Decision management series – Part 4

Having looked at how Mission Control can increase Situational Intelligence and simplify an operator’s experience through Visualization, we thought it would be a good time to examine how it actively empowers your security operators through Guided Responses. 

Like you, we hope that security personnel never have to make quick decisions in difficult situations. After all, everything is better when security professionals have uneventful work days. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible. Security personnel and their physical security systems are often called on to respond to a variety of situations and emergencies, and all of us depend on them to mitigate danger and return our systems to normal as quickly as possible.

We understand that it’s not easy making split-second decisions under stressful circumstances. Given the responsibility they face, it just makes sense to support security operators in their responses. That’s why we designed Mission Control to allow organizations to proactively plan responses in order to facilitate decision-making for their security personnel. One of the ways Mission Control achieves this is by allowing users to upload their standard operating procedures (SOPs).

SOPs are a series of documented steps defined by an organization to instruct security personnel on how they should respond to a variety of situations or incidents. They help organizations to prepare for routine or unforeseen situations in advance and to standardize responses when creating individual strategies and contingency plans. By outlining these procedures, organizations are better able to provide clear direction, ensure compliance with their processes and minimize the risks associated with poor decision-making in high-stress situations. 

SOPs aren’t new to the industry as universities, airports, law enforcement and a variety of other organizations have been using them for decades. But what is new is the ability to integrate them into their security and decision management system to avoid the hassle of managing paper procedures.

In the past, security personnel had to flip through paper-based SOPs collected in binders to search for a course of action. But, in Mission Control, the SOPs pop up dynamically as needed and can be associated with video feeds that helps build a clearer picture of a situation.

Using an SOP in Mission Control also makes it easier to periodically review and audit operator and system responses, assess response effectiveness and time-to-resolution (TTR), and improve performance over time through continuous updates. Because organizations are working with clear documentation, they can use exact criteria to evaluate their success and determine what needs to be changed. The result of this evaluation frequently leads to improvements in responses that are then reflected in easily updated SOPs.

Ultimately, it’s a question of providing the men and women we rely on to keep us safe with the tools that support them both in their daily tasks and when facing high-stress situations. Guided Responses through the integration of SOPs reduce the risk of human emotion getting in the way of good decision making in tough circumstances and allow our own cooler heads to prevail.

Up next, we will be looking at how Mission Control helps organizations with compliance, auditability and liability control.