Emergency Reporting® (ER), a provider of cloud-based Fire and EMS records management software, was featured this week in a blog post published by Microsoft. The interview-based article summarizes a discussion between Chief Andrew Olesen of the Cedar Rapids Fire Department and Microsoft.
In the interview, Chief Olesen describes why his agency switched to Emergency Reporting Records Management System (RMS) and how his department uses it to track and analyze important fire incident and patient care data. The blog post highlights Cedar Rapids Fire Department’s innovative use of Microsoft Power BI to create visually impactful dashboards using their data from ER.
Data-Driven organization
By leveraging both of these platforms, Chief Olesen has been able to provide real-time information and business intelligence that has been instrumental for decision-makers in his community. The ability to collect and analyze accurate data has long been a need for the fire service, but modern tools and integrations are making that easier than ever before.
Chief Olesen has been able to provide real-time information and business intelligence
When Chief Olesen was asked what challenges led his agency to switch to ER, he stated: “We’ve always been a data-driven organization, but the data collected wasn’t always at the level we would have liked due to the legacy reporting system we had used for the past 15 years or so. The system was hosted on-premises and needed to be installed and maintained on each machine.”
Analysis across organizations
“We had a limited number of users who could be on the system at the same time. We had an issue with data quality and integrity and spent a lot of time doing QA to ensure it was accurate. We were the complete opposite of cloud-based.”
“We needed a stronger Records Management System (RMS) that would also enable us to share data and analysis across organizations, with the City Council and other agencies, as well as with the public. We want the community to be able to track what’s going on in their neighborhoods and engage with the fire department.”
Customer-Facing dashboard
The City Council constantly wants us to talk about why and how we do things"
The blog post also discusses the importance of using information from your RMS to justify the services and make data-driven decisions, now and for the future “The City Council constantly wants us to talk about why and how we do things and make reportable, data-driven decisions.”
“It is an integral responsibility of government to communicate to the public how they run operations and leverage technology to be more effective. Leveraging Emergency Reporting and Microsoft Power BI, we’re planning to develop a customer-facing dashboard next. Our time, incident, and medical data is now really tight, and we want to be able to share that,” stated Chief Olesen.
Powerful data visualization
“Emergency Reporting is excited to announce the kickoff of a new project that will empower our 6,500+ fire departments with a powerful data visualization tool,” said David Nokes, Chief Executive Officer of Emergency Reporting.
“In collaboration with both Microsoft and several key beta customers, we are excited to show how your data can be utilized in Microsoft Power BI. This is a great step forward in our ongoing relationship with Microsoft Public Safety and the municipalities we proudly serve.”
