This post originally appeared on the Louisiana Technology Park blog.
Courtney Sparkman was working in sales and marketing when his father, who had recently retired from law enforcement, said he was interested in starting a security company. Sparkman agreed to research the industry and help manage the business.
As he dug into the industry, Sparkman says he was astounded by the levels of inefficiency he saw in scheduling security officers and writing, sharing and storing the reports from their shifts. “I was all about software and processes, but in security, no one was doing any of that.”
He started looking for solutions, and after a couple of other tries ended up founding OfficerReports.com. “I’m not tech-oriented, but I figured out how to make it happen,” Sparkman says. We talked with him recently about finding a niche and providing meaningful solutions for clients’ projects. Here’s what he had to say about the company’s success.
By Providing Software That Works
The product OfficerReports offers makes it easier for security guard companies to manage and schedule security officers, as well as collect and read the reports they generate on their rounds. The innovation isn’t in the technology itself — it’s moving a process from paper to digital. “It’s not artificial intelligence or virtual reality. We’re not trendsetters, but leverage current technology that’s out there to provide for our customers. And if you don’t have the technology, you don’t know what your officers are doing.”
The industry is taking notice. Sparkman says a property manager who was trying to get a problem tenant evicted used evidence it had gathered from OfficerReports data during a legal hearing. The tenant was evicted, with the judge telling the plaintiff: “Whoever is providing you all this electronic stuff, you need to have them at all your properties.”