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ICT opens Toronto office

ICT has historically sold in Canada through a reseller and will continue to maintain those business relationships.

ICT is represented in Canada by Pat Alvaro, director of sales, and is quickly adding other staff. Hayden Burr, the company’s founder and CEO and a native New Zealander, also has a Canadian connection.

Burr lived in Canada for a period during the 1990s and moved back home after about a decade. He established his current company, ICT, in 2003, producing electrical products. With its manufacturing operations headquartered in New Zealand, the company immediately began exporting products to Canada before selling anything domestically. The company narrowed its focus on security products, developing its current line-up of card readers (and access cards), intrusion, intercoms and IP reporting tools. In addition to Auckland, New Zealand, ICT also has locations in Melbourne, Australia; Denver, Colo.; London, U.K.; and now Toronto. All of its products are still manufactured in New Zealand.

For Burr, who was in Toronto to attend the new office launch, integration and reporting is key, particularly to leverage the value of access control data. “There was a term that was coined probably about eight years ago: Data is the new oil,” says Burr. “An access control system is really data about employee movements. If you’ve got that information, what can you do with it? Things like leveraging inter-departmental transactions in large organizations. You can calculate that using that information.”

Burr says his company goes to market by developing relationships with local integrators. Mass distribution “is not right for our type of product. We need to have that direct touch and feel with the integrator — that gets us closer to the end user.

“The integrators that we deal with, they are our partners. Ensuring that we’ve got good partnerships and maintaining good relationships with them is our No. 1 [priority]. No. 2 is backing them up and ensuring that they are trained well.”

Burr identifies high-rise residential, large retailers, commercial and finance (both branch level and corporate offices) as the company’s target markets. The company has an estimated 4,000 systems installed in Canada and is also working on increasing its brand recognition here. Establishing a Canadian office is a major step in that direction, says Burr. “Right now, for us, we have to have that presence.”

This article originally appeared in the October issue of SP&T News.