Accountability systems: can they prove the work happened?
This is the single biggest separator in the industry. You will rarely be on site at 3 a.m. to see whether patrols happen, so the vendor’s verification systems are your eyes:
- Electronic checkpoint verification — officers scan tags at fixed points, producing timestamped proof of each round. No checkpoints means patrol frequency is whatever the officer says it was.
- GPS patrol records — for mobile patrol, vehicle tracking that shows when the unit was on your property, not a handwritten visit sheet.
- Digital incident and shift reports — delivered to you, with photos and timestamps, not filed in a cabinet at their office.
Ask each vendor to show you these systems in the sales meeting — the actual reports, the actual checkpoint data. Companies that have them love demonstrating them. Companies that don’t will steer the conversation back to how experienced their people are. Ours are documented on the technology page, and we’d rather you hold us to them.
Supervision: who checks the checker?
Officers perform like they’re supervised. Dig past “we have supervisors” into structure: Are field supervisors making unannounced site inspections, and are those inspections logged where the client can see them? What’s the ratio of supervisors to posts — one working supervisor for an enormous roster is a paper program. Who reviews reports for quality, and who calls you when something needs attention? A company that can describe its supervision loop in concrete nouns — visits, logs, review steps — has one. A company that answers with adjectives doesn’t.
Dispatch: what’s behind the officer at 3 a.m.?
A lone officer with a problem needs someone to call who answers. A staffed 24/7 dispatch desk handles officer check-ins (and catches the missed one that means something is wrong), coordinates backup and alarm response, fills a call-out before the post goes empty, and gives you one number that always picks up. When you evaluate vendors, call their main line at night and see what happens — it’s the cheapest due diligence available.
Insurance and licensing: verify, don’t accept
Every company will tell you they’re licensed and insured. Make each one prove it the same way: a current certificate of insurance sent directly to you, with your organization listed as certificate holder, and license documentation for the company. This takes a legitimate operator minutes. Any friction — delays, excuses, “our owner handles that” — is the most reliable red flag in the entire process, because a company careless with its own compliance will be careless with your liability.
Local footprint
Security is a logistics business. A company actually operating in Worcester and Central Massachusetts has supervisors within driving distance of your property, a bench of local officers to cover call-outs, response capability that doesn’t start from an hour away, and working familiarity with area police departments and AHJs. National brands can serve local properties well — but ask where the nearest field supervisor actually sits, and how a 2 a.m. call-out at your site gets filled. The honest answer to those two questions tells you what the org chart won’t. (Ours: we’re based at 5 New York St in Worcester.)
Contract flexibility
Read the agreement for how it treats your ability to leave and adjust: reasonable termination terms rather than multi-year lock-ins with no performance language; the ability to scale hours up and down as your risk changes; clear rate structure including holidays and short-notice requests; and no evergreen auto-renewal that quietly re-commits you. A confident company retains clients with service. A contract built like a trap tells you how the vendor expects the relationship to go.
Transition quality: the overlooked criterion
How a company starts is how it runs. Ask each finalist to describe their first two weeks on a new account. You want to hear: a site walkthrough before day one, written post orders drafted and reviewed with you, a documented key/code/fob handoff, officers oriented to the site rather than dropped at the curb, and a scheduled review call to adjust. If you’re replacing an incumbent, ask how they run the overlap so the property is never uncovered. The step-by-step version is in our hiring guide; a vendor whose answer matches that outline unprompted is a good sign.
The 10-question vendor scorecard
Run every finalist through the same ten questions and keep notes. Vague answers count as noes.
- 1. Will you send a current certificate of insurance and license documentation this week, with us as certificate holder?
- 2. Are the officers at our site your direct W-2 employees, or subcontracted?
- 3. How do you verify patrols happened — can we see live checkpoint or GPS data for our own site?
- 4. Show us a redacted incident report and shift report from the last month.
- 5. How often do field supervisors inspect posts unannounced, and are inspections logged where we can see them?
- 6. Is your dispatch desk staffed 24/7, and what happens when an officer misses a check-in?
- 7. What is your process when an officer calls out two hours before a shift?
- 8. Walk us through your first two weeks on a new account, including post orders.
- 9. What are the termination and schedule-change terms, in plain language?
- 10. Who is our named point of contact after the sale, and how often will we hear from them without prompting?
Price matters — our cost guide explains what drives it — but price comparisons only mean anything between vendors who scored well here. A low rate from a company that failed questions 3, 5, and 6 isn’t a deal; it’s a discount on a product that doesn’t exist.
Put us on the scorecard
We wrote the ten questions because we like answering them. Send us your property details and ask anything on the list — certificates, sample reports, checkpoint data, the transition plan. You’ll have comparable answers on paper before you sign anything.