Police, Fire, EMS and dispatch management face personnel challenges in maintaining a balance between emergency preparedness, budget constraints, and department morale. By utilizing business innovations in information technology, it is possible to maximize agency effectiveness while controlling costs and limiting personnel hardships. By providing real-time oversight of resource deployment and having insight into trends and dependencies, management decisions can be informed, timely and effective.

There are three technological areas that make ScheduleExpress unique and powerful:

• Process & Rules automation
• Enterprise-class design
• “On-demand” service-based deployment

Process Automation

Process automation provides for the replacement of paper forms and signature-based approvals. The computer manages the flow – from concept to fulfillment – of any “manual” process, while enforcing the rules associated with that specific process. This allows processes to incur substantially less labor, while ensuring governing rules are upheld.

Process automation allows ScheduleExpress to deliver far more capability than any other workforce scheduling solution. Our research shows that the majority of the labor, and sources of errors & abuse are associated with paper, manual processes such as absence requests, shift trading, overtime request & assignment, etc. By delivering a system that automates these processes, paperwork is eliminated, approvals / denials happen faster & more efficiently, and the impact to coverage plans is reported before, during and after approval.

Enterprise-Class Design

The enterprise-class design of ScheduleExpress provides a platform that is incredibly robust and reliable. Utilization of enterprise databases, redundant power, data, disk and processors, and multi-tiered architecture affords the system with “5 nines” reliability (up and running 99.999% of the time). It also provides a platform that easily scales in both performance and function.

The ScheduleExpress system is architected as a 3-tier application. At the lowest level is the enterprise-class SQL database that allows all information – from user identification and contacts, to full organizational schedules, coverage plans, rules and process configurations – to be accessed and manipulated by any number of users simultaneously, while preventing any type of data corruption.

On top of the database is the “middleware” - a set of scheduling process functions that provide the logic associated with emergency services scheduling.

Finally, the application layer provides a web-based interface into the scheduling functions so that any number of users can access schedules, request absences, review and approve overtime, and many more functions – from any Internet browser.

The combination of these three layers provides a reliable, accessible, and powerful scheduling automation capability that as many as 40,000 simultaneous users can access.

On-Demand Deployment

ScheduleExpress is sold as a service. This provides several advantages to our customers:

• No hardware to buy, no software to license – it’s included in the service.
• Substantially lower cost of service – there is no IT overhead associated with back-up, maintenance, insurance, or floor space.
• There is never an additional charge for improvements – as the application improves, it is rolled out to all service subscribers
• It is accessible from any Internet browser – home or work.

Informer Systems provides ScheduleExpress from a Tier-1 hosting facility, with unsurpassed security and data capabilities. Physical barriers include razor wire, windowless design, armed guards and identity authentication. Battery and multiple diesel generators provide power redundancy. Redundant data lines provide ultra-reliable data connectivity.

By hosting the ScheduleExpress application Informer Systems can provide a level of reliability that is substantially above the requirements of our customers.

Additionally, the electronic security is substantially more robust than that of “in-house” systems. Encryption and authentication technology as used in the banking and finance industries – providing environments that are immune to hackers and intentional abuse.