Protection One GmbH

From Outdated Manuals to a Living System

About Protection One GmbH
As a pioneer and market leader in 24/7 remote monitoring with real-time intervention, Protection One GmbH – a Securitas company – offers comprehensive solutions for continuous property surveillance. The company operates its own emergency and service control center around the clock and delivers all services from a single source. With a nationwide sales and technician network, Protection One ensures responsive, on-site service. Today, around 260 employees at ten locations provide holistic consultation and customer-focused security services every day.

Whether it’s burglary, theft, vandalism, fire, or assault – our concept relies on fast response times. If an alarm is triggered in a monitored area, our emergency center reacts instantly. Staff address the intruder directly and ask for a pre-agreed password. This unexpected, personal confrontation typically causes the intruder to flee. If they fail to provide the password, our predefined response chain – like alerting the police – is initiated. The result: a damage prevention rate of 97.3%, independently verified.

The Challenge Before Q.wiki
As a growing company onboarding around 50 new employees each year, reducing ramp-up time was a key priority for Quality Manager Thorsten Schmidt. The goal: streamline onboarding and cut down on internal inquiries by introducing a high-quality, collaboratively maintained documentation system.

In our old folder structure, documents were often duplicated, edited locally, or hard to access. Updates were limited to a few managers – mostly Thorsten – and documents were rarely current. We needed a way to distribute ownership, keep documentation up to date, and reduce certification and audit effort, which had previously demanded significant resources.

Why We Chose Q.wiki
The wiki-based approach won us over immediately. A single platform for all company knowledge, best practices, and operational info? Exactly what we needed. Its decentralized setup allows us to assign ownership, shifting responsibility from management to the people closest to the process. The team at Modell Aachen showed us what an interactive, living management system could look like and supported us through every step of implementation.

Success with Q.wiki
We’ve now been using Q.wiki for over six years — and its impact continues to grow. On average, the system sees over 4,000 page views per month and we have an estimated annual savings: over €1.04 million
Here’s the breakdown:

1. Faster Answers, Less Time Lost
Thanks to high-quality documentation, employees can answer every fifth question themselves in Q.wiki. This “digital cheat sheet” cuts down inquiry time by 20%, saving over €500,000 annually.

2. Faster Onboarding
Q.wiki shortens onboarding by 20 days per employee — saving 15 days for the new hire and 5 for their mentor. For 50 new employees per year, that’s another €500,000 saved.

3. Centralized Knowledge, Less Redundancy
Before Q.wiki, documentation was often scattered or outdated. Now, everything is in one place. This avoids miscommunication and saves an estimated €65,000 annually. Another €90,000 is saved through decentralized content maintenance — reducing redundant work and cutting the burden on employees in half.

4. Management Relief
Responsibility is now shared. Technicians own and maintain relevant processes, contributing practical tips and best practices. This shift has reduced the workload of Thorsten and other managers, saving an estimated €60,000 a year.

5. Simplified Certification and Audits
Q.wiki helps us stay audit-ready at all times. Documentation is clean and aligned with real-world practices — no more frantic prep before external audits. Four annual audits now require 25 page owners, and we’ve cut the time and cost by 70%, saving around €23,000 annually. QM team members also save around 30 days per year on documentation work.

Looking Ahead with Q.wiki
Security remains our top priority — and Q.wiki plays a big role. It has helped us strengthen transparency and process quality, supporting our longstanding collaboration with the certification body "Trust Through Security" (VdS). A recent milestone was our VdS 10000 certification, modeled after ISO 27001. The Q.wiki-based documentation passed a COVID-safe two-day audit with flying colors.

Next up: further digitalization. With Q.wiki’s module generator, we’re automating even more processes. Our “cheat sheet” has become indispensable — and we’re confident it will continue delivering value for years to come.