Fire Service Review - A scope for innovation

Fire services in England need to become more ‘effective and efficient’, the recently-published government report found. But before this can happen there must be a change of heart in the way fire services think about technology.

The report issued by Sir Ken Knight in May highlighted an important problem with English fire services. While the lives of citizens and public service servants are undergoing a profound change due to the increased influence of digital and social channels and the infestation of technology in general, fire services remain in the shadow, trapped under the rising costs of service provision and more budget cuts than ever before.

There is no doubt, as Sir Ken pointed out, that fire services need transforming. But how exactly would that transformation happen? What needs to change? Many experts in the field of frontline services, myself included, believe that one way of tackling this problem is creating efficiencies by sharing services.

Those aware of the history of shared services in the Fire services sector will probably frown at that suggestion. After all, the famed FireControl project, based on the concept of shared services, cost taxpayers approximately £500m at the time and was scrapped in the not so recent past to avoid generating even greater losses.

While it was indeed a large failure, the idea of shared services, which gave birth to the project, wasn’t flawed in itself. And there are in fact, fire services who are implementing shared services with successful results - already making savings. For example, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk and Hertfordshire and Lincolnshire have all successfully managed to combine their control rooms through the use of technology, in particular - intelligent voice communications technology, in a shared service programme first of its kind in the UK. In doing so, Cambridgeshire has saved approximately £500,000 and continue making savings now.

So why do more fire services not embrace this type of sharing in the current economic climate? One challenge lies in the fact that front of mind for many fire services is citizen safety. As such, promoting successful shared service case studies, where a fully operational fire service with a merged 999 response centre helped achieve efficiently while maintaining front line services, could be a step towards encouraging more fire services to follow.

Fire services could be saving millions by sharing infrastructure with their neighbours but before that happens there must be change of vision in service provisioning. Fire services will have to become open to the idea of sharing their services – taking note of those who have already made significant savings by doing so in the past and emulating their success.

Stepping up to support Operation Olympics

The MOD has a primary role in civil protection and with the Olympics just around the corner, extensive contingency plans are already in place.

Under Operaton Olympics, Military personnel are being deployed in and around the venues to protect the general public from any potential threat. Business continuity plans have been extensively rehearsed for any event. And staff, especially those based in Main Building, are also planning for any impact to regular working practices which may happen due to the potential travel disruption.

The smartnumbers services are already used extensively across key sites within the MOD and they are under-pinning Operation Olympics. Those with a smartnumber will be able to take calls from wherever  they are located using any device.

If staff are unable to reach their usual place of work and have to work from an alternative location, they can still be contacted on their usual number.

Get the call to the right person and brand loyalty will follow

Neil Worker, Head of Sales for the UK Commercial, talks about the importance of customer service in tough economic conditions.

The answer to growing a business is simple: focus on customer service. Customer Loyalty and brand reputation are paramount if today’s businesses are to flourish.

A key component of customer service is being able to manage customer enquiries and sales made over the telephone to the highest standard.

Direct Connect makes the shortlist

We received some great news! That smartnumbers Direct Connect has been shortlisted for a CIR Magazine Business Continuity Award under the Most Innovative Solution of the Year category.
This wouldn't have happened without such excellent feedback from our customers and the support of our partner BT.

We'll find out if we have won on the 30th May so will keep you posted!

Turning numbers into people with smartnumbers

Flexible call handling
on a number-by-number basis

Tim Jalland, Vice President Product Management and Development, Resilient Networks, spotlights how smartnumbers services can make better call management a reality.

What’s setting smartnumbers apart is not its massive potential to help reduce costs — although that’s a huge selling point — it’s our approach that keeps at its heart the simple fact that every phone number represents a person; so smartnumbers makes it possible to configure call handling on a number-by-number basis.

Access all areas: meeting public sector needs with smartnumbers

Improving control room resilience

Tony Watson, Vice President Government sales, Resilient Network talks about how smartnumbers helps public sector customers meet their challenges

If there is one thing I would like to say about smartnumbers, it’s what a strong option we are for helping public sector customers meet their challenges — to reduce costs, increase resilience and squeeze every last drop of benefit out of the investment they make.

We’ve taken a very upfront approach to this issue and always lead with our proven ways of reducing cost, backed up by how we can support their resilience and business continuity.

Inbound voice: The key to business continuity during London 2012

There's an old saying that goes 'failure to plan is planning to fail' – and this is especially true ahead of big events such as London 2012.

But what exactly are the things that CIOs and their team overlook during events such as the Olympics? In an attempt to find out we commissioned survey of 100 enterprise IT decision makers and 1,000 London-based employees to assess exactly on how business and voice continuity plans will measure up during London 2012 – and to find out what is being overlooked.