TycoIS to launch worldwide network of centers

AURORA, Colo.—Systems integrator TycoIS has opened a new National Center of Excellence here as part of a larger plan to build a "global center of excellence network," Daryl Haga, director of Tyco's Global Center of Excellence, told Security Systems News. TycoIS will open two more centers by the end of the year and two more in 2016.

The new facility here is modeled after TycoIS's Global Center of Excellence in Birmingham, Ala. Here is a report from the official opening of that office, which took place April 2014. TycoIS supports its global enterprise customers in 38 countries from Birmingham, Ala.

Haga said the Colorado center was "created to look like the Global Center of Excellence with the same branding, the office space is set up similarly and we did that because the goal is to create consistency in how we do business around the world," Haga said. All of the centers should "have the same processes and procedures. We need consistency throughout our business just like customers need consistency," he said.

Like the GCoE in Alabama, the new center in Colorado houses design engineers, CAD operators, program managers, system engineers and others, who work with Tyco's largest customers to develop, maintain and support its customers' security operations.

They devise “global standards, technical specifications and detailed work plans” so that customers' security systems are standardized in all of its offices around the world. They also audit the systems to ensure they're working properly and are compliant with corporate standards.

The Aurora center occupies 20,000 square feet. It currently has 40 employees and is recruiting more. This office can seat 84 people. Tony Duarte is director of the NCoE.

Where the Alabama center is the home office for global customers, the Aurora center is the home office for the U.S. strategic accounts. However, the centers will work together, providing "workload balance and business continuity," Haga said. "We can shift work when we need to."

And, TycoIS plans to bring two additional centers online by the end of the year. One in Santiago, Chile, is expected to be up and running Nov. 1. This center will have primary responsibility for TycoIS's Latin American national, regional and global customers. A leader for another center, in Singapore, has been hired and starts work next week. Tyco plans to have the Singapore center online by the end of 2015.

In 2016, TycoIS will add a center in Birmingham, England, and it is in discussions to open a center in India next spring.

Having centers around the world will enable TycoIS "work with the sun" for projects or emergency situations, Haga said. For example, if a global customer needed to reprogram and test an access control system in thousands of locations around the world, that could be accomplished in 24 hours without any one office working more than eight hours. "You start in the East and have the teams work throughout their day [moving from center to center across the world]," he said.

It will give TycoIS "the ability to have the regional, local touch with [employees] who understand the culture and regulations in the market as well," he added.

All of the centers are run from Salesforce.com, so each has "visibility to any work request from any CoE," Haga said. This facilitates workload balance, ensuring the right people are available for certain jobs, and gives national, global and regional customers "an additional sense of security."

TycoIS has a small council of global customers that it meets with to “talk about things we can do to get ahead. The idea for the GCoE and the GCoE network came from customers,” Haga said. Customers asked for better speed to market, consistency, the right talent in the right place, an integrator that is easy to do business with and who will grow with the customer. So far, “they like the results,” Haga said.