Security Sales July 2021 - 63

How has the pandemic impacted your
business most and what do you see as we
start to look past it?
Fabiola Francisco: The pandemic definitely
had an impact in our business, causing a standstill
for a time. We were able to balance a lot of
our workflow through the federal government
side. It started getting busier again, about two
months after the pandemic hit. That was mainly
because the government said, " Well, there's
nobody in the office. Let's get these projects
running. " Where we struggled quite a bit was
with the supply chain, resulting in halts and
stagnation for a bit.
It was hard to get our folks out to the jobsites
to work on projects clients wanted to have done
because everything was shut down, including
truck drivers and means to get all your shipments.
Our staff realized how important our
job is and I think that's the important piece. We
may not have been recognized as first responders
but we definitely were supporting them. We did
whatever we needed to do to keep our federal
government buildings and clients secure. Lately,
we have been quite busy on the government side
and now commercial has picked up again. Usually
the beginning of the year, first quarter and
part of second quarter, it's quite slow. However,
in 2021 it's picked up the pace.
We did suffer a revenue loss overall, due to not
being able to invoice for two or three months
last year. But we were able to manage through
that. It's been a little concerning for my staff,
and so we had to keep an eye on the culture
here and how they felt about what transpired.
We have had to make sure they are comfortable
and have everything they need. For 2021, it's
looking like we're going to be on target for our
goals. We've been able to hire some more folks,
which is a good thing.
Louis Boulgarides: At the beginning of 2020,
we were on pace for a record year as the economy
was booming. COVID hit and we were
sent scrambling around trying to find out how
to support our processes and it was challenging.
We were already primarily a virtual operation
to begin with, so there weren't really any logistical
issues around that. And when 2020 finished,
we were at tick ahead of 2019.
Where we really felt the impact was Q1 of
this year, with February being the worst month
we've had ever. We had a lot of orders scheduled
to happen in 2020 that were delayed while peosecuritysales.com
JULY
2021 Security Sales & Integration 63
ple waited to find out what was going to happen
with vaccines and reopening. About 60% of our
businesses is in high-rise office buildings. Those
here in Los Angeles are still only running about
10% occupancy. They're still being impacted.
We do work with movie studios that are
back in full swing. Pharmaceutical companies
and medical facilities are starting to move from
COVID response back to normal operation.
We're starting to put together some good months
and making up for the first part of the year.
To what extent were you panicked or
very concerned? What was the mindset?
Boulgarides: I try not to panic in front of
my other employees but there were points in
time. When 60% of the business is high-rise
office and they are literally a ghost town, it's a
gut check at that point. Fortunately, we were
diversified enough in other verticals that were
continuing to move. We were able to manage
through. Really the only time I was seriously
concerned was Q1 this year when things really
slowed down. The rapid way the vaccine got
rolled out helped allow us to exhale in March
and start moving forward. The concern now
is how long will this be sustained? Inflation is
coming, supply chain issues are coming and
although there's pent-up demand summer is
traditionally a slow time.
According to LVC's Bert
Bongard, AI is becoming more
prevalent as the company is
experiencing an increase in
how it can deploy analytics.
Cloud-based and managed
services have really come to
the forefront, he says.
http://www.securitysales.com
Security Sales July 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Security Sales July 2021
