Page 13 - Campus Security & Life Safety, March/April 2021

"Before universities consider increasingly sophisticated, license-based campus life safety solutions, they must have a firm appreciation for both technical capabilities as well the way solutions are delivered and implemented."
By Glenn Farrant
Pitfalls to Avoid
When this risk isn’t addressed, you can end up with shortcuts being taken, functions not being used, or with responsibility simply being handed over to one or two team members whose job it becomes to manage the tech. That narrowing down will leave your organization vulnerable any time those persons are not available.
To avoid this, every member of your team needs to be engaged with the solution, and any difficulty or reluctance they have in using it needs to be identified and fixed. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t appoint one or two people to take overall responsibility and project manage introduction of the new service. Often, establishing those roles provides a great promotion opportunity that unlocks new energy and commitment. But it does mean that none of your officers should be left with a “blind spot” around the technology. You should verify that your service provider will deliver training, both initially and refresher training, to help ensure this.
The result should be that your team becomes more capable and less stressed. Instead of disengagement, you end up with every team member convinced by the value of the new tech and eager to advocate for it. This belief is essential, because only heartfelt enthusiasm from your officers will lead directly to high levels of user engagement which underpin the effectiveness of the whole service.
Essential Stages for Success
Here are some of the stages that are essential for achiev- ing this outcome:
• Project plan. If you’re signing up to a new licensed-
based service, the first thing you should expect is for the technology developer to work with you to for- mulate a detailed project plan. This is the roadmap that guides the successful initial deployment, and it leads into the subsequent evolution and ramp-up of the service.
• Valuable opportunity. Done well, the project plan- ning meeting provides a valuable opportunity to consider any issues that have been causing you chal- lenges, and it should help you to drill down into spe- cifics that aligns the deployment of the technology to your highest priorities as the customer. A good supplier will point to best practices other customers have successfully implemented to tackle similar problems and offer practical steps to replicate those strategies.
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