Why local in security matters

This blog post is going to be a long read, but what we aim to achieve is showing a potential customer the benefits involved in buying a local security service; this isn't unique to the security industry and could equally be applied to any service industry. It could, for example, apply to gardening services, an electrician, or a decorator. Much of this will also apply to buying physical goods and the importance of having a local supply chain.

Why Local Security

There are plenty of reasons to buy your security from within your local area and I'll admit upfront that I'm 100% biased - I operate a security company who only trade within the local area! I'll discuss some of the reasons and the benefits that I firmly believe make buying local the better option for most companies. There will always be the argument that central contract management is easier. For huge national contracts where you have a thousand supermarkets central management has its place but it almost always trades off against quality. 

Local Knowledge

Something that is typically better with a local security company is the local knowledge and experience that comes with them. As a local business, we know both the problems that different areas face and often hold practical intelligence that can often prevent a security problem before it escalates into a business-continuity event. This might be as simple as recognising the vans used by the local ne'er-do-wells. It could be something more involved, like understanding the idiosyncrasies of the technology used on your site, and being able to visit to assist guards when it comes to setting and un-setting the more quirky of your security devices.

Local staff

When you're working with a local security company with their own team, you tend to find that the staff turnover is lower and that the staff are based in the local area; when you task an out-of-area business for your security requirements, one of two things happens:

1. They use their own staff to service the contract; often resulting in staff working long shifts to justify the travel. Staff can often travel distances of upwards of 90 minutes each way leading to the best-case scenario being that the staff are fatigued and having to get their head down on site and the absolute worst case scenario.. that the HSE are visiting a business and asking why a guard who drove for two hours on a 12-hour shift has just crashed his car on his journey home.
2. They call us. We often get calls from out-of-town security companies looking for either a guard, or a keyholding provider to subcontract a job. It's not uncommon for someone to quote a job with absolutely no local presence in the area and suddenly they need to fill the void. We normally give them a quotation and explain that we do not work "white box", and they politely decline. Calling around local companies until someone is invariably cheap enough so as not to affect their margin and actually has the guards available is not uncommon. 

Easy Access

When you work with a local supplier, you're working with someone who can "pop to site" if anything needs discussing. You are working with someone who can make quick decisions and implement changes smoothly. Site meetings can be a lot more frequent and impromptu site meetings don't rely on "when we next have someone in the area", often making for client relationships with a more natural flow.

It's not just the client relationship that is improved by a local management structure and the same can be observed with guard relations. Our team know that there's local management available when they need us; if they're on shift, the chances are that we're out and about and can drop supplies to site as needed or attend to offer assistance when the guard's lone-worker alarms are triggered.

An accessible management hierarchy who are in the right place at the right time will beat that of any national provider for 99% of situations, especially when the national provider is relying on subcontractor relationships to deliver.

Relationships

When selecting a security company, it's critical that the people servicing the contractors work operationally with the stakeholders within your business who are going to be working alongside them on a day-to-day basis; often we see that head-office selected contractors can lead to fractured working relationships with the site management teams where the service is being delivered, this can lead to an ineffective solution where all "cogs aren't spinning together". By allowing site and regional management to select their own suppliers you often achieve better value for money and a smoother service relationship just by selecting local talent.

Another big thing about being a local business, is you are not customer 8392X4B, to a small business, you are Bob from Bob's Warehousing. We know each of our clients, and we understand both their business and their needs which they trust us to deliver upon. With a local supplier, you're never going to be "just an account" to a customer service team within a contact centre.  

Local Wealth Retention

As much of a cliché as it may be, when you buy local, your support for local business keeps revenue in the local economy; your payments to a company like K9 Protection Ltd go towards paying salaries for local staff who in turn spend their money within the local area and pay their taxes in the local area. Your money helps sponsor local grass-roots sports teams, and local companies to remain strong and work together so other companies like yours can benefit from the same level of service in years to come. When you're buying from a national provider, the local economy suffers as money is sent out of the local area and in some cases even out of the country to support multinational holding companies while the taxes that would have been paid end up being minimised through clever accounting.

Finding Local Security

The Location

When a person first realises they have a security requirement, like almost anything nowadays, the first thing that happens is they hit the internet. So let's say you carry out a search; that could be on Google or Yell, or as the world evolves, possibly even ChatGPT. The results will vary based on what you type, but invariably the output from the traditional search engines will be the same - a search for "local security company in Newport", for example will likely bring up:

• Top of the page is dominated by businesses who've paid to be there.
• Middle of the page is a handful of listings where the search engine has actually looked at the website.
• Bottom of the page has a few more businesses that've paid to be there.
• Right hand side of the page has businesses that have paid for a fancy listing.

The days of a search engine returning pages from the internet that are relevant to the search are sadly largely behind us and that's why knowing how to spot a genuine local provider matters. The crazy level of sponsorship on the big search engine platforms nowadays means the links you click don't always go to the companies you're searching for. There is no guarantee that any of the companies showing to you here are actually local, let alone in Newport; on occasion when the algorithm goes wrong, there's not even a promise that they're a security company at all.

It's important at the research stage that a potential buyer knows what they want and the signs that a website might not be what it seems; several tell-tale signs that a website might be masquerading as local include:

• Web addresses being sub-pages of a generic site featuring pictures of a generic landmark in said location, and a list of services with the location name splattered in at random intervals
• "keyword stuffing" in the footer of the website, often in text that isn't immediately visible with the background listing several variations of the phrase "security in zzzz, security in yyyy, security in xxxx"
• Non-local telephone numbers - if you're looking for a local security guard that's in an 01633 area, you don't expect the security company to have an 0118 dialling code 

The Qualifications

As a security company, we clearly state that we're an SIA Approved Contractor - this is a term that's protected in law by the Private Security Industry Act and shows that we have been audited to a high level and every element of our business has been looked at over a rolling audit cycle (and as a small business, trust me when I write this, we're not big enough to hide skeletons where the auditor will not go). There are several companies out there who use the phrase "SIA Licensed" on their website, or even show an SIA logo with the "Approved Contractor" part cut out to imply that they are the same; the same people will also tell you in a sales pitch that they are licensed as a company when currently no such thing exists.

The next big one in security is ISO9001. As a business, we can legitimately state that we have a UKAS accredited ISO9001 quality system; that means that like the Approved Contractor system that our quality management system has been audited externally by a company who themselves have been audited by UKAS - the UK's official accreditation body; companies will circumvent this by using alternative assessing bodies which do not have to be audited by UKAS and therefore are not held in the same regard. Another line companies may use on marketing is "We work to ISO9001" and whilst it is entirely possible to have a quality system and work to it, without controls and external audit, the system often isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Checking these details takes minutes and can be done on the official websites for the SIA and UKAS

Teamwork Makes The Dream Work

So, you have a need for a security company and you've realised you'd like to buy from a local provider; where's the best place to start? It's our experience that the best place to look is often closest to home. Need a security company? Ask your cleaning company! You'd be surprised how many companies are interlinked and know of providers who value the same qualities as themselves; Already have security in Newport but need security in Bath? Ask your Newport security company who they'd recommend. As "local companies" we may be small, but we're typically well networked and have high quality contemporaries across the land and personally I know I'd be only too happy to put a client in touch with a friend of the business that covers a different area of the country. 

If you haven't got providers that can help, try a search on your favourite search engine, but be on the look-out for the red flags I've mentioned above, often clicking through the pages and ignoring the many sponsored listings until you find a local business that sounds like they're on your page.

Of course, if there's anything in South East Wales that we can help with, you're already in the right place!