Three Reasons You Need Guard Tour Software

By TEAM Software November 23, 2021 Categories: ,

The benefits outweigh the costs when you invest in guard tour software for your business.

Keeping track of your security guards with guard tour software is, for the most part, a standard practice among contractors. Businesses use them because of the importance of accountability in the security industry, but one of the main reasons security companies might choose not to use a guard tour system is the cost. Up front, they appear expensive. However, if you do a quick cost-benefit analysis, you quickly realize it generally costs more to operate a site without a guard tour system than it does with one.

Let’s look at three reasons you should be using a guard touring system. The bottom line? The benefits outweigh the costs.

1. Improved Security Operations

If you ask most security company executives how their business is performing, they have a good idea of top-line performance. But, if you dig a little deeper, you find those who aren’t using guard touring don’t have visibility of more granular issues. And when seemingly minor issues are left unaddressed, they can escalate and eventually lead to lost customers.

Guard tour software provides you with data that helps answer questions including:

  • Are we complying with post orders or standard operating procedures?
  • Which sites have the most issues?
  • What are the most common types of issues?
  • Which days do we have the most issues and what are they?
  • Which patrol runs do we miss the most?
  • Which guards are regularly underperforming?

Answering these questions allows you to identify where to focus your time to improve performance and reduce risk in your business. And, you can go back to your customers with data and evidence that you are continuously reviewing and improving your performance.

2. Reduced on-site supervision

Supervision is critical to ensure guards are meeting the required standards outlined in your contracts. For example, are patrols being completed on time? Are vehicles being maintained? Are critical areas secured? Are officers dressed in full uniform? If you don’t invest enough in supervision, you’re increasing the risk of losing the contract because you’re not meeting your customer’s expectations.

But investing in supervision doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire more staff. Guard touring allows you to reduce the amount of manual supervision required by using automated monitoring, workflows and alerts. A guard tour system alerts you if scheduled patrols are missed or an incident is logged. And, since you can log in from anywhere at any time, you can see if guards are on site whether you’re in the office or at another site.

Guard tour software allows you to manage more sites remotely, reducing supervisor labor costs and increasing the profit margin on your contracts.

3. Savings with real-time automated reporting

Customers expect to receive reports that demonstrate they’re getting the services they’ve paid for. In many cases, this involves supervisors or managers pulling together multiple data sources and manually compiling them into a daily or weekly report that can result in an hour or more per week spent on reporting for each customer they service. It may not seem like much, but across 10 customers, that’s 10 hours per week of time that could be invested in more important activities.

What if there was a way to eliminate the time spent on reporting completely? That’s exactly what guard touring does. A guard tour system automatically logs all security activity for each site in real-time and packages the information into a client-friendly report that lands in their inbox on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Not only have you saved your supervisors time, but you’ve also delivered a better customer experience.

These are just some of the benefits that a modern guard tour software system can deliver for your security business. Investing in a guard tour system leads to better performance, faster growth and less customer churn.

Want to learn more? Download our case study on how one integrated services company improved their service delivery with mobile workforce management and guard tour software.