Like many tech-driven industries, the security industry is undergoing a massive transition – most of which is powered by Artificial Intelligence. This is not breaking news; after all, in 2024, the Security Industry Association devoted the first four of its 10 annual “megatrends” to AI.

But while it isn’t breaking news that the industry is adapting to the use of AI in technology, the executives running security integration and consulting firms have probably felt like a leaf in a windstorm, being tossed about by what seems like daily technology innovations that greatly impact both their customers and their own businesses.

It isn’t enough to know how AI will work for video analytics; now they need to know how it works across the gamut of all security and even non-security technologies. Even more daunting, these seasoned executives are now being told that failure to implement AI from an internal operations basis means they are behind the curve – a sure path to eventual perish.

The most immediate and widespread impact of AI is transforming how security integrators run their own businesses internally. The time savings are substantial. Castillo shares a striking example: “We had a project manager use Microsoft Copilot to generate a schedule in about three minutes that traditionally would have taken about three hours.”

Nemerofsky describes how AI handles routine tasks: “If every Monday they need to have a purchasing report or a pricing report done, we don’t do that anymore.” Instead, Nemerofsky has turned to AI-powered sales software called RapidFlare to take care of these tasks. “It continues to learn and take away the B tasks,” he adds.

Lanning says her engineers are using generative AI tools to assist with tasks ranging from crafting scope-of-work verbiage, to searching for comparative part numbers to replace obsolete components, to power calculations. And the benefits of generative AI extend across multiple departments: “Our accounting team loves it,” she says. “They’ve been using it to help with collection letters, understanding legal terms, and creating collection processes and escalations.”

Castillo echoes this widespread internal adoption: “It is pervasive. We are using it across the board – from how to generate better cash flow forecasts, to automation workflows, to writing better emails, and building work documents.”

The efficiencies created by AI makes things faster, but more importantly, it is giving human talent the bandwidth to focus on higher-value work.

“The routine, low-knowledge, low-skill tasks that we just have to do on a day-to-day basis are the greatest opportunity [for AI],” Castillo says. “That gives us back time so that our folks are not using their powerful minds on routine things that require little skill.”

Adds Nemerofsky: “Now our coordinators can be more customer-focused and more employee-focused, doing the A-type work we wanted them to do.”

Beyond the back office, as customer interest in AI functionality piques, it has moved from a pie-in-the-sky idea to meaningful purchase orders. This means integrators must fundamentally change how they engage with their clients to create deeper, more consultative relationships.

Castillo observes a clear market shift: “What was just interest a couple of years ago has now turned into purchase orders,” he says. “Most of our customers – primarily in the enterprise space – now understand the force multiplier that AI can be, and they want to leverage it.”

Leveraging it for customers means understanding the greater impact of the technology; in fact, the AI technology’s significance to the security department may actually become secondary to the impact it has on an overall enterprise operation. This means Castillo must “get into a deeper relationship with customers to understand their business more holistically than we ever have – because it is not just a security system, it is a business system that customers can leverage to make money, save money, and reduce risk.”

In turn, this deeper engagement extends beyond traditional security stakeholders. “I love to at least engage or invite to the table folks from sales, marketing, and operations and explain how they can leverage the investment in the security system,” Castillo adds. “It ends up being a win-win.”

For integration company staff experts, the consultative approach is paramount for AI evaluation and deployment. “The average clients who don’t have a technology lead are overwhelmed by options,” Nemerofsky says. “Our role is to be a guide or an architect on how this is going to look, how it aligns with their tech stack, and dealing with the IT environment and with business objectives. It’s not just something new and shiny.”

SAGE and Nemerofsky champion the embedded model for integration for this very reason. “Having embedded people is a huge advantage, because you understand your client’s tech stack better than they understand it, or at least as well as they understand it,” Nemerofsky says. “You are better able to be a resource and a consultant to a client when you are embedded.”