About Us
Over 40 years of experience
For over 40 years, Bold Group has served the security and alarm industry with the most comprehensive array of alarm monitoring and integrated financial and business management solutions tailored to achieve optimal business performance for central monitoring stations, dealers and integrators. Bold Group was established in March, 2019 with the operational merger of Perennial Software, Bold Technologies, SIMS and Secure Global Solutions (SGS).
Bold Group is the industry’s trusted provider of mission-critical alarm monitoring and financial management technology offering flexible, automated solutions that streamline customer workflows with improved efficiencies and consistent processes that enable critical response services that safeguard life and property.
The Bold Group product portfolio features the renowned alarm monitoring systems Manitou, stages™, and SIMS. These leading alarm monitoring systems are complemented by the industry’s top accounting and business management systems including SedonaOffice and AlarmBiller. This comprehensive portfolio of solutions is supported by a network of strategic partnerships, technical support, and robust ongoing training programs.
Bold Group and its subsidiaries are owned by EverCommerce – a leading service commerce platform, providing the top marketing, business management, and customer retention solutions to more than 400,000 service businesses across the globe. EverCommerce develops, acquires, and transforms mission-critical software that helps service-based businesses accelerate growth, streamline operations, and increase retention.
A team of experts behind the wheel
Alison Forsythe,
President
Alison Forsythe has over 30 years of experience in the IT sector. Starting in the Silicon Valley to many cities and countries in between, she has been a pioneer. Most recently at Honeywell, she served as Vice President and General Manager of enterprise software solutions responsible for the transformation of Honeywell from an industrial conglomerate to an enterprise software company.
Prior to this, she served as Managing Director and General Manager at Exact Software and was retained in 2013 to lead the turnaround of a legacy, on-premises ERP software company. Under her leadership she was responsible fortransforming the software development methodology from Waterfall to Agile resulting in a new flagship product being released which won several industry awards. Alison was responsible for the general management of the Macola division, overseeing software development, marketing including PR, communications and brand reinvigoration, sales, customer support, consulting services and corporate culture.
Prior to joining Exact in 2013, Alison led the enterprise market expansion efforts at SMART Technologies as the Managing Director, Americas. Prior to SMART Technologies, Alison served as Vice President, Americas Channel Sales for CA Technologies, a global provider of enterprise IT management software, driving significant revenue growth in addition to reengineering financial and operational processes. Alison also served in various sales leadership positions throughout a nine-year career at GE Commercial Finance. During her tenure with GE, she was responsible for managing a $1B sales division with GE Access, a worldwide distributor of Sun Microsystems and other complementary IT products. She later joined GE Vendor Financial Services where she led the sales division, responsible for developing and providing financing solutions to Sun Microsystems channel partners and end user clients.
Throughout Alison’s career she has been recognized as a software industry thought leader receiving numerous awards including Top Midmarket IT Executive and Supply Chain Influential Leader. Other career highlights include meeting the President of the United States in 2012 to discuss technology in education, delivering a joint keynote speech on American manufacturing with economist, actor and presidential speechwriter Ben Stein and flying an aeronautical stunt plane for an opening promotional video for one of her keynotes!
Originally from California and from a family of entrepreneurs, Alison earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Business Administration from Queens College.
Julie Lichty,
SVP Product Management
Julie Lichty is an accomplished product and services executive and board director who has led successful multi-billion dollar portfolios through an unwavering customer-centric lens, leveraging expertise in hardware, digital transformation, product management, operations, and innovative solutions.
Most recently, as Executive Director of Product Management for Panasonic Avionics Corporation, Julie led across hardware, software, and digital services with a $1B+ P&L on a portfolio of over $2B, for more than 300 global airlines, utilizing her keen emotional intelligence with a human touch. These innovative products are seen and used by 2.5 billion users annually.
Julie has driven digital, hardware product and services strategies and go-to-market across the technology and business spectrum. As a digital expert, she leads at the forefront of IoT, AI, SaaS, Software and Cloud. Julie is recognized as a pioneer who “stays a step ahead” – foreseeing trends, innovating winning value propositions for solutions to meet emerging trends, and establishing market leadership through strategic partnerships, technology, and differentiated customer services.
Julie earned a BA in Business Administration & Organizational Management from Vanguard University, graduating magna cum laude. She holds certificates in Executive Education for Directors and Women’s Leadership Institute from the University of California, Los Angeles, The John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management. She is also Product Manager certified from the Pragmatic Institute.
Derek Ochs,
SVP Software Development
Derek Ochs is a veteran development leader with broad expertise in software and systems architecture and a successful record of leading enterprise teams to deliver rapid, customer-centric innovation.
In his role at Bold Group, he is responsible for driving development and innovation across the organization’s portfolio of business management and alarm monitoring solutions. He leads a team of engineers, developers, and software architects to execute on development strategies that evolve the current product line, design next-generation solutions, and deliver increasing value for customers.
He got his start in software development writing code for successful startups and eventually made his way to eBay Inc. where he managed a software engineering team for 9 years. Since then, he has led global software development efforts for numerous organizations, including managing enterprise-wide IT teams for Fortune 500 companies. He has designed and implemented systems in the insurance, manufacturing, marketing, financial, retail, telecom and healthcare industries and has worked on web based front-ends, back-end data integrations, data warehouse systems, big data, and business services. Derek is a fan of fast-paced development cycles and constant improvement through iteration. His personal philosophy is that time-to-market is everything and development cycles should be short. His motto is “If you’re not delivering, you’re not developing”.
Derek earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Derek is originally from western PA and he and his wife Denise now reside in Dublin, Ohio with their two children.