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“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.

“I’ll be right behind you guys,” you shout to your operations team as they make their way out of the office.

It’s 1 AM, and you’re finishing up the final report on tonight’s event.

There’s only one last item on your to-do list.

You’ll review the incident reports from tonight, tally everything on your spreadsheet, record the information on your Monday morning report, and be on your way home.

You take the final swig of your water and begin reviewing the numbers from tonight.

“Here we go,” you whisper to yourself.

“Only one record of vomit,” you continue.

“That's pretty good,” you think to yourself.

“One fight,” you read aloud.

You continue reviewing the reports.

But, after three more minutes of review, you stop in your tracks.

“Wait a minute,” you shout.

Something is not right here.

All personnel and departments record incident types differently.

You begin listing the variations.

• “1 vomit.”
• “1 puke.”
• “2 throw up.”

The list goes on and on.

Your report for Monday will be inaccurate if you don’t fix this error.

You must fix it.

It’s now 1:12 AM.

You call Jack from security and tell him that you’re going to be a little longer.

It looks like another night that you won’t get to say goodnight to your husband and children.

But, you must ensure your numbers are accurate, and not only for Monday but all future analysis of your property’s incidents.

You need standardization.

And, you need it now.

“There has been a car theft in parking lot GG.”

“A thunderstorm is approaching at 15 MPH.”

The calls are coming in.

“We have…”

You turn off your radio for a moment.

You stare at the mirror knowing you only have thirty seconds before your operations coordinator sends out the bat signal because you haven’t responded to your calls.

Cupping your hands under the faucet, you let the water run over them.

You slowly splash your face to make sure this isn’t a nightmare.

“Yep, this is real,” you mutter to yourself.

You put on your glasses, turn on the radio, and rush out of the restroom.

While your team is panicking over the radio, you open the restroom door to the thousands of customers moving throughout your property.

Your goal is to keep smiles on their faces and to ensure they never find out anything is ever wrong.

It’s a big goal, and not always achievable for your team.

More calls are coming, but they aren’t incident calls.

It’s your team.

You can hear the panic in their voices.

A few variations of “We weren’t prepared for this” make their way over the radio.

You head to the operations center.

“There’s no way to prepare for all of these incidents,” you tell yourself.

But, we’re here to tell you there is.

You’ll need to employ Proactive Operations because incidents occurring on your property is an instance of when not if.

You walk into the Administration office.

“Where are we at,” you ask your team.

Last night’s event was massive.

The size of the event was more than your staff is used to managing.

The number of issues and incidents captured was overwhelming by your operational standards.

Today your team is inundated because of all the files to review.

“Incident #1023 is missing,” one of your operation coordinators shouts as you walk by their cubicle.

You pick up your pace, walk into your office and shut the door.

It’s only 9 AM, and you’re already anxious about today’s call with your General Manager.

After telling yourself that everyone will have to spend today sorting through the files, you run out the door to gather your team and share the game plan.

“Hey team, stop what you’re doing for a moment and let’s get a strategy together for getting through this day,” you yell across the office.

Immediate silence takes over because they’ve been waiting for you to propose a solution.

Everyone in the office turns with a troubled look on their faces.

You find out why quickly.

The phones are ringing off the hook.

“What’s going on?” you ask your operations manager, Brian.

“Customers from last night, especially VIPs are calling to discuss the brawl that ‘ruined their night’ on the suite floor,” he responds.

“Customers want to review and discuss the incidents from last night, but everything is so disorganized we just can’t provide the information they request.”

Now, you’re panicking.

You need a solution, or you’ll lose your customers.

How would you handle this at your property?

Can you effectively communicate information about incidents with your customers when they call to discuss?

Keep reading; we have a simple yet powerful fix for your documentation needs.

You’ll learn about the robust documentation capabilities of a world-leading incident management system, and how to review and discuss incidents with customers efficiently.

Are you ready?

“Police have always relied on data — whether push pins tracking crimes on a map, mug shot cards, or intelligence files on repeat offenders. The problem with all that information is that it has traditionally been slow and hard to use,” writes Martin Kaste in their recent NPR article entitled “How Data Analysis Is Driving Policing.”

"I would have to log into 19 different databases. I'd log in, print out all the tickets that were written to you, and lay them on my desk. Then I'd go and run your criminal history on another database, and print that out. And then another database to see how many times your name was associated with crime reports," says Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Dennis Kato in Kaste’s article.

Later in the article, Kaste also shares that “At the Olympic Division station, Officer Jennifer Ramirez reviews her daily mission sheet printout. She eyes the areas she'll target, ‘because these are the hot spots, these are where the crimes tend to happen, this day, this time, based on the crime mapping that we do."

Hot Spots, ok, now we’re talking.

That’s right up your alley.

Agree?

And the longer we spent reading this article, the more we realized its alignment with how Proactive Operations are handling ‘incidents’ to maximize performance.

Do you see the similarities here?

If not, we recommend reading Kaste’s article – after this one of course.

It’s an informative read with lots of facts about how policing is evolving, much like 21^st-century operations.

We’d argue that many things are congruent between policing and running a proactive operation.

So, keep reading; we’re going to share the insight we took from Kaste’s article that might help you enhance your incident management initiatives.

Ready?

Last night’s event had you scrambling.

Your team responded to one incident call after another.

No one had any downtime.

About 100,000 people attended this year’s motocross show. Dirt, ramps, and professionals flying in the air on dirt bikes.

Who wouldn’t want to participate, right?

For your customers, it was a night they will never forget.

You’re just glad it’s over.

Now, it’s 5 AM Monday morning.

You always get to your office early these days to prepare for the Monday morning calls.

You start scouring through your office.

You’re looking for the stack of incident files from last night’s event.

The executives always want a snapshot of the previous week’s events.

It’s not too bad, but it’s been a real struggle to get all the information, so you’ve been dropping the ball lately.

You cannot afford to lose it again.

They need the number of incidents, customer requests, injuries, medical evacuations, fights, and ejections.

They’re known to throw some tough questions at you from time to time.

You’re running on empty because of last night, and this might be the final straw for you if you don’t find the files you need.

You already “misplaced” incident reports in the past.

You’re out of excuses.

“Where are last night’s documents,” you scream down the hall.

Everyone looks at you, and your operations coordinator, Tyler, responds, “Everything is in your office.”

But, you only see the remnants of a couple of files from customer services’ reports.

It appears that Housekeeping saw the files stacked near your trash pile.

Everything is gone.

You panic because you know you’re going to be taken out like the trash too.

It is 9 AM.

Time for your call.

You have nothing, and your job is on the line.

How does this make you feel? Could this have been prevented?

Yes.