coast including New England and the Northeast into Canada. “We are really diving deeper into the regions, so I see that growth continuing as we expand existing territories and branch out deeper into new ones,” he added.

Barnard noted that another key initiative in 2019 was the creation of a new field engineer position. “This is a high-level, qualified database- and network-savvy field engineer who can actually go on site if required to help integrators with higher profile clients,” he explained. “So we added one in 2019 and are adding another in the first quarter of 2020, because we see that as an invaluable position to not only help with integrators, but our sales teams as well.”

Another key to the company's growth is its adherence to open architecture platforms and the development of “a very well documented and straight forward API,” said Barnard. “Of the 20-plus integrations that we added in 2019, many are because of the implementation of that API and because of how easy it is for our partners to integrate to it and partner with us.”

Both Barnard and Bransfield credited RS2 Product and Marketing Manager Tim Vahary for spearheading this initiative and “really shepherding those integrations,” said Barnard.

In 2019, RS2 also issued 1,297 software license keys, a growth of 7 percent over the previous year, covering a wide range of clients from enterprise organizations to the education and healthcare sectors. “We are starting to see a trend of new licenses being issued to larger, enterprise-scale level customers, and we attribute that to exposure and word of mouth about what we are all about.”

Also in 2019, the company added the ACT365 cloud-based access control and video management solution. “I definitely see a fit for that product in the marketplace,” said Bransfield, who added the company is excited to be able to offer this solution to customers.

The ACRE acquisition is also helping RS2 to grow its presence internationally. “We are excited to leverage our relationship with sister company Vanderbilt to try and do a more rapid expansion into the international markets," said Barnard. "Although they have their own product, there are some customers they have that would be a very good fit for RS2.”

When asked what has been the key to the company's success all these years, both Barnard and Bransfield agreed it's a dedication to customer service. “We pride ourselves on being a business that people want to do business with and that is a message that is being heard from our end users and dealers,” said Bransfield.

Barnard added: “A lot of the momentum is because of the propagation of our reputation by our customers. For example, we are very strong in the college and university marketplace and that is a fairly close-knit community, so we are gaining new universities all the time because of referrals.”