Last month, I sat across from a property manager in Cordova who looked like she hadn’t slept in three days. She’d signed a two-year security contract for her retail plaza on Germantown Parkway back in April. The company’s sales pitch had been polished: GPS-tracked patrols, cloud-based incident reports, real-time camera monitoring. Three months in, she discovered her guards were filling out handwritten logs on clipboards. The “GPS tracking” was a cell phone the supervisor carried (and often left in his car). The camera system? Nobody at the security company had ever logged into it.
She wanted out of the contract. Her attorney said it would cost her $14,000 in early termination fees.
That story isn’t rare. I hear versions of it two or three times a quarter from property managers around Shelby County. The gap between what security companies promise during the sales process and what they actually deliver on the ground is one of the biggest problems in this industry. And it’s almost entirely preventable, if you know what questions to ask before you sign.
Start With the Basics: Are They Even Licensed?
This sounds obvious. It isn’t. Tennessee requires every contract security company to hold a valid license through the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, governed by T.C.A. 62-35-101 and administered through the Private Protective Services division. Every armed guard needs individual registration. Every unarmed guard needs individual registration. The company itself needs a separate license.
You can verify any company’s license status on the TDCI website in about 90 seconds. I’m always surprised how few property managers actually do this. In a 2024 enforcement sweep, TDCI found dozens of companies operating with expired licenses or employing guards whose registrations had lapsed. One company in the Raleigh area had three guards on payroll whose armed registrations had been expired for over a year.
Before you evaluate technology, confirm the company is legally allowed to operate. If they can’t clear that bar, nothing else matters.
GPS Tracking: The Single Most Important Technology Question
GPS tracking separates professional security operations from the rest. When a company tells you their patrols are GPS-tracked, you need to dig deeper with specific questions.
Who carries the GPS device? Some companies issue dedicated GPS units to each officer. Others rely on a mobile app running on the guard’s personal phone. Dedicated units are harder to fake, harder to leave behind, and produce cleaner data. App-based tracking works fine when it’s managed properly, though you should ask what happens if the guard’s phone dies or loses signal.
Can you access the data? This is where a lot of companies fall apart. They’ll say they track patrols, and maybe they do. The question is whether YOU can see the tracking data. A good provider gives you a client portal or dashboard where you can pull up any patrol from any date and see the exact route, timestamps at each checkpoint, and total time on site. If they tell you the data “stays in our system” and they’ll “send you a summary,” that’s not transparency. That’s a filter.
What are the checkpoints? GPS tracking without defined checkpoints is just a dot moving on a map. Your contract should specify physical checkpoint locations around your property. The guard scans an NFC tag or QR code at each one. If checkpoint 4 (the loading dock behind your building on Summer Avenue, say) didn’t get scanned at 2:15 a.m., you should see that gap in the report by morning.
How current is the data? Real-time tracking means you can open a dashboard right now and see where your guard is standing. Near-real-time means updates every few minutes. Daily summaries mean you won’t know about a missed patrol until tomorrow. Know which one you’re getting.
I spoke with a facilities director at a medical office complex near Baptist Memorial in East Memphis who switched providers last year specifically over GPS tracking. His old company emailed him PDF patrol summaries once a week. His new provider gives him a live map and automated alerts when a checkpoint is missed. “I found out more about my property’s security in the first week than I learned in two years with the old company,” he told me.
Cloud-Based Reporting: Paper Logs Are a Red Flag
If a security company still uses paper incident reports in 2025, walk away. I don’t say that lightly. Paper logs get lost, can be backdated, and can’t be searched. They’re impossible to audit at scale. And they make it nearly impossible for a property manager to spot patterns.
Cloud-based reporting means every incident, every daily activity report, and every patrol log lives in a digital system that you can access from your phone or laptop. Here’s what to ask:
Can I see incident reports in real time? When your guard files a report at 11 p.m. about a trespasser near the south parking lot, can you read that report at 11:05 p.m.? Or do you have to wait for someone to email you a scan of a handwritten form on Monday?
What fields are captured? Good reporting platforms capture time, location (often GPS-stamped), incident type, narrative description, photos, and disposition. Great platforms let guards attach photos and video directly from their phone. Ask to see a sample report from an existing client (with identifying details removed, naturally).
Can I run analytics? Over six months of digital reports, you should be able to answer questions like: What time do most incidents happen? Which area of my property has the most trespassing? Are incident counts trending up or down? If the system is just a digital version of a paper log (text in a box, no structured data), the analytics won’t work.
Who owns the data? Read this section of your contract carefully. Some companies treat patrol and incident data as their proprietary information. If you cancel the contract, they keep your data. You want a clause that guarantees you receive a full export of all reports, GPS data, and incident records in a standard format if the relationship ends.
