Get More from your Solutions
How university police and public safety teams can win in 2021
- By Glenn Farrant
- April 01, 2021
Many universities and campuses across the globe are leveraging
the latest generation of licensed-based life safety
solutions. They’re delivering a level of protection, rapid
response, and operational command and control capability
that police departments could only dream about a few
years ago.
Delivering Impressive Results
While it is true that the number of transformative tech implementations
at campuses is growing – and delivering impressive results –
there are many examples that indicate some new technologies have
not quite lived up to their promise. And, there are many reasons why.
Sometimes control interfaces that looked promising in demo sessions
prove to be too unwieldy in real-world situations. Other times,
dispatchers and offcers get frustrated by having to switch between
multiple systems and interfaces. One of the most common problems
is lack of community engagement, which leads to poor uptake and
use of apps by students and staff. When this issue isn’t resolved the
value of the entire solution, and all its functions, can be undermined.
But with the right approach – starting from initial roll-out,
through deployment, to daily use and subsequent monitoring and
improvement - these problems are entirely preventable.
An all-in-one public safety soffiware emergency and security management
solution that empowers safety and security teams to streamline
and strengthen their capacity to respond to incidents, optimize
outcomes and mitigate risks can provide impactful results for campus
security teams. But, realizing these results requires testing that solution
in daily operations and real life emergencies to customize capabilities
specific to each campus’ particular needs
Asking the Right Questions
Any police and public safety department looking to transform operations
by leveraging a licensed-based service will benefit from asking
the right questions in advance.
Let’s assume that you have chosen the service that best fits your
campus life safety needs, that it works within your budget to give you
all the functions you need; for example: targeted mass communication;
lone worker safety monitoring; emergency call; user location
pinpointing; three-dimensional positioning in multi-floor buildings;
heat mapping; team command and control tools – in other words,
everything necessary for full situational awareness across all your
buildings and sites.
Let’s also assume that you are satisfied that all these functions will
be easy to use, having talked to existing customers about their experiences.
Now is the time to focus on implementation, training and support,
recognizing that with any new technology there’s a risk that overstretched
offcers will feel burdened by having yet another new system
to manage and operate.
Pitfalls to Avoid
When this risk isn’t addressed, you can end up with
shortcuts being taken, functions not being used, or
with responsibility simply being handed over to one or
two team members whose job it becomes to manage the
tech. That narrowing down will leave your organization
vulnerable any time those persons are not available.
To avoid this, every member of your team needs to
be engaged with the solution, and any difficulty or
reluctance they have in using it needs to be identified
and fixed. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t appoint
one or two people to take overall responsibility and
project manage introduction of the new service. Often,
establishing those roles provides a great promotion
opportunity that unlocks new energy and commitment.
But it does mean that none of your officers should be
left with a “blind spot” around the technology. You
should verify that your service provider will deliver
training, both initially and refresher training, to help
ensure this.
The result should be that your team becomes more
capable and less stressed. Instead of disengagement,
you end up with every team member convinced by the
value of the new tech and eager to advocate for it. This
belief is essential, because only heartfelt enthusiasm
from your officers will lead directly to high levels of
user engagement which underpin the effectiveness of
the whole service.
Essential Stages for Success
Here are some of the stages that are essential for achieving
this outcome:
- Project plan. If you’re signing up to a new licensedbased
service, the first thing you should expect is for
the technology developer to work with you to formulate
a detailed project plan. This is the roadmap
that guides the successful initial deployment, and it
leads into the subsequent evolution and ramp-up of
the service.
- Valuable opportunity. Done well, the project planning
meeting provides a valuable opportunity to
consider any issues that have been causing you challenges,
and it should help you to drill down into specifics
that aligns the deployment of the technology
to your highest priorities as the customer. A good
supplier will point to best practices other customers
have successfully implemented to tackle similar
problems and offer practical steps to replicate those
strategies.
