Why My Guard Tour Tracking Software Is Better Than Your Wand

I usually share these two stories with customers who are evaluating our security guard tour tracking software, but I thought it would be great to share them with you too.  When we first launched OfficerReports.com, we wanted to develop a comprehensive security guard management software suite.  The first module in that suite was our Reporting Software which included daily activity reports, incident reports, maintenance reports, etc.  Within months of launching that module we began receiving requests to integrate tour reports from our customers’ wand based guard tour tracking software into our system.  Although it would have been a relatively simple integration, I thought that we could provide a better tour tracking solution.  Back in the early 2000’s when I was managing my security guard company, I had several experiences with those systems that made me believe that we could do it better. Two particular instances stand out in my mind.

When wand based tour tracking systems were first introduced they were pretty cutting-edge.  They allowed security guard companies the ability to do something that they had previously been unable to do easily.  That ability was monitoring their security officers’ activities without having to have someone actively watching them.  As leading edge as they were, since they were first introduced, there have been two significant weaknesses with wand based systems.

Guard Tour Tracking Software Needs To Be Real Time

The first weakness with wand based systems is that someone has to go to the site that the wand is at and download the wand to a storage device.  After the wand’s data is downloaded the storage device has to be attached to a computer to generate the tour reports.  Speaking from experience, this can be a problem if you don’t have someone doing those downloads daily.  When I first began deploying the wand systems it was my belief that if officers knew that we were monitoring their patrols they would make sure that they did all their rounds.  As a result, in the beginning we only downloaded the wands once a week…big mistake!  Once we started generating reports they were horrible!  The reports showed an abundance of incomplete and missed patrols.  Initially I thought that maybe we’d forgotten to tell the officers what the wands were supposed to be used for.

Based on those results we had to drastically increase the frequency at which we downloaded and reviewed officer patrols.  So rather than having our field supervisors coaching and managing our officers, they had to spend more time driving to download wands.  The inability to see your security officers in real-time is a major drawback to wand based systems.  You’ve got 99 problems and downloading shouldn’t be one…

Guard Tour Tracking Software Needs GPS

guard-tour-tracking-software-boardAt the end of a long day at the office, I decided to stop by one of my security company’s client sites to do a spot-check on one of our officers.  It was about 7:30pm when I arrived at the site.  It was a large manufacturing facility where the officers were just responsible for ensuring that no unauthorized personnel were entering the facility after hours.  When I began the inspection the officer’s uniform looked great.  He had begun his daily activity report and it had sufficient details.  I then asked the officer to take me on a tour with him to show me how he was performing the patrol.  This facility had 20 – 30 touch buttons and I wanted to make sure that he was hitting them all.  The officer just stared at me blankly and I started getting a little uneasy.  After a few moments of awkward silence the officer said “Mr. Sparkman I can’t do that.”  At that point I was trying to figure out what the problem was, “Had he lost the wand, did he not know where the touch buttons were, what was the issue?”  The officer then reached down and pulls open the drawer at the desk that he was sitting at.  From that drawer he pulls out a wooden board on which I could see 20 – 30 touch buttons.  It turned out that the officer had gone around the entire facility, removed the touch buttons and affixed them to this board.  He was doing his tours right from the desk!  After that experience I quickly realized that not only were our field supervisors going to have to download the wands more frequently, but they were also going to have to do a tour of the site to inspect the touch buttons.

Fast forward to 2013.  Based on what I’d learned about tour systems, I knew that when we developed our guard tour tracking software we were going to have to incorporate GPS positioning to ensure that officers weren’t doing their patrols from their desks.

Wand based tour tracking systems were cutting edge for their times, but in the security guard industry of today they are becoming less effective as management tools.  The ability to remotely monitor your security officers and ensure that they are actually doing patrols is a must for any tour tracking system.  Both are abilities that wand based systems cannot provide.

If you would like information on OfficerReports.com’s Security Guard Tour Tracking Software please feel free to contact us at 888-511-9811 or email us at Marketing@OfficerReports.com.  In the meantime, if you have some tour tracking stories that you’d like to share, please share them in the comment box below.

 

 

 

By Courtney Sparkman

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