12 things to consider when buying an Incident Response Software
How are you trying to help in your organisation? It is important to understand what your organisation is trying to fix before thinking about sourcing an appropriate incident response solution. So identifying your organisation incident response needs is the first place to start: Does your organisation have a problem getting information through to the right people during an incident? Does your organisation struggle with responding to an incident in an effective manner? Do your teams constantly struggle to access up to date documents, drawings, information etc.? Once a more detailed plan has been identified, then you can start thinking about an incident response software that can help aid your organisation. Have you explored in-house options? In our experience that SharePoint, …
Read MoreFrom to Chalk to Marker to ICR Whiteboards
The use of White boards for tracking information during a Crisis or Business Continuity event have become priceless in the last number of years. White boards correctly laid out in your Business Continuity / Crisis Control Centre.are great for gathering information, assisting in decision making, tracking actions and issues during an event. But what happens; When the boards start filling up, When your Control Centre isn’t accessible, When you are trying to describe a scene that someone has told you about on the phone, When there is no more space on your recognised current situation board, When the note taking isn’t legible to all, When the information being put on the boards is third hand, When the number of scribes required …
Read More10 Tips – Creating Great Crisis Management Team Workflows
Workflows, when done right can provide enormous support to your crisis management team when they are called to respond to incidents / crises. So, we’ve produced for you 10 workflow tips to support your crisis management procedures: 1. Think executive summary not “War and Peace” – Your crisis management team spend most of their time working on the business and not necessarily in the business, so when your preparing your workflows, keep it concise and to the point. 2. Make the workflow role specific – Each member of the team is expected to respond to crises as per plan. Build workflows that will support their decision-making and demonstrate compliance with the established plans. 3. K.I.S.S. – Before ICR™, I …
Read MoreCrisis Management Teams need to use workflows
When most people think of workflows they think of complicated flowcharts but we think of workflows like a checklist that can support your crisis management team during an incident. For us, each step in a workflow has a specific step before it and a specific step after it, with the exception of the first step. In a linear workflow (which is a checklist), the first step is usually initiated by an outside event i.e. an incident which results in someone having to do something. That person follows the workflow step by step until the incident comes to a close. So, here are 5 reasons why your crisis management team need workflows: Incidents don’t happen that often – Your senior leadership …
Read MoreManage Business Continuity Incidents & Reduce Risk
How to manage Business Continuity incidents better Every Business has a Rhythm Businesses by and large operate in steady state i.e. there is a rhythm to their normal operations that has developed over time. Manufacturers produce goods, goods are delivered to customers, customers consume those goods and in turn create further demand for manufacturers. In the background people and process support the activities of the business to ensure that the rhythm is maintained. But what if an Incident occurs? For these businesses, incidents can disrupt the rhythm of a company, disappoint customers and lead to unplanned costs. Ultimately this isn’t good for business. And because incidents come in all manner of shapes and sizes such as IT Incidents (payment systems going down for …
Read MoreCrisis Management in the 21st Century (with Les Allan, Heriot-Watt University)
Summary: We were delighted to have Les Allan, Director of Safety & Security Services at Heriot-Watt University joined David McCarthy (ICR Founder & CEO) recently to discuss how he and his team leveraged ICR (crisis and incident management software) to support his people on all safety, security and emergency planning matters across several University Campuses in the UK, Dubai & Malaysia as well as over 30,000 students. Topics discussed: Les gave his thoughts on all things Crisis Management having previously relied on a paper based system to record and store their crisis management plans. Some of the topics covered included: Importance of managing information to your gold, silver & bronze teams during an incident; Managing a paper based/ manual process. Creating …
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Off Site Incident Support Video
Student safety is of paramount importance at all times and even more critical when handling incidents on a school field trip or on a remote location off site. In this video we demonstrate how ICR™ can help guide and support supervisors through whatever incident is thrown at them when off site. Watch this video for insight on: How ICR™ can guide your supervisor through an incident from start to finish How to ensure a standardised response and best practice is followed How to easily capture a chronological log of incidents Remote access to the incident log for management and email notifications for the leadership team Management of communication regarding the incident to staff, parents, students How to ensure you have everything …
Read MoreIncident Report – Rate your current methodology today
Part 3 – Incident Report In a previous blog we asked you ‘Are your campus incident response teams ready?’ and a flow chart guided you through questions to find out if your university or campus was rated as unprepared, moderately prepared or very prepared if an incident arouse. The final stage after looking at response is reporting, this is to enable & establish if your reporting procedures work for you or if they could be improved to provide a richer record. Reporting on key incident and crises is of paramount importance when understanding and reviewing how the incident has been handled in terms of; What went well? How improvements can be made? If corrective action needs to be taken? Investigate …
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