Strategic Security Solutions brings on new leadership

RALEIGH, N.C.—Strategic Security Solutions (S3), a super regional systems integrator based here, recently brought on industry veteran Ron Oetjen as partner and president.

Jay Slaughterbeck
S3 CEO Jay Slaughterbeck, who is a member of the Security Systems News' 20 under 40 Integrator Class of 2016, told SSN that he is excited to have Oetjen join the team and bring his leadership and experience to S3.

“Ron and I go way back and have deep roots and he has helped me with my personal development as well as with the development of what is now S3,” he said, noting that Oetjen is the right person to take the company to the next level. “So it is not that I was in the market to bring somebody on as president, it was that I was in the market to bring Ron on as president because of what he brings to the organization.”

Oetjen is the former president of Intelligent Access Systems and the architect of the company's highly successful growth strategy. Oetjen told SSN that he has learned a lot about S3 over the years through his close relationship with Slaughterbeck.

“Jay has already built a very strong organization with a good culture, which in my mind is sacrosanct, so those two items really were appealing to me,” Oetjen explained. “So I will be focusing on the infrastructure of the organization, employee and leadership development, and strategy, policies and procedures, while also consulting with Jay on expansion efforts and possibly an acquisition if the right opportunity presents itself.”

Ron Oetjen
Oetjen pointed to S3's recent ERP conversion and push to adhere to Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP) compliance standards as two key accomplishments that impressed him.

“There are a lot of people out there that will just lick it and stick it, but to embrace OSDP the way Jay and the company has done is truly a remarkable feat,” he said. “While manufacturers are still struggling to figure it out, you have this relatively small company in Raleigh that has invested in it and is rolling out large-scale national deployments.”

Slaughterbeck added, “We are doing OSDP version two secure channel as a standard because it is the right thing to do, while many in the industry are not. This is a big deal that we have spent a lot of time and money and blood, sweat and tears on to adhere to. So when our customers engage with us, now they get an encrypted system, from the credential all the way to the client.”

Looking back on 2019 and forward to 2020, Slaughterbeck is confident the company can continue to build on its past successes. “This year we are going to come in just shy of $8 million in gross sales, which is our biggest year ever,” he said.

Oetjen agreed, noting that he expects “strong and steady” growth to continue in 2020. “A doable goal is double-digit growth, around 10 percent, every year, so we will focus on continuing to grow, but, more importantly, to grow wisely.”

One area that the company has benefitted from is the increased adoption of cloud services. “There has been steady growth there and we are at the point now where our engineers are engineering it and the company is comfortable selling it,” said Slaughterbeck. “So we continue to grow cloud and we continue to grow RMR, so that has been successful for us.”