IFSEC Global discusses winning the Security Guarding of the Year Award, company ethos and future trends in guarding with Darren Read, Managing Director of Amulet.
Hi Darren, can you tell us a little bit more about Amulet and what you do?
Amulet is a specialist security solutions provider that operates within the wider Churchill Group. Created in 2018 following the acquisition of AOS Security by Churchill, Amulet works in close partnership with each individual client to identify a unique combination of technology and the highest calibre of security professionals to provide a bespoke service with measurable results, underpinned by our core belief that ‘security enables everyday life’.
Amulet works in multiple sectors, ranging from rail to premier retail, and public spaces to education. Following an impressive year of growth and development, Amulet has already been named a winner at the PFM Awards for its work with Trenitalia c2c Limited and will soon be opening a new communications and security centre to further enhance its services.
You also won the Security Guarding of the Year (Over £25 million) award at the 2019 Security & Fire Excellence Awards, why do you think this was?
This award recognised a number of factors, including Amulet’s business performance, commitment to staff training, integration of technology, current contracts and staff loyalty.
We are one of the fastest growing companies in the sector, with 40% top-line growth in 2018-19. The company is working across new and exciting sectors and has carved itself a niche in the luxury retail and outdoor space specialist solutions. These recent undertakings have seen Amulet rise to the challenge of some of the most demanding tasks within the security sector and we are delighted to see this hard work recognised.
We ensure all staff are trained to an exceptionally high standard to prepare them for any eventuality. A staff turnover rate of just 12% demonstrates Amulet’s commitment to staff wellbeing and career development. Recently, Amulet scored 168 out of a possible 174 rating by the SIA, which rates the top security companies to work for.
Integration of technology along with high calibre security personnel is an area Amulet has worked hard to finesse. As the company has no specific ties to technology providers, it is is in a position to always seek the most appropriate technology solutions from an independent standpoint.
Finally, our commitment to working within our communities and strong CSR efforts helped Amulet to stand out from the crowd. We were delighted to have won the award considering the strong industry competition. 2019 was a hugely successful year for Amulet, and 2020 is looking to be even stronger.
What new technology innovations has Amulet been using to support the company provide high levels of security?
The ideal model of security today is ‘smart buildings with smart people’. The best security comes about through the integration of technology and well-trained security personnel. At Amulet, data and intelligence plays a key role in everything we do and allows us to plan, train, and deploy our personnel effectively. Despite its benefits, the use of data hasn’t become ubiquitous in the industry yet. We expect this to change in the year ahead as ‘always-on’ technology and real-time data are becoming a necessity in the security industry.
In a move designed to better integrate and align services, Amulet has recently opened a new centralised Command, Control, and Intelligence Centre (CCIC) where it can work closely with intelligence partners. This is something that we will likely be seeing the whole security sector doing in a bid to move towards a seamless, integrated service. Unlike traditional monitoring centres where information would be collected and passed on elsewhere for analysis, the CCIC offers an end-to-end service where monitoring, communicating with customers, processing information, and managing staff can be carried out in a single location.
Do you think technology has changed the role of security personnel?
The security industry has been transformed by technology in recent years, but that doesn’t mean that highly-trained staff are any less important. Integrating people and technology is vital; a single, highly skilled operative can’t always do the job of two untrained operatives. Combine that single operative with well-implemented technology, however, and they will far outperform the two operatives. We are investing in training and becoming more discerning with deployment because technology has given us hard data that shows what works.
Download this report, produced in conjunction with Texecom, to discover how increasing processing power, accelerating broadband speeds, cloud-managed solutions and the internet of things and transforming the intruder alarm market, and whether firms are adopting these innovative new technologies.
