Bill Brennan, President of i-PRO Americas, speaks to SJA about partnerships and the core values driving the company forward.

Defining an image

In 2019, i-PRO split from Panasonic and became its own entity.

At the same time, Brennan was appointed to the role of President at i-PRO Americas.

“To start a new company back in 2019, really right at the beginning of COVID, meant, along with the challenges presented by the pandemic, it was also very difficult for us to gain brand recognition,” Brennan noted.

He commented that at the beginning, i-PRO was a complete carve out – while the high quality of Panasonic was well known in the Americas, new products were needed to truly define the company and demonstrate its commitment to the security industry.

Since that point, i-PRO Americas has launched over 190 new models.

A second focus for the company was, and remains, compliance.

Brennan revealed that the company removed any type of ambiguity around its NDAA compliance.

By moving manufacturing back to Japan, i-PRO has also addressed the need for TAA Compliance.

Cybersecurity is additional way that i-PRO Americas differentiates itself, striving to ensure that its products and technologies provide the highest level of security.

Core values

“i-PRO currently consists of three business units,” Brennan noted.

“Intelligence security sector, public safety and medical vision are the current business segments within the Americas.”

Speaking about the key tenets of the company, Brennan said that i-PRO Americas always aims to be bold, flexible and trusted.

“We want to be a very transparent organization,” he said.

“Our strategy is very much open and consistent, with a strong dedication to our channel partners and the needs of our end users.”

Part of this ethos means being open to other technologies and working with third parties, such as video management system (VMS) platforms.

This allows the company to bring forth the best of breed solutions for the end user.

“We have to embrace this – it’s what integrators do every day!” said Brennan.

“We are dedicated to bringing forth technologies that make other companies and platforms better in terms of addressing the true requirements of the end user.”

By driving the development of technology, Brennan said, i-PRO focuses on creating proactive solutions that can prevent security threats from escalating further, to truly protect people, places and assets.

Partnerships and success

According to Brennan, success can be broken down into two parts: internal and external.

“Internal success relates to my role,” said Brennan.

“I want to make sure that every one of our team members has a long career with i-PRO, and although some team members may eventually move on, we want to make sure that this is a place where people can learn, grow and feel empowered to achieve their own personal and professional goals.”

He explained that i-PRO Americas’ goal is to create an organization that all its employees can be proud to represent.

“We’re fortunate in that we are creating a culture of people that are committed to what they do and giving back to the community, while also being incredible partners to work with for our integrators and end users.”

From an external standpoint, Brennan said that he aims to cultivate a sense of community with the integrators that work with the company.

By forming a close-knit group, the integrators can become true partners with i-PRO.

“We listen to our integrators and we listen to our end users. That’s what drives future innovation,” Brennan said.

He continued that many of i-PRO Americas’ customers have told him they do not need a vendor, but a partner that they can work with in the long term in developing technology, because threat environments are ever-changing.

Future growth in the Americas

Brennan noted that, despite its strong partnership ecosystem, i-PRO Americas is still a relatively new organization.

While COVID did impact the company’s initial growth plans and create setbacks such as cancelled shows and exhibitions, i-PRO Americas has grown from strength to strength under Brennan’s leadership.

“I envision down the road that i-PRO Americas will continue to embrace change and bring forth an even more comprehensive offering to address the real pain points of end users,” Brennan remarked.

“I’m really excited about some of the partnerships that we’ve created with third parties and our hope and vision is that they become even stronger and embrace the open strategy.”

Another way that Brennan hopes to advance the company in the future is through continuing to work on new programs that i-PRO Americas has introduced.

These recently launched initiatives offer additional benefits to loyal integrators and Brennan said that he encourages others to learn more about what the company is doing in this area.

Additionally, Brennan revealed that he hopes to continue growing i-PRO Americas’ integrator network.

“There’s a reason why we’re looking to build strong partnerships with our integrators and part of that is training,” he said.

“When an end user asks about a certain technology that is already built into their system, then they need to be educated on how to use it.

“When we have a close group of integrators that know their solutions really well, then they’ll be able to properly advise the customer.

“It’s going to be a very exciting future for i-PRO Americas. I can’t wait to see where the company goes next and what kind of innovations are part of its future.”

Leading the industry

Brennan noted that i-PRO Americas likes to position itself as an industry leader, although he recognized that this comes with a great sense of responsibility.

When new technologies and platforms enter the market, such as cloud-based systems, i-PRO’s goal is to ensure that its solutions are the easiest to install and offer the most capabilities of any type of cloud environment.

Additionally, i-PRO Americas is increasingly becoming more focused on business intelligence, moving away from simply looking at challenges and solutions from a security perspective only.

Brennan noted that i-PRO Americas can provide the required solutions for mission critical environments like critical infrastructure, as well as K-12 schools.

i-PRO has continued to enhance the Video Insight platform and is excited to be launching a new version of this VMS platform in coming months.

This will offer a sleeker and simpler dashboard that will enable schools to deploy a proactive, comprehensive security solution.

He emphasized that although technology might progress, this will not make a real difference to the industry unless end users fully understand the capabilities of their solutions.

“We must focus on increasing our effectiveness in training our partners and end users to ensure they are utilizing technologies to its full capabilities,” added Brennan.

“To advance the industry forward, we really have to focus on this challenge.

“We must simplify and encourage the use of current technologies in order for future advancements to be truly impactful.”

For example, analytics are much easier to deploy today than they were when first released, but initially many end users asked for this technology and then did not utilize it to its full potential.

“I’m starting to see people really migrate towards analytics and now take full advantage of it, especially those within mission critical environments.”

However, Brennan noted that what has really helped i-PRO to advance in this area is incorporating these technologies within the camera at the edge rather than utilizing additional software and applications.

Getting to know i-PRO Americas

A final thought that Brennan conveyed was that the industry should get to know i-PRO Americas and understand the people and principles that make up the organization.

“Get to know how we are going to market and what we can bring forth and how we can grow together,” he said.

“I love talking to integrators and I want to communicate the reason why I feel so strongly about i-PRO Americas is because they could be very successful and profitable representing our product.”

This article was originally published in the November edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.