News headlines

27 May 2009

Beat Systems faces up to challenge

Mobile data is now a key part of almost every police information system and is becoming an integral part of the way police services are evolving in the UK. Police duties combine a huge variety of situations, roles and tasks with an enormous range of business processes: mobile data offers significant improvement opportunities across the whole of this range of processes, for both police officers and staff.

 

But realising this potential is not straightforward. In-house development of mobile data systems has often proved challenging, with functional development difficult to control and maintain. The in-house approach can also result in a complex array of integrated third-party products (the Flanagan Report on mobile data notes the track record for lack of success in homegrown solutions).

 

Likewise, new mobile solutions are often in the early stages of the product lifecycle and have not been tested comprehensively in front line policing situations. Some police forces are understandably reticent to adopt such solutions until they have developed further, and have been proven in the field.   To really capitalise on the potential of mobile data to assist police officers in their everyday duties, and to help police forces improve crime figures by improving officer efficiency, forces need to look for mature mobile solutions which have already been proven in pressure situations, and which have evolved successfully in line with the needs of real policing situations. 

 

Beat Systems offers a full-featured suite of mobile data applications for policing that has been designed by police officers and developed over many years in conjunction with police users. Based on existing police business processes, Beat Systems’ solutions used on a full range of mobile devices including PDA’s, BlackBerry Smartpohnes and in-vehicle Mobile Data Terminals address the specific needs of police users in the field.

 

Beat Systems’ solutions help police officers and forces with briefings, resource tasking, location-based intelligence, and crime, roads and incident management, improved identity verification, evidence capture and self-learning. Vitally this is all done within a single application – allowing re-use of data from, between and to various back-end systems.

 

Frontline officers and staff can access high-quality information and use a full range of data submission tools, including: evidence capture; Incident Updates; Intelligence Reports; Stop & Search Tickets; Crime Updates; and full Crime Reports. This ability enables officers to spend more time on patrol in the community. On average a front line officer can save 45 minutes per shift, by reducing the need to return to the station to do paperwork. The ability to easily capture and record data in the field also boosts the volume and quality of intelligence that forces collect.

 

To steer product development, Beat Systems has a well-developed user group which meets regularly to discuss the system’s functionality and evolution. This iterative development model ensures that the solution embraces and enhances police business processes effectively. As the user group grows, police forces have an opportunity to collaborate on joint functional requirements and set the standard for national initiatives in mobile data. In this collaborative environment, future national or regional joint working initiatives become much easier and more cost effective for police forces to implement. The technology for shared data between forces, regionally and nationally is already available.

 

Beat Systems has considerable experience delivering mobile data solutions to police forces in the UK, and has an impressive bank of customer references in the police market. In fact, Beat Systems have pioneered many ‘firsts’ in mobile policing, including delivering the first mobile access to Niche RMS for Cheshire Police in early 2007.