How to Skyrocket Incident Management Effectiveness with Mobile Apps

“Thank you all and be safe,” you tell your supervisors before they branch out to meet with their team.

You leave the meeting room.

You swing by your office next door to grab your radio.

You start the five-minute trek to the operations center upstairs.

“Welcome,” a passing staff member says to you, followed by a few others.

“We’re excited to have you,” Joe, the head of security tells you as he catches up.

Today is a day like any other for your property, except, for you.

It’s your first day on the job here.

Your experience in Proactive Operations landed you a higher-level job at this property.

You were hired to make improvements.

But, you’re not sure what to expect.

Calls begin coming in through the incident management system and radio.

You notice something unusual but wait a little longer to diagnose the issue.

More calls come in.

“Wow,” you say to yourself.

This property has many more incidents than your former property – but they use the same resources.

“We have a…,” you hear over the radio.

Everyone is moving around the channels attempting to get some clarity.

You listen to the radio but are struggling to collect needed information.

“That’s it,” you exclaim.

You look at your operations coordinator, Mike.

“This radio traffic is the problem,” you tell him.

“Radio is not adequate for calls we have on this property,” you say.

“We have too many incidents to communicate and manage,” you continue.

But, you know what to do.

“We’re getting mobile apps,” you assert.

“We need real-time communications, and we need it now!”

Is your incident management bogged down by the lack of proactive, real-time communications?

Then, it’s time to change your approach and reap the benefits of mobile incident management solutions.

Your Current Incident Management Is Not Effective

Your event begins as usual.

The calls will start coming into the operations center one after another.

From lost items to car theft in the parking lot, you know what to expect.

They are not going to stop anytime soon either.

Agree?

These calls eventually trip up your operation as well.

You have calls coming into the operations center through your incident management software.

Your frontline staff and supervisors work hard to communicate the details of these incidents through their radios.

• “Jerry, where’s the wet spill again?”
• “The woman near bathroom 104-A is still waiting for medical.”

Incident management goes beyond reporting.

Your team is required to communicate, coordinate, and resolve incidents promptly.

To expect your team to be able to accomplish efficient response and resolution of incidents with only radio communication is not realistic.

The days of sclerotic communication are over.

It’s obvious; your staff is bottlenecked from too many incidents and no way to communicate their details, status, or resolution efficiently.

1. Your operation must have effective communication between you, supervisors, and staff.
2. Your employees must clearly understand what to complete and how to capture accurate documentation during many moving parts.

You have significant drawbacks if neither of these is under control.

Keep reading; because we must address these deficiencies.

Implement mobile apps to skyrocket your effectiveness.

Reframe Your Understanding of Mobile Communication

You’re probably used to radio communication.

Since the advent of radios, they’ve been the ‘mobile communication’ devices properties use.

But, how can you be ready for or manage high priority calls if you don’t have advanced communication?

You can’t. At least not to the level of Proactive Operations.

Your staff must execute efficiently – in real time!

• Wet spills
• Thefts
• Assaults
• Slip & falls
• Unruly behavior
• Fights
• Protein spills
• Heart attacks
• Unhappy customers
• Lost phone

That’s only six examples of the several incidents your property manages.

Limited radio bandwidth does not help to administer the influx.

Make today the day you unclog your communication – and augment effectiveness.

Mobile apps are your solution!

Before you know it, wet spills will turn into slip & falls.

These turn into a liability.

Who needs that?

Not you.

It’s terrifying how poor communication can result in a snowball effect that affects other areas of your operation.

You're Communicating Incidents, but What About the Details?

Now your team communicates incidents like pros.

This enhancement is moving you toward Proactive Operations.

But, when your team is on-scene how do they capture relevant information?

Do they even bother to interview witnesses?

Do you they document accurate details?

Time flies, and if you don’t have the ability to check up on incidents five minutes ago or three years ago, you might need to increase your budget for legal representation.