Camera Integration: The Question Most People Forget to Ask
Many commercial properties already have camera systems installed. The security company you’re evaluating may or may not be able to work with them. This matters more than most people realize.
Will they monitor your existing cameras? Some security providers have a central monitoring station where operators watch camera feeds from multiple client sites. Others will install their own cameras and ignore yours. Others won’t monitor cameras at all. Their guards might look at a monitor on-site, which is different from trained operators watching feeds 24/7.
What camera brands and systems do they support? If your property runs Verkada, Avigilon, or Milestone, ask whether the security company has worked with those platforms before. Integration isn’t always plug-and-play. A company that claims “we work with all systems” probably hasn’t tested compatibility with yours.
Is there video verification for alarms? This is increasingly standard in the industry. When a motion sensor or door alarm triggers, an operator pulls up the nearest camera to verify whether it’s an actual intrusion or a raccoon. Video-verified alarms cut false alarm dispatches dramatically, and some Memphis police precincts now prioritize verified alarm calls over unverified ones.
Alarm Response: Get the Guarantee in Writing
“We respond to alarms quickly” means nothing. You need numbers.
Ask for their average alarm response time, and ask them to break it down by time of day. Response at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday will be faster than response at 3 a.m. on a Saturday. A reputable company will be honest about that difference rather than quoting a single average.
Then ask what happens if they miss their target response time. Is there a penalty? A credit? Or just an apology? Companies that put response time guarantees into their contracts, with financial consequences for missing them, tend to actually meet those guarantees.
Get specific about the response protocol too. Does a mobile patrol unit roll to your site? Does someone call you first? Is there a verification step? Who contacts MPD if needed, you or them?
AI Scheduling and Route Optimization: The New Frontier
Some security companies have started using AI-powered scheduling tools that optimize patrol routes based on historical incident data, time-of-day risk patterns, and even weather forecasts. This isn’t science fiction. These tools exist today, and a handful of Memphis-area companies are testing them.
The idea is straightforward. Instead of sending a patrol car on the same loop every night at the same times, the software adjusts routes and timing based on when and where incidents are most likely. A property with higher risk on weekends gets more coverage on Friday and Saturday nights. A site where most incidents happen near the loading dock between midnight and 4 a.m. gets extra attention during those hours.
If a company mentions AI scheduling during their pitch, ask for specifics. What platform are they using? How long have they been running it? Can they show you before-and-after data on incident response times or coverage gaps? A company that genuinely uses this technology will be happy to show you the numbers. A company that’s name-dropping buzzwords will get vague fast.
The RFP Checklist: Ten Questions to Ask Before You Sign
If you’re issuing a request for proposal or just sitting down with a security company’s sales team, bring this list. Write their answers down. Compare them across vendors.
- Are you licensed by TDCI, and can you provide your license number right now?
- Do all your guards carry GPS tracking devices during every shift on my property?
- Can I access GPS patrol data through a client portal in real time?
- What checkpoint system do you use, and how many checkpoints will you establish at my site?
- Are all incident reports filed digitally, and can I access them within an hour of filing?
- Will you monitor my existing camera system, and what platforms have you integrated with before?
- What is your average alarm response time between midnight and 6 a.m., and will you put that number in the contract?
- Do you use any AI or data-driven tools for patrol route optimization?
- If I cancel this contract, do I receive a full export of all patrol data, incident reports, and GPS logs?
- Can you provide references from three current clients who manage properties similar to mine?
Any company that can’t answer these clearly and confidently is telling you something. Listen.
What Paper Logs Really Mean
I want to circle back to the Cordova property manager I mentioned at the top. When she confronted her security provider about the paper logs, the owner’s response was revealing. He said digital reporting was “in the pipeline” and that their current system “works fine for most clients.”
Translation: they hadn’t invested in the technology, and they were hoping no one would notice.
Paper logs mean a company is running a 2005 operation in 2025. It doesn’t necessarily mean their guards are bad, or that they don’t care about your property. What it means is that they can’t prove their guards did what they were supposed to do. And if you ever need to file an insurance claim, defend a liability lawsuit, or justify your security spend to ownership, “the guard wrote it in his notebook” isn’t going to hold up.
Technology doesn’t replace good guards. A GPS tracker on an undertrained guard doesn’t make your property safer. What technology does is create accountability, and accountability is the foundation that everything else is built on.
The Cordova property manager eventually negotiated her way out of the contract for $6,000 instead of $14,000. She signed with a different provider, one that let her log into their client portal during the sales meeting and showed her live GPS tracking on a property across town. She told me last week that she checks the dashboard every morning with her coffee.
“I don’t know if my property is actually safer,” she said. “I just know that for the first time, I can see what’s happening. That changes everything.”