Oscar Macías, the Juárez-based regional director of Securitas, said that while the company’s finances have been positive overall, they have not been as high as he’d like.
For one, he said, the company’s earnings have been eaten up by investments in equipment and salary increases.
Since 2008, Macías said, Securitas has toughened up its training and recruiting processes and upgraded technology to meet the growing expectations of an increasingly demanding clientele.
“We have to invest in quality to make sure the client is satisfied,” he said.
Having to ‘invest in quality to make sure the client is satisfied’? Now that is music to my ears. lol Not to mention salary increases and investments in equipment sounds great too. You have to take care of your people if you want good customer service and satisfaction.
But most importantly, these companies have to invest in good quality management to ensure that everything operates the way it is supposed to. From the shift leader all the way up to the project manager, a company must focus on quality management. You can have high salaries for employees and the best equipment ever, but unless your guard force is well organized, trained and managed, then all of that is for not. It is that management that will ensure good customer service and satisfaction, and continuous improvement (Kaizen).
You know what would be an interesting study is to actually do a customer and employee/contractor survey to see exactly what the companies are doing right and what they are doing wrong in Mexico. With Juarez being the most dangerous city out there, perhaps in the world, this kind of study might be pretty influential in the realm of private security research and industry best practices. –Matt
Juárez cranks up private security
Businesses spent 45 percent more than in 2009
January 2011
By Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera
JUáREZ – Confronted with the city’s bloodiest year to date, businesses in Ciudad Juárez spent 45 percent more for private security in 2010 than the year before, according to figures reported by private security companies.
Juárez “is the city with the largest increase in security investments,” said Ivette Estrada, spokeswoman for the Private Security National Council, or CNSP, an association of security firms in Mexico. It calculated the increase using data provided by its 298 members.
The average increase in private security expenditures for Mexican border cities was 33 percent, Estrada said.
At the national level, the council estimated that companies in Mexico spent an average 11.3 percent of their production costs for insurance and security services in 2010, compared to 7 percent the year before and between 3 and 5 percent in 2008.
Last year was the most violent in Ciudad Juárez so far, with a record 3,111 drug-related killings, bringing the total number of violent deaths in the city since 2008 to at least 7,488.
Faced with the inability of Mexican authorities to stem the wave of crime and brutality pummeling the city, Juarenses have invested heavily in alarm systems, closing off streets with gates and hiring private security to guard neighborhood entrances.
