Page 44 - Security Today, October 2017

Helping Resellers
meaning our focus is about demand generation at the local level.” ASSA ABLOY unveiled the group about two years ago, bringing in Huggins to head it up. With him came two senior professionals who hit the ground running. The government group, which Hug- gins said is a relatively new vertical market focus for ASSA ABLOY, provides door and hardware solutions, as well as perimeter security and identification technology to federal and state government agen- cies, including large Department of Defense and VA Medical Centers around the world. The group also serves local jurisdictions, rounding
out its complete approach to the governmental sector.
“From a market perspective, I would put it into federal, state and local,” Huggins said. “The reason we categorize our program this way is that each have specific product needs, but all have similar bidding and documentation requirements to be met as spenders of
taxpayer dollars.”
A significant part of the focus of the Government Programs team
is supporting its partners with a wide range of services specific to dealers and resellers working in the government sector. Huggins said the group assists dealers who have state contracts or General Services Administration federal contracts.
“We don’t own our own schedule, but what we do is we support our partners,” he said. “There’s a formal process called the GSA letter of supply. We support our dealer partners who have the schedules, and we provide them with all the letters of supply.”
ASSA ABLOY’s government group also has all of the product compliance programs necessary to ensure that its products meet Buy America and other similar regulations. Huggins said everyone on his team has managed GSA and/or state contracts before, in addition to their government sales experience, something that can be incredibly useful to ASSA ABLOY’s partners, including those on the distribu- tion end of the deal.
“That’s how we’re able to help our distribution,” Huggins said. “We know what they need to do paperwork-wise, so we’re very proac-
tive to try to make it as easy for them as possible.”
Another offering from the Government Programs team, are its
field-level and end-user training programs. Huggins said they’ll also provide overviews of government contracts and educate partners on how to navigate the entire process of landing government business at any level. The latter is something ASSA ABLOY’s government team did at the 2015 Medeco Security Center Sales Conference in Orlando.
“We’ll do general sessions and breakout sessions to help them understand,” he said. “We’ll bring in the Small Business Administra- tion (SBA). We’ll teach them how important that is, how to go find the SBA, how to register, just to help them capture business in the government space.”
Product-wise, Huggins said the government team has three pri- mary areas of focus at present. First off, ASSA ABLOY is participat- ing with the Department of Defense on a sustainable door open- ing demonstration project. The team has been working with the military to install energy-efficient versions of hollow metal doors, frames, and hardware.
“It’s basically a hollow metal, steel-stiffened metal door, filled with a foam insulation that helps support the thermal performance and air infiltration of the opening assembly” he said.
ASSA ABLOY has also been seeing more interest and demand for specialty doors, including doors that are resistant to forced entry, bal- listics, blasts, sound and other forms of attack.
“Those are becoming more and more relevant in just about ev- ery setting, whether it’s a school system or a military installation or a downtown federal building—whatever,” Huggins added. “It’s some- thing that can’t be ignored.”
The third new product area in the government realm is wire- less and Power-over-ethernet locks with integrated readers. ASSA ABLOY’s offerings include the IN120 and the IN220 lines. These products have been enhanced with the capability to read the federal government identification card known as a Personal Identity Veri
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GOVERNMENT SECURITY OCTOBER 2017