by Daniel Vukotich, Jr. / Vice President

The purpose of this White Paper is to help you quickly cut through the rhetoric and hype of competing guard service companies when evaluating their potential value to your organization.   It is designed to reduce the points of pain in making this major decision by providing an insider’s view of an industry that has heretofore been unstructured, maligned, and largely unregulated. 

We attempted to create this White Paper as if we were a prospective client looking at hiring a guard service for the first time or replacing their incumbent provider.  Readers should be aware that this report is brutally frank, practical, and sometimes sarcastic.  The only assumption we make is that you have already committed to some kind of security program and have realized that good security is not an inexpensive proposition.  This report will also help you avoid paying too much for the services.

 If you are a current or potential contract security user, we readily admit that the task of making the right decision is very confusing and often intimidating.  Especially when presented with what appears to be identical marketing materials from countless security firms all claiming that they…

     "Set the standards by which all others are judged."

     "Set the standards of excellence."

     "Set the standards for the entire security industry." 

 

If you compare their brochures and promotional materials side by side, you’ll discover...

    That they all discuss guard training so extensive as to be    second only to a West Point graduate’s college education;

     Security officer selection through testing, background checks (local/ statewide/ national), fingerprint checks, drug and alcohol testing, neighborhood checks, credit checks, previous employment checks, medical history checks, unemployment and workers comp claims checks;

     Planning and organizational meetings enough to last to the next decade before service actually begins, followed by daily, weekly, monthly, and annual client meetings;

     Inspections of all officers, on all shifts, performed by local, zone, area, regional, and sometimes national corporate dignitaries; conflict resolution seminars;

     Old forms and new forms and old reports and new reports and more forms and more reports;

     Post arrival call ins, hourly call ins, patrol supervisor physical checks, and so on, and so on.

 

 The reality of this situation is that to deliver 75%, (forget about 100%)   of the above promises, (and they are all promising) it would take until the last quarter of the second year of service to generate the first dollar in profit from your account.  Could your business, or any kind of business for that matter, hold on that long before you saw a profit?   Didn’t think so.