Question

Why is emergency management software so important? How important is software  to emergency managers?

Answer 1

Goal of disaster preparedness is to lessen the impact of disasters on vulnerable populations, to ready an organization for an influx of activity, and to design a coordinated plan that reduces the waste of resources, time, and efforts.

A well defined emergency management plan coupled with the necessary tools provided Mission Mode will minimize the impact on operations, loss revenue and potential injury to personnel.

The benefits of web-based emergency management systems are:

1. Efficiency:  Effective response plans require cyclical maintenance. As a result of changing personnel, fluctuating external response contacts, and revolving equipment availability and inventory levels, maintaining up-to-date and actionable response plans can be administratively time consuming. Emergency management software should eliminate the need for duplicate updates. The most advanced web-based software programs utilize a database, allowing for specific repetitive information to be duplicated in the various necessary plan types across an entire enterprise.

2. Accessibility of plans: In the event of an emergency, updated paper plans are typically not available from all company locations. Additionally, accessing plans housed on a company intranet may be dubious if an incident renders company servers inaccessible. Although the intranet approach has improved overall plan accessibility, a number of significant difficulties remain. With an intranet approach, plan maintenance, version control, and consistency across multiple plans remain challenging and time consuming.

3. Instantaneous updates: With web-based technology and an Internet connection, revised information is immediately available to all approved stakeholders. Both paper-based plans and those housed on a company intranet are often out of date with multiple versions in various locations, potentially misinforming the response team. 4. Superior functionality: Web-based plans can provide hyperlinks, forms libraries, simplified interfaces, and other tools designed to improve functionality for plan users. Simplifying documentation during an incident enables prompt response progress, improved regulatory compliance, and a more accurate account of the response.

5. Multi-purpose data: Typically, response plans share common data with a variety of additional plan types including business continuity, pre-fire plans, hurricane plans, and others. Web-based, database driven plans utilize one database to manage this information, effectively leveraging plan content and revision efforts to all plans and locations that utilize that data.

ways in which mobile emergency management software can help keep your employees safe:

1.) MOBILE ACCESS TO INFORMATION

The key benefit of mobile software is the fact that it provides each stakeholder with immediate access to your crisis plan information, from any location and at any time. Emergency plans, contact details, maps and other important data is stored on remote servers and accessible using any mobile device. This means that employees have full access to your crisis plans in the palm of their hands. They can view emergency data from any location, even if they are away from their desks, working remotely or out in the field.

2.) REAL-TIME UPDATES AND ALERTS

Consider whether your current emergency protocol enables you to provide updates or alerts to your employees during the actual crisis. For example, if they were initially told to shelter in place, but now you need to evacuate the building, how would they know that the plan had changed?

As an emergency unfolds or the threat evolves, mobile software enables you to quickly and easily update all employees through push notifications and alerts. This helps to keep them apprised of the situation and out of harm’s way, which can prevent injuries and death.

3.) MULTIPLE PATHS OF COMMUNICATION

If your organization uses only one path of emergency communication—such as a manual call tree or website announcement—it is likely not achieving a very high rate of delivery success. Research has found that multiple paths of communication ensure a delivery success rate up to 80 percent higher than single paths.

Mobile software provides several highly effective paths of communication, including app-based push notifications and alerts, phone calls and emails.