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Your fire department likely has a Record Management System (RMS). But it probably isn’t giving you the insights you need. This article explains why a standalone RMS isn’t enough, and why using a mySidewalk Fire Performance Dashboard as an RMS add-on will help you save more lives.
Before we can get down to why you need more than just an RMS, let’s spell out what a Record Management System is exactly, and what a good one should do for you.
Fire departments use RMS software to enter and house their electronic records. Such as incident reports, training hours, scheduling, and more. An RMS is a necessary investment for most fire departments to manage their data effectively, data they're often legally required to track.
Some fire departments create their own RMS, and some purchase a ready-made solution. In either case, they’re often integrated with the CAD reports from their Dispatch centers, including linking the timestamp information from Dispatch to the completed incident reports in the fire department.
Regardless of the type of RMS you use, it should provide the following.
So yes, every fire department needs a sound RMS system to capture data and comply with regulations. The problem is, an RMS alone isn’t enough, because fire leaders need more than a pile of raw, out-of-context data.
You need something that helps you use, understand, and leverage that data.
The mySidewalk Fire Performance Dashboard is not an RMS provider – we do not house records. Instead, our solution uses those records to do complex data science analysis – so you don’t have to. With other reporting tools, you must:
And after all of that, you’re left with a static PDF that will soon be outdated.
You can get more out of the data you’re already capturing. Fire departments switch from other reporting tools because mySidewalk does more than just regurgitate counts of records. They choose mySidewalk because our data gives them the insights they need. You get sophisticated analytics without any extra math or wrangling work.
In fact, we want your data as raw as possible when exported from your RMS. You don’t have to make any cleaning or adjustments. We account for cleaning in the process, ensuring it’s done the same way, every time. Repeatability is crucial to make sure that the analysis is comparable. If the cleaning process changed, the analysis can’t be compared to the previous analysis. Not to mention, it makes your job a whole lot easier.
Your team has more important work to do than editing spreadsheets. Our Fire Performance Dashboard does that heavy lifting analysis for you, and it automatically updates. You get a beautiful new report full of insights each month. Plus, you can share dashboards with as many or as few stakeholders as you like.
For example, here’s a quick video overview of our partner, the Springdale Fire Department, Performance Dashboard.
Check out Springdale’s Dashboard.
If you're interested in using the best fire data to get to emergencies faster and save more lives, we can help.
Download the PDF overview here
Bottom line, a mySidewalk Fire Performance dashboard will take your RMS to the next level and give you the intel you need to get to emergencies faster. As our partner, the Chief of the Glendale Fire Department, put it:
"My goal is to leave this department better than I found it. mySidewalk has been a key part of that process and has empowered me to change the culture and improve turnout times. When we see that turnout time is decreasing, that means our productivity is increasing, and we’re trending positively.”
- Fire Chief Silvio Lanzas Glendale Fire Department. (Read Glendale’s story.)
Let's connect and schedule a demo, so you can see what better fire data analytics looks like firsthand.
Meanwhile, here's a Fire Performance Dashboard example.
Sara joined the mySidewalk team in 2019 to lead the design and implementation of the next generation of public safety products. Prior to joining mySidewalk, Sara worked at the Office of the State Fire Marshal, a state-level government agency dedicated to the protection of lives and property from fire, explosions, and natural- and human-made disasters.
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