Communications represent the most important aspect of an emergency. If you can`t contact people, they can`t respond.
The Communicator from Cirrus-TechVue addresses this aspect of disaster management directly and reduces the time to respond drastically by automating the communications and keeping track of who has responded and when they will arrive. The Communicator closes the loop on these communications by asking the person contacted to respond to questions by pressing buttons on their phone, so unlike systems that simply send SMS or pager messages and hope they are received, The Communicator supplies the operator with positive notification of whether a person is responding or not. This is displayed on the screen in real-time as well as in printed or faxed reports.
Instead of having an army of people sitting on the phone or using telephone call-trees to warn local residents of impending danger, or to mobilise reservists and response teams, The Communicator will do the job in a tenth of the time and in a totally automated manner. Highly-trained personnel are freed-up to manage and control the situation instead of having to make dozens of phone calls.
In addition, The Communicator keeps track of all contact numbers for all personnel and uses each one in turn to make the connection. While cellphones are extremely useful, they are not the ultimate answer and it is imperative that alternate numbers can be used during a crisis. Keeping the numbers up-to-date is simple and can even be done by the contacts themselves remotely.
People costs are high these days, and using The Communicator can help to reduce them by having fewer people on duty and calling them out quickly if a situation requires. Calling the right people at the right time and in the right order is essential and The Communicator does this as a matter of course.
Ensuring that a message is received and understood and that the recipient will respond by a particular time is another crucial aspect of dealing with an emergency. Manual methods are hard-pressed to keep track of who was called, whether they can respond and what time they will arrive. The Communicator logs the date and time of every call it makes, which number was used, whether the contact can respond and his ETA on site, etc. All this information is used to compile reports that can be printed or even faxed during and after the call-out.
The use of manual systems makes it difficult to know how many people have responded before they actually arrive at the scene, making management difficult. A real-time status-monitoring screen shows at a glance, how many people have been contacted and how many have responded positively, allowing disaster management personnel to monitor the situation and respond quickly to any changes.
The Communicator is able to contact people via standard Telkom telephones at work, home or at any other designated number (golf club, Granny`s place, etc), cellular phones, pager devices (alpha or digital), radio systems with telephony interfaces, e-mail and fax. It employs recorded voice messages so any language can be used, and up to 72 phone lines can be utilised simultaneously (inbound and outbound).
In short, The Communicator automates the routine calls leaving only the exceptions to be handled by manual methods.
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