5 Signs It's Time to Upgrade Your Guard Tour System

If your existing security guard tour system isn't furthering the success of your company, then it may be time to reconsider your approach to guard management.

The security industry already operates under razor thin margins to begin with. There is typically no room in the budget for tools that don't consistently deliver a big ROI.

But if the tool provides you & your contracts the piece of mind the job is getting done the right way, you will find a way to budget for it. Any effective guard tour software should help you:

1. Increase officer accountability
2. Discover areas of inefficiencies that can be optimized.
3. Improve retention rate
4. Attract more clients

1. You Lose an Account Due to Guard Performance

If you take pride in delivering outstanding service and having open lines of communication with your clients, you should never unexpectedly lose a customer.

Getting blindsided by an account termination is unsettling and should encourage you to review the management systems you have in place.

As an owner, you (or someone in your organization) should always have on officer performance. An effective guard tour app should alert you in real-time when officer performance begins to slip. The best solutions will even offer GPS & time-stamping, just to ensure the guards are honest at the end of their shift.

It's one thing to lose an account because the client has a budget cut, a change in need, etc. But guard performance should never jeopardize an account if you have the right tools in place.

2. You’re Doing Randomized Post Inspections

If you’re sending a supervisor into the field to randomly check on properties or sites, you're wasting a lot of time and money. The supervisor ends up spending unnecessary amounts of time with their favorite officers or sites, and it's hard to really calculate the value of having this position staffed. 

Instead, use a solution that allows you to identify exactly how the supervisor spends their time including, but not limited to:

• Sites visited with GPS & time verification
• Incident reporting summaries
• Documentation on training that was conducted
• Officer performance issues
• A list of sites that haven't been visited in a while

Effective guard tracking software will also take care of notifying your supervisors that particular areas have additional needs, so you can tend to these issues without taking the shotgun approach.

3. It Takes More Time to Manage than it Saves

Software should make business processes easier, save time, and free up resources. Simply collecting tour details isn't enough. A modern solution should allow for easy collection and analysis of that information, allowing you to automate your management processes.

Going on site once or twice a week to collect tour information from a wand or pipe is a total time suck (not to mention that it's really reactive).

If you're current solution is costing you more time than it saves, it's time to upgrade.

4. You’re Settling for a Faulty Software System

If you find yourself turning a blind eye to deficiencies or bugs, having issues reaching the company, or hearing about people jumping ship in droves, you’ve got a problem.

Making concessions or dismissing difficult-to-use features as “not that important” is a sign that you’ve got the wrong system in place.

And finding a company that will work with you to grow your business as a partner, rather than a monthly or annually check is difficult, but they exist. Companies like us take pride in the fact our customers consistently rank our customer service as some of the best.

The guard tour system space is a competitive market, so take your business elsewhere to find a better solution.

5. You Groan When You Get the Invoice

If you don’t immediately know that you’re seeing an exceptional ROI on your guard tour management system, it’s time to look into adopting a new one. You should be overwhelmingly confident each and every month that your system is delivering the level of performance that you expect.

At Silvertrac, our customers see great returns when it comes to the time and expenses saved as a result of implementing our security guard tour system. Our client Roger Lange, Owner & CEO of Lange Investigation and Consulting Service LLC, finds it easy to justify the costs of Silvertrac Software:

“If you're hesitant on the cost for your startup company, I’m here to tell you that it is well worth the cost. And the expense is nowhere near that of other products I have tried that provided a similar service to Silvertrac. It's a no brainier.”

Summary

Using dated tech like pipes, deggy wands, or inefficient & buggy software can take a toll on your budget, time, and efficiency. Take the time to evaluate your current management process. 

5 signs it's time to reevaluate your approach:

1. You've lost an account due to guard related issues
2. You still do randomized post inspections
3. The current tool takes more time than it saves
4. You're settling for a faulty, unreliable system
5. You groan when you get the invoice

If there is room for improvement, our team would love to share how Silvertrac is helping 500+ security operations stay on top of guard performance. Click here to request a live demo today.