At the beginning of this year, one of our main customers made us a specific request: They needed to know how many parking violations were issued by their security officers during the previous month in one particular property. This property is a residential building that does not have a visitor’s parking, so visitors constantly park inappropriately creating great discomfort in the residents of the building.

We immediately checked our system and informed the customer that only during the previous month, their officers had generated 193 property violations in the building. Let’s take a quick look at the analytics involving that number for a moment: On average almost 7 parking violations were issued per day on that property, and assuming that all the process of generating each report took the security guard approximately 25 minutes, we have that each officer spent almost 3 hours per day just dealing with parking violations issues. By devoting so much time to this matter, the on-duty security officer did not have enough time to complete his patrol rounds on the property. As a consequence, the main work for which the security company was hired was not being properly done, jeopardizing the success and continuity of the contract.

It was clear to our client that they needed to include at least one security officer per shift in that property. Therefore, they would have to renegotiate the terms of their contract with the building management immediately.

The above was just an example of how our customers can use the data and analytics collected by our system to make better decisions that improve their operation. Security companies now have mechanisms that allow them to show their customers the results about the daily work their officers do, leaving behind those prehistoric written reports. That level of accountability is priceless in the modern security business.

Another important benefit of our Guard Tour System is that it allows our customers, especially small and middle security companies, to offer different services and solutions to various industries on a very efficient and professional way. Security needs vary from one company to another. For example, it is not the same to surveil and patrol an out-of-service warehouse in a remote location, than a school or a supermarket in the middle of the city.

When our clients are making their sales pitch trying to approach new customers, they usually mention to their prospects the tools that our systems provides, such as real time information, time and attendance monitoring, automatic status reports, security guard tracking, automated activity reporting, among many others. It has become a fundamental part of their sales strategy. They immediately give an impression of modernity and “tech savvy” that is not very common in the security industry, where many of the businesses are small, family-run operations with a very old fashion structure.

It is not enough in this time and age for the security companies to deploy a couple of officers on a property with a walkie talkie and a black jacket, make them complete rounds of patrolling on a 12 hours working shifts and have them input the surveillance findings on a piece of paper, that at the end of the day, few people will be able to understand. The whole sector has changed and the competition to get and especially to retain new customers have become brutal. The correct use of analytics has emerged as an essential part of the operations of the big players in the industry. As a consequence, the small and medium size security companies have the obligation to obtain every competitive edge they can get, and one of the crucial ones it is to operate an accurate and reliable Guard Tour