Universal Protection Service, a division of Universal Services of America, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Guardsmark. Based in Memphis, Tenn., Guardsmark is one of the world’s largest security service companies with over 125 offices serving more than 400 cities in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and UK.
The combined company, which will employ approximately 60,000 security professionals across the U.S. and Canada, will become the largest U.S.-owned security company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Steve Jones, CEO of Universal Services of America, said that Guardsmark’s culture combined with an overlap in their geographic footprint with Universal Protection Service made the acquisition a “natural fit” for the company.
“It allows us to strengthen our branch infrastructure out in the field through more density and with more density it helps enable us to have more resources for the client,” said Jones. “We have a tremendous amount of technology that we employ in our security programs, so we saw Guardsmark as a perfect company that was not using technology and where we could deploy our technology out in the field with their clients and really improve the value proposition for those clients and the level of service they are getting.”
Aside from back office systems, such as enterprise and human resource management solutions as well as payroll and billing systems, Jones said that Universal employs a handheld device to track security officers and aid them in their day-to-day work. The company also has an electronic security systems division.
According to Jones, Guardsmark had 125 branch offices spread across the country while Universal had about 100. As a result, about 50 of those offices will be consolidated into one location in the markets they serve. Jones said that the company will be increasing the size of these offices and adding resources as necessary.
While melding the two company cultures together will be important in the short-term, Jones said that timing in how they merge different parts of their operations will also be paramount.
“I’m actually out here now in Memphis, so we’ve been meeting with the teams and culturally, the first two days have been great in working with them. You normally think about those cultural challenges initially, but in this scenario it hasn’t been that way,” added Jones. “I would say the biggest (challenge) is just the timing and making sure we sequence it and time it out correctly and also the implementation of our technology and making sure the Guardsmark team is well-trained, staffed and being able to utilize them which we have a whole plan in place for.”
Jones said that both companies will operate under the Universal Services of America umbrella; however, there are decisions still yet to be made as it pertains to branding. “There may be some co-branding in different market segments or areas,” he said. “We’re still finalizing that.”
In addition, Jones said their plan is to retain Guardsmark’s workforce and senior-level management staff. However, he acknowledged that there could be some changes in the back office due to synergies that will be achieved once the merger of the companies is complete.
“We have a national footprint and resources that now rivals any of the international companies,” concluded Jones. “We think (the acquisition) positions us to be the number one player in the industry.”
