Guardhouse: Committed to its values 

Revolutionising the landscape of workforce management software for security SMEs, Guardhouse has become Australia’s largest provider for the sector – but the company’s plans don’t end there.

Guardhouse Founders, Andy Longworth, Julian Cartwright, Keith Longworth and Jack Alpe started the company in 2018 with a vision to address the gaps in Australia’s fast-growing security industry by building an end-to-end system to support that growth and empower clients to stay ahead of society’s changing security needs. 

Since then, Guardhouse has partnered with over 300 companies in the 20-2,000 staff range across Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Cartwright, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer, emphasises that its success is grounded in core values of innovation, commitment to the industry, simplicity and customer obsession. “We identified a gap in what was a niche market of SME security companies in Australia – one that larger software companies found unviable to invest in,” Cartwright explained.   

Committed to its values, Guardhouse offered a free pilot of the full functionality from the start, providing in-person onboarding and training before customers committed to a paid subscription.

This customer-centric approach, along with ongoing implementation support included in the price, is a major reason cited in customer testimonials and reviews for partnering with Guardhouse.  

Cartwright shared: “Our values drove this thinking from the get-go. We believe it’s the right thing to do.

People bought into the principles of our business; they saw we genuinely had their interests at heart. As a result, the loyal relationships we’ve built with customers and the industry have been extremely rewarding.”  

A solution for common challenges 

Guardhouse recognised a common challenge among customers, who often used four to five different systems for workforce management tasks.

After thorough market research, the team created an all-in-one platform to address this issue, covering security compliance, simplifying complicated scheduling and invoicing systems and streamlining incident reporting. 

“It’s not that easy to make something that’s user friendly, robust and consistent across the platform for every need. By listening to our customers, we understood the critical requirements in various industry segments and focused on those.” 

While initially focused on delivering the best product for Australian customers, thoughts of international expansion surfaced just before the pandemic.

The team seized the opportunity of increasing interest from UK companies and made plans for Cartwright to relocate to establish Guardhouse UK.

However, these plans were momentarily halted by lockdowns and travel restrictions. 

“When we had to pause, we started thinking more and differently,” he said.

“Security companies everywhere were an essential service during the years of disruption and owners told us they needed to pivot fast to capitalise on new business opportunities to protect assets and provide safe environments.

“In the end, many companies fared better than the original gloomy forecast.”  

Responding to these changing needs, Guardhouse made changes to its operations, reducing the time needed to develop and implement new features.

Like businesses everywhere, the team lost its ability to visit a customer and talk through a solution face to face. The company increased its support team headcount and hired Success Team members, utilising platforms like Zoom to offer remote support.  

“We attribute the Success Team as a key component of the growth of our business through the pandemic years. We’re now able to provide punchy training sessions that customers can attend from anywhere in the world, at any time.

“They know we’re available and ready, whether it’s a support query or they want us to roll out an entirely new feature.” 

Innovating for new opportunities 

Guardhouse observed a trend where multiple customers collaborated to provide the required scale for major events.

This led to the innovation of the Labour Partner Connections functionality, enabling Guardhouse customers to collaborate for events, building shifts on the contract holder’s platform and making the appropriate share of shifts available to each partner to manage time, attendance and guard compliance records rather than duplicating them in separate Guardhouse systems.  

Cartwright elaborated: “Early on, we noticed a real kinship between competitors in the industry in Australia. Customers that experienced the value Guardhouse offered referred us to their competitors.

“We asked ourselves, why do our customers providing guards for the same event need to create the same shifts from scratch every time?

“Why can’t we integrate these companies that have connected to fulfil a contract for a major event and reduce the staggering amount of administration hours involved in duplicated work?” 

This feature also enables a customer to fulfil contracts that include geographic areas they don’t have a presence in.

The Guardhouse team can make introductions to customers in that area and help them streamline the process. 

Entering the global market 

In September 2020, Guardhouse opened for business in the UK with the appointment of Sales Director, Leigh Charles.

He onboarded the first ten customers, working with them to identify local market needs and enable Guardhouse to tailor the product to the requirements of UK customers.  

During the next 17 months, Guardhouse built solid partnerships and spent time researching and demonstrating its commitment to getting the UK product right.

This paid off – when Cartwright made the move in February 2022, the company drove a tremendous growth, bringing on 55 new customers. “People really responded to the product and referral sales came regularly,” said Cartwright.

“These are the purest form of tracking how our customers think about the value of what we offer and how supported they feel.” 

In the near future, Guardhouse aims to expand into the Middle East, Europe and the US.

A key part of its growth strategy and core values of commitment to the industry is to focus on the universal challenges of the industry, globally, rather than staying in Australia and servicing other industries that could benefit from the platform. 

“We looked at different growth options in Australia and New Zealand and realised that other labour hire industries have huge differences in workflow.

“We didn’t want the value and effectiveness of Guardhouse to be diluted by becoming a jack of all trades, master of none. That would distract us from what the business is built on.” 

In preparation, the team is investing in research, branding and engagement with the industry to further its goal of bringing Guardhouse to customers in every time zone across the world.  

Guardhouse 

Guardhouse is an end-to-end workforce management system, custom-built exclusively for security companies.

It specialises in delivering simple to implement and use workflows to maximise the productivity within a security company, reducing operational and financial admin and streamlining work in the field.  

Guardhouse not only covers the key basics of scheduling, time and attendance, payroll and invoicing but goes deeper into the market specific functionality that the industry needs.

Incident reporting, daily license checks, compliance management, NFC and QR checkpoints, automated check calls and a suite of mobile patrol functions are just some of the features that it offers to ensure clients have an all-in-one solution to run their business.   

To find out more information about the benefits of Guardhouse, as well as stories and testimonials from delighted customers, visit: www.guardhousehq.com