2022 Video Surveillance Deep Dive: COVID, Supply Struggles Put Dent in Profits
SSI’s Video Surveillance Deep Dive spotlights installations, prices, profits, verticals, challenges and technologies.
As ubiquitous and analytics-enhanced as video surveillance has become in recent years, not even it could see the pandemic, labor shortage, supply chain or inflation hardships deeply impacting the business climate.
While the security industry remains more resilient than most fields, it is certainly not immune to the effects of such significant — in some cases historic — upheaval to the overall economic landscape.
While by in large security dealer and integrator companies are at least seeing slow growth or at worst staying solvent, 2022 will likely be remembered as a year when the dearth of products and people postponed profits.
Those factors are borne out in the findings of Security Sales & Integration’s 2022 Video Surveillance Deep Dive as many key indicators came in lower than past surveys.
While profit margins held steady, the average number of projects, scale and revenues all took hits in the wake of COVID and amid an unprecedented procurement predicament. Little wonder almost two-thirds of responding dealers and integrators say the supply chain issue is having a moderate to severe impact on new sales and upgrades, and report lower growth percentages.
But it’s certainly not all doom and gloom because demand remains high for video solutions and a multitude of technologies continue to advance and more deeply penetrate the market.
Video surveillance as a service (VSaaS), Cloud storage and remote access are among the areas tracking upward trajectories. Meanwhile dealers/integrators note they are collaborating more seamlessly with clients’ IT departments and personnel. Costs and cybersecurity remain among the leading sector challenges.
The fourth such study of its kind, the SSI 2022 Video Surveillance Deep Dive was conducted during April and included dealers and integrators from throughout the United States and Canada. In addition to the balanced geographical footprint, the study also drew respondents from a wide range of company sizes and years in business.
As well it spanned the residential, commercial and industrial video surveillance sectors — including projects, prices, margins, verticals, challenges, technologies and more.
As the pandemic fades into the rearview mirror and the supply chain quandary subsides — hopefully by early 2023 —most industry observers are expecting a boom of pent-up demand. At that point, the biggest obstacle to elevated revenues and robust growth figures to be adequate staffing and enough hours in the day for timely deployment and minimal backlog.
As a whole — in combination with consistently softening costs, ceaseless technological capability advancements, ongoing discovery of seemingly unlimited use cases and extensions (many predict video integrated with access control will eventually obsolesce most if not all intrusion detection) — video surveillance continues to represent one of the world’s most exciting and lucrative market opportunities.
According to the study’s respondents, ease of installation, ease of use for the end customer and protected “pro-only” product lines are the top three features that help them sell more surveillance products. Those elements translate into being more productive, more efficient and maintaining a competitive advantage.
The following detailed results also include dozens of verbatim comments to lend equipment suppliers direct insights on how to best serve their channel partners, who also identify their most popular video solutions providers.
View the 2022 Video Surveillance Deep Dive
Click here to download the Deep Dive as a PDF
View all of SSI‘s Deep Dives.
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About the Author
Scott Goldfine
Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].
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