Juárez security company opens El Paso office
El Paso TX Feb 1 2018 A Juárez security company that has offices in Mexican cities along the border is expanding into El Paso and will be relying on a big-name advisory board to help guide the company into U.S. business territory.
Thursday evening, Sysol hosted a welcome dinner at Coronado Country Club for its seven-member advisory board with El Paso Mayor Dee Margo and the heads of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce and Borderplex Alliance.
The board includes Lucía Navarro, a former CNN and Telemundo anchor, and Patrick Jephson, a CNN commentator and author whose experience ranges from Britain’s Defense Ministry to serving as Princess Diana’s chief of staff before her death.
A 52-year-old engineer, Yiris Hallal, started Sysol two decades ago after landing a contract with the Mexican supermarket chain S-Mart to update their point-of-sale system from cash registers to a computer-based network.
Hallal said S-Mart, which now has more than 70 stores across Northern Mexico and is the leading grocery chain in Juárez, still uses an upgraded version of the system he put in two decades ago.
“With every new store they open, Sysol goes in at the construction phase and installs their voice and data network, their surveillance cameras, sound systems and access control systems, he said.
Sysol has about 100 employees and handles security systems for more than 60 corporate clients, including many of the major maquiladoras along the border.
The company has offices in Tijuana, Hermosillo, Chihuahua, Reynosa and Monterrey and is already doing business in El Paso with Tyco Electronics and other companies.
But not long ago, Hallal decided it was time to expand into the U.S. and hired a consultant, Nestor Sainz, who suggested creating an advisory board to help guide and even work with Sysol.
“I’m happy I did it,” Hallal said. “They’re not from technology and have different points of view that you don’t get from the inside. That’s been helping me a lot.
“We’ll be looking to incorporate the board into El Paso so they can start doing business here. I think that’s a win-win for the El Paso-Juárez community.”
Among them is Washington, D.C., attorney, lobbyist and Republican fundraiser Gary Compton whose specialty is energy. His clients have included T. Boone Pickens and the Texas Railroad Commission.
Before Thursday’s dinner, Compton told El Paso Inc. that Pickens’ empire started with an advisory board not unlike Sysol’s.
“I’ve been lucky to do three (advisory boards), and they really have been helpful,” Compton said. “You get an outside look at what’s going on.
“I recently started a company that can purify water without chemicals at a low cost, and we’re using an advisory board with UT professors, A&M professors and Rice professors, and have them looking at what we’re doing,” Compton said. “If they sign off on it, we have instant credibility.”
In El Paso, he said, energy is worth looking at – solar, wind and natural gas.
“I understand Mexico is wanting to convert, starting with buses,” Compton said. “What they’re doing can be a piece of what we’re trying to do.”
Asked if he wants to get into energy, Hallal said he is interested, noting that natural gas is “picking up in the area.”
Born in Sinaloa, Mexico, Hallal has a home in Juárez but lives in El Paso on the Westside. He and his wife have two daughters attending U.S. universities.
Sysol will have an El Paso office up and running by summer, he said.
Sainz, his consultant and a member of the advisory board, is an international and government relations specialist who has worked in China, Latin America and the Caribbean.
“He asked me to help him restructure the company and work up strategies to be able to compete in the U.S. market,” Sainz said. “I thought it was important for him to have consultants from Juárez, Texas, Washington and further out.”
Jephson, the CNN commentator, said he is impressed by Hallal’s desire to expand his company’s profile.
“This is an area of enormous opportunity – not just El Paso, but this whole region at the moment, and there is an opportunity for Sysol,” he said.
Navarro, whose last visit to the El Paso region was as a reporter a decade ago when things were very different, said the board’s interest goes beyond the company.
“The plan of this board is to help the community of El Paso grow, create more jobs, make more companies, more business and to give a better quality of life to every family in this city,” she said. “That’s our purpose.”
El Paso