- Engagement. These introductory meetings
are also the time to build engagement and
awareness of the technology across your
whole organization: with your senior
teams, your staffimmediately responsible
for the implementation, managers from
other departments, and wider stakeholders
including external agencies that you work
with. While initial deployments are typically
focused on one or more specific objectives
the organization wants to focus on, it’s
important everyone has a solid understanding
of the depth and breadth of the
solution, so they can gradually increase the
value they drive from its deployment across
the organization.
Those additional capabilities may not be
taken advantage of for a few months, or
even another year, but with successful tech
introductions customers invariably look to
extend and develop what they do. This
extension of service scope is often the result
of feedback and ideas generated either from
frontline customer teams using the tech
daily, or at the request of stakeholders they
are working with.
Achieving Hassle-Free Roll-Out
Only after the project plan is agreed on are
you ready for the deployment phase. The
goal is to ensure that your roll-out is onpoint
and hassle-free. In this phase, it’s
often helpful to ask your supplier to work
more closely with significant stakeholders
in your organization, for example coordinating
between IT, marketing, security and
senior executives. All these departments
may have different ideas and agendas which
need to be addressed, aligned, and scheduled
for a truly successful deployment.
You should verify your supplier is prepared
and able to do this. At this stage, ask
if your technology partner will assist your
IT department with things like supporting
the use of Single Sign-On (SSO) for users to
log into your new solution with their existing
organization’s credentials and ensure
full compliance with their data privacy
standards.
A critical aspect of deployment is ensuring
high levels of community engagement, so
you should check how your supplier will help
you with communications strategies and
resources such as branded assets. Examples
include digital signs, posters, and social
media campaigns which you can use to drive
up adoption through awareness and interest
among members of staff, students, remote
workers, first response teams, support personnel
or patrol officers themselves.
As you move into full-scale operational
use of your new service, it’s best not to tackle
everything at once, but rather, to prioritize
use-case applications that address your pain
points and serve the needs of the most vulnerable
before expanding your capabilities.
The Importance of Measuring Success
As you move forward, it’s essential to measure
how much, and how well, your team
uses its new technology. Granular measurements
will underpin your success by allowing
you to see which functions your officers
are making good use of, and which need
more focus.
An effective way to achieve this is through a
system of quarterly reports that let users drill
down into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs),
including the number of active users, the
number and type of alerts triggered, average first response times and average incident resolution
times.
Crucially, this quarterly review mechanism
also includes comparative data which enables
the customer to measure their performance
against others. This comparison between peers
provides an ongoing barometer of how well
teams are doing. These valuable insights can
show customers where there are opportunities
to further improve performance.
Successes can be celebrated if problems are
addressed early on with enhanced proficiency
training, targeted online courses and explainer
videos, or targeted promotional tools.
Major, but Unexpected, Benefits
There is another benefit to this approach. It is
a major advantage that customers truly value
but isn’t usually obvious when you first look
to adopt a new technology. Are there opportunities
to network with other users and share
best practices? For example, look toward vendors
that host online and in-person events
and conferences that will bring together
police and security chiefs and heads of
department that enhances the value of the
service solution.
It is at this coming together of customers,
industry thought leaders and operators from
around the world where successful results are
shared, and valuable relationships are forged.
Senior practitioners share details of incidents,
challenges, and examples of operational innovation,
and help counsel one another through
difficult circumstances.
In addition, you should be provided the
opportunity to look ahead at product development
plans for the short, medium and longer
term. This should allow every customer
present to vote on and prioritize specific
product enhancements they want to see next,
so that every customer has a voice versus just
the largest customers. It is imperative that
vendors commit to act on these votes, and
report progress as product roadmaps are
expanded throughout the year. When vendors
make a new feature or capability available, it
should be released to their entire customer
base.
Investing in the necessary on-boarding,
training, and providing customer support
through ongoing meetings and metrics results
in customers truly getting the most out of their
service. With this approach, university police
and public safety teams can come out ahead in
2021 by getting the most from the latest generation
of campus safety, security and emergency
management solutions. This rigorous
approach will help ensure campus security
leaders enhance and deliver a level of protection,
rapid response, and operational command
and control capability that they could
only dream about a few years ago.
This article originally appeared in the March / April 2021 issue of Campus Security Today.