What makes a great Guard Tour System?

In this series of posts, we cover what elements our customers looked for when choosing a Guard Tour System. This series is in four parts with posts twice a week! We encourage you to engage with us, give us your comments & suggestions as to what you're looking for in a great Guard Tour System!

Post 1-Why do you need a Guard Tour System?

As with many industries, the contract security guard industry has to keep up with the times, and that means taking advantage of the latest technology. Part of that may include finding the right Guard Tour System to track and report on the movement of your security officers when they are on patrol.
Let’s look at some detail about why Guard Tour is necessary and the benefits you’d expect from this kind of system.
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Why do you need a Guard Tour System?
Just think about how your employee will do his patrol without technology. He walks around the property with a pen and paper and writes down any issues that he finds. At the end of the day, he may have to compile those notes into a daily activity report and get that back to his supervisor and the client. Other than what is personally written by the officer, there is very little in the way of evidence to show that he has done his job.  
How can a client, or a supervisor for that matter, really be sure that the work is actually being done and your company is providing good value for money? How much time is wasted on Management’s end collating all the notes and getting out reports to clients? How much time and effort is spent in filing away and categorizing the reports to prepare for when the client comes back a year later and wants details?
With a Guard Tour System, the officer visits a number of physical locations while on patrol. When he reaches a checkpoint (location), it is scanned and the time recorded. In the case of a smartphone based system, he can also record details and take pictures. The more documentation the better!
All this leads to a whole lot of advantages over a manual system. Key among these are efficiency, simplicity and accountability which we’ll cover later on in this Series.