Bringing security guard dispatch and control operations in-house with a React app, from planning onward

What changed

• Control-operation entry time
  Reduced vs. paper-based operation
• Deployment-change miscommunication
  Trending down
• Release cycle
  Weekly

Challenge

At the security company, guard deployment and control operations were scattered across paper, phone calls, and Excel. There was always a lag between the deployment information held by headquarters and the actual situation known to guards in the field, and every sudden change in assignment triggered a flood of phone calls that led to miscommunication. Headquarters was worn down by the workload, while guards had settled into a routine of calling in every morning just to confirm "which site am I at today." On top of that, the business requirements were never documented and everything ran on individual know-how, so even the wish to systematize it had to start from sorting out "what exactly to build."

Approach

1. 01 Interviewed both field guards and headquarters, and mapped the business flows into diagrams
2. 02 Narrowed the MVP scope to 'control operations' and 'deployment operations' and captured it in a planning document
3. 03 Rapidly prototyped screens with Supabase + React + TypeScript, showing the real thing and driving discussion from the planning stage
4. 04 Used Vercel's preview environments for weekly on-site reviews and reflected feedback in the following week's release
5. 05 Designed the input UI around one-handed smartphone use, so the migration would not add to the field's workload
6. 06 After initial adoption, laid out a feature-expansion roadmap and set up a structure that lets them shift to in-house operation

Key success factors

Requirements drawn from the field

Starting from a state where business requirements were never written down, we began by interviewing the field and headquarters and turning the business flows into diagrams.

A tight MVP scope

We narrowed to two points—control operations and deployment operations—and refused to let scope creep into a system that only matters if it is actually adopted.

Preview-driven field involvement

We used Vercel's preview environments for weekly on-site reviews, creating an environment where the business side felt free to speak up.

A minimal Supabase configuration

We consolidated authentication, database, and storage into Supabase, keeping the ability to show the real thing quickly even at the planning stage.

Solution

We used Supabase as the foundation, consolidating authentication, database, and storage into a minimal configuration, and built the front end with React + TypeScript. We used Vercel's preview environments for weekly reviews, establishing a cycle where feedback from the field was reflected in the following week's release. As a result, the cost of communicating deployment changes dropped sharply, and the "confirm by phone" routine—for both headquarters and the field—was replaced by an app-contained flow. Even after the MVP launch, we have continued expanding features with the same team.