Are you fighting the effects of either of these?

• Handwritten, illegible reports written several minutes or hours after the incident occurred
• Files stacked on your desk with buried incident reports from three events ago

How’s this ‘Proactive Operations?’

It’s not, so let’s stop managing incidents this way – today.

We get it; your team struggles with these obstacles regularly.

Of course, you’re stuck, without the best applications implemented on your property.

Consider this scenario for a moment.

Don’t read through it quickly.

Stop, and think about what we’re asking.

Process it.

• What would happen if your wet spills went unattended for an extended period? Five minutes? Six minutes? 10 minutes?
• What if the captured information is handwritten, inaccurate, incomplete, and useless?

You don’t want to keep your general counsel busy negotiating legal settlements, do you?

Replacing the lack of responsibility with optimized solutions allows you to focus on winning.

It lets you concentrate on managing your property with full effectiveness.

Solve Your 3 Problems of Communication

Every property has communication needs.

But, with these requirements comes problems associated with poor strategy, infrastructure, and technology.

Here are three issues most properties have, which we can help you solve today:

1. Lack of order and unwarranted radio traffic that leads to confusion
2. Liability concerns due to the failure to correctly handling incidents
3. Relying on legacy documentation methods for obtaining critical incident details

Now, take your new-found knowledge of real-time communications and apply Proactive Operations to eliminate these problems.

• Remove bottlenecks and unclog communication lines for efficient management
• Capture digital details of incidents ensuring nothing goes under the radar
• Employ Proactive Operations forever

Enhance Real-Time Communications for a Positive Ripple Effect Throughout Your Operation

Mobile apps transform how operations communicate.

Today’s technology offers your property capabilities that were unimaginable in the last several years.

Managing, handling and communicating incidents or issues that occur throughout your property are treated with two specific types of applications.

1. Mobile handheld devices for reporting incidents from anywhere. These devices are ideal for your frontline staff. Most operations deploy these apps on smartphones for most of their team.
2. Mobile tablet devices to document and capture an incident report from anywhere. These devices are ideal for mobile supervisors, medical teams, and especially your risk managers.

Staff can communicate and document incidents with ease.

Staff also has the confidence knowing they can do their job, and do it well.

No one has time to waste.

Put real-time communications into action and into the hands of your staff.

Time is your asset.

So, report incidents in seconds.

And, make every second count.

Whether your property is a leading property with Wi-Fi infrastructure or not, don’t wait to employ proactive operations.

Below are three immediate benefits you’ll realize following implementation.

1. Capture Every Detail

Send photos and videos between your mobile applications and operations center to give staff comprehensive and contextual information.

The result is a rapid response rate to incidents.

Limit the time it takes to identify a suspicious person or locate a lost elderly customer or verify whether a mysterious package is dangerous.

Instantly send photos to every active mobile device during one of these scenarios above.

Watch your team handle everything with ease.

How’s that for Proactive Operations?

2. Faster Response Time

‘Response’ is a necessity.

But, your response time is the difference between quick resolution and escalation.

It can also be the difference between life and death.

The faster your response time – the better.

Mobile technology augments your ability to communicate, mitigate, and close incidents.

Incidents progress, and the mobile apps can update occurrences in real time.

Real-time data is currently a missing ingredient for many operations.

What about yours?

3. Painless Deployment

Step up your game, and your training process.

Streamline training and communication simultaneously.

Deploy your teams faster than ever now.

Here’s how:

Images on most mobile apps represent incident types and response teams such as wet spill and Housekeeping or fight and Police.

Primary device training is needed only before appointing staff to their posts.

They’ll report incidents in seconds – without leaving their post!

Over to You

You can maximize the effectiveness of your incident management. It’s simple, deploy real-time communications as part of your Proactive Operations efforts.

Take advantage of world-leading communication technology and boost your performance capabilities to new heights.

It’s only up from here!

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.