What are the most important characteristics of an excellent corporate security department? What makes an excellent security supplier? These are among the topics for the latest report from the Security Research Initiative (SRI).
SRI asked corporate security people and security suppliers to rate various characteristics of outstanding performance. While overall they shared similar views, there were some differences, say the researchers. In brief:
➢The most highly valued characteristic was a focus on customer needs. Having objectives that are aligned with the client was also seen as crucial.
➢While it was seen as important to have innovative and adaptive senior management it was more important to have excellent management on the front line.
➢Suppliers appear to attach higher importance than clients to some criteria, for example, adopting new philosophies, a focus on training and learning, and having excellent and visionary leadership. This may suggest suppliers are trying to do too much and would benefit from a greater focus.
➢Suppliers were particularly likely to agree strongly that price trumps quality, indeed the difference here was striking given the similarity of answers on other criteria.
➢That 47 per cent of clients and 59pc of suppliers agreed strongly that suppliers can only be excellent if clients fully support them, suggests that clients may underestimate the crucial role they play.
➢There was some agreement that often security is not valued highly by companies, that they accord security suppliers less status than other suppliers.
Findings
➢Understanding threats (91pc), having an effective security strategy (87pc) and having objectives aligned with the company (84pc), were the three highest ranked characteristics for client excellence.
➢While both clients and suppliers think security fares well in comparison to other business functions in terms of excellence it is often less effective at showing how it adds value.
➢While both suppliers and clients agree that security leaders need business skills only clients saw security expertise as being of equal importance, suppliers considered this much less important.
➢Clients, like suppliers, favoured the carrot rather than the stick approach, suggesting excellent companies are those that focus on rewarding good performance.
➢There was some evidence that clients do not fully recognise the price pressures on suppliers, for example, just a third attached strong importance to paying the going rate for the job as a condition of excellence.
➢According to both samples, and judged against all the criteria listed, most clients do not achieve excellence.
Professor Martin Gill, pictured, of Perpetuity Research who led the study said: “What is clear is that a reputation for being an outstanding performer is only temporary. There is evidence from these findings that security undersells itself, suppliers to their clients and corporate security departments to the wider business. Security is moving from being seen as a protector of assets to a facilitator of good business, and an essential one at that. But it is moving slowly and the sector needs to change from keeping its potential secret. The characteristics of outstanding performance need articulating, the good thing though is that by all accounts those working in different aspects of security are largely in agreement about what it involves and now the strategy must be to achieve it.
The research
The research is based on a review of the drivers of business excellence. Responses were received from 200 representatives of security suppliers and 289 clients globally. These were supplemented by 24 in-depth interviews. The research was by Perpetuity Research (which started life as a spin out from the University of Leicester) under the umbrella of the Security Research Initiative (SRI) which does a study each year into an aspect of security.
To download a free copy of the full report go to http://perpetuityresearch.com/category/publications/security-research-initiative/sri-publications/ or email [email protected] for details.
