Article by Dough Kelly

It’s a challenge faced by most organizations today. Executives and managers need to reduce budgets and save on costs when it comes to security, but they must do so without sacrificing quality.

Modern incident management and physical security technology systems were designed to help companies reduce costs while simultaneously ensuring the success of their security initiatives. This is done by enabling measurable, dramatic improvements to efficiency, productivity, organization wide standardization and security effectiveness.

This technology can provide an incredible return on investment for organizations as evident by a recent statement made by the Vice President of Corporate Security and Emergency Management at a Fortune 500 company:

“By analyzing our incident data through the D3 Incident Reporting System and applying appropriate risk based counter measures we were able to reduce incidents significantly and cut the overall security budget by million”

The solution offered by D3 helps organizations drastically improve efficiency, so much so that it can help reduce security staff by up to 20 percent. While a staff reduction of only 3-4 percent is usually more than enough to cover the price of the system, the improved efficiency means much lower costs for security departments operating expenses.

So what makes the D3 system so efficient? For one, it has a single application that controls the notification process, escalations, information access, forms and procedure documentation. These tasks often take a great deal of time when done by hand, and tend to have errors. In addition, the D3 system’s incident reporting forms allow for additional options based on each selection, meaning that there’s no unnecessary collection of data and each process is customized to a client’s needs, perfectly streamlined.

D3′s physical security technology solutions are unmatched in the industry as evident by AlliedBarton Security Services selection of D3 as a strategic partner for Guard Tour technology. Next generation physical security technology solutions leverage the power of mobile devices over RFID wands for managing Security patrols. The D3 system also includes a full featured, easy to use guard scheduling application.

The decision-making process is also enhanced, as D3 provides access to organization-wide and real-time information that helps staff members make decisions on budget allocations and other actions. This information is provided through a fully customizable executive dashboard, as well as through reports and KPIs. Attractive, organization wide reports raise the profile of security departments within an organization. Furthermore, reports support budgetary requests and resource allocation decisions. In the D3 system custom reports can be saved, published and exported in seconds.

Incident management systems are a boon to productivity, eliminating hours of wasted staff time spent on searching through physical records. Instead, the system allows users to retrieve information immediately through its secure search engine, which accounts for a users access privileges when returning the information from the search.

When certain incidents occur, for example a serious or critical incident, a series of actions need to take place to comply with policy and regulations. The D3 system automates these actions and allows for management of these processes from a single location. This makes implementing changes to these processes very efficient and provides an auditable trail of activities.

Physical security technology features the following productivity-enhancing components:

• Guard tour tracks the whereabouts of physical security resources, which is then analyzed against incident trends in real-time. • Patrol checkpoints are configured to automatically generate work orders where equipment maintenance is required. • Integrated dispatch system provides the ability to escalate a dispatch to an incident report with a single click, retaining all of the associated data. • Pin-mapping to visually monitor and enhance security coverage in real-time, where it is needed most. • Coverage reports provide tamperproof details on Security activities and their effectiveness. • Mobile communications enable security personnel to communicate with the SOC, create incidents reports, and receive dispatch requests, log activities and review post orders while on patrol.

While many manual processes associated with Security are prone to human error, the D3 system mitigates these concerns by offering standardized forms with required fields, includes approval automation to ensure that all information entered is accurate and comprehensive before being approved.

The incident management and physical security technology system from D3 helps companies around the world see a huge ROI by reducing costs and improving the security effectiveness. Managing costs will always be a critical element of the Security Executive’s goal of achieving a successful security department, in any economic climate.

About the Author
###About D3 Security Management Systems, Inc.:Founded in 2002, D3 Security provides data-driven decision making designed to manage the security, governance, risk management and compliance functions of organizations in a wide range of industries. Its systems provide the most advanced incident reporting software, computer-aided dispatch (CAD), security post orders, security guard tour patrol system and case management systems on the market. To learn more visit http://www.D3Security.com.