TEAM Software

​When Gail Tutt came on board at First Alarm Security & Patrol almost a decade ago, she had one main objective: pull all business components into one technology system. The 1,600-employee company, based in San Jose, California, was using Win- Team, TEAM Software's core business management solution, for the scheduling and operations piece of the business, but financials were combined with their parent dispatch and alarm company in another software system. They also out- sourced payroll to a third party and had several other software systems to handle different areas.

"We had too much overhead for this piece of the company," Tutt, the company's controller, explained. "We were overloaded with personnel and had six or seven platforms to get everything done. The alarm division used to allocate thousands to the patrol division just for accounting. They were way over-allocating expenses. When I came on board, we immediately became profitable."

Tutt was tasked with carving out the financials for the security and patrol division from the parent company's, recreating the database and pulling all the division's data into WinTeam, including payroll.

"It made more sense to keep payroll in house," noted Tutt. "I don't anticipate us ever outsourcing payroll because of the manual work that would go into it. We do a lot of audits and reviews before we push that final payroll button."

Initially, Tutt hired her own team and had the whole initiative completed in seven months. Since then, the company has also moved to TEAM's cloud-based platform and added on two more of TEAM's solutions—TeamTime, automated time and attendance, and eHub, employee self-service and workforce management software.

"For us, the biggest advantage of using a fully integrated system has been the ease of use. There's just one platform to use," she said. "It's global, go-anywhere functionality. It's easier for operation managers to fix things like timekeeping on the fly and not have to sit at a desk somewhere to do it."

The software system has also proven to be a scalable solution that has driven efficiency and enabled growth for the guarding company. Through strategic purchasing contracts and organic growth, the company has seen a minimum of 35 percent year-over-year growth without having to increase staff significantly to keep up.

"We've been able to grow 100-fold over the last 10 years, and I've only increased back office staff by four. It's a great cost-saver on headcount," said Tutt.

TEAM Software, Inc. has been a leading provider of software solutions and associated services for the building service and security industries since 1989. TEAM offers a host of fully integrated solutions from operations, financial, and workforce management to employee and customer self-service to time and attendance products designed to help customers profit from efficiency. Team is an employee-owned company based in Omaha, Nebraska.