Whether you’re responsible for managing the emergency response and crisis management programs for a single facility or a global operation with thousands of locations, one thing is for sure: You need a universally accessible emergency response planning (ERP) system capable of adapting to every emergency planning requirement. Many organizations still utilize and rely on paper-based emergency response plans. Crammed into binders and organized with countless color-coded tabs, these plans contain hundreds of pages of procedures. Often, these unwieldy binders end up collecting dust on emergency managers’ shelves.
While some organizations now provide access to paper-based emergency response plans via their intranet, the documents still utilize separate static word-based files. Although this approach has improved plan accessibility, several significant difficulties remain. Plan maintenance, version control, and consistency across multiple plans remains challenging and time-consuming.
More organizations are now beginning to realize the benefits of web-based emergency response planning systems. To better describe how this innovative approach is changing the face of the industry, we’ve compiled the top three most impactful benefits of web-based emergency response planning.
Immediate Accessibility
Web-based emergency response planning systems offer immediate and direct access to your emergency response plans from any computer or mobile device. Since your plans are no longer stored in a single, centralized location, there is no longer a risk of loss or damage to these critical records in an emergency. More importantly, since every member of your team can easily locate and navigate your emergency response plans at a moment’s notice through a password-protected website, your incident response time and management capabilities improve dramatically.
For organizations with multiple facilities and locations, web-based response planning provides site-specific emergency response plans that integrate seamlessly with your organization-wide procedures and policies. This helps to ensure that every location remains in compliance with state, federal and municipal regulations.
Streamlined Maintenance
Gone are the days of manually photocopying and distributing plan corrections or emailing updated versions of your plan to users. Web-based emergency planning systems allow you to update and maintain your plans in real time across all locations. Utilizing integrated database technology, you now can change duplicate and redundant information residing in multiple plan types and locations with a single universal revision. This intuitive, streamlined maintenance process helps achieve a higher level of compliance and consistency across your entire enterprise.
Organization-Wide Integration
With paper or electronic document-based emergency planning systems, fully integrating each individual response plan type at every individual location is nearly impossible. Web-based emergency response plans allow you to seamlessly combine multiple organization-wide and site-specific emergency response plans into one universally accessible system. Utilizing this integrated database technology helps you to effectively manage multiple plan types (e.g., emergency response, oil spill response, SPCC, fire preplans, business continuity, SWPPP and others) across your entire organization, thereby improving compliance, plan maintenance and response times.
It also ensures that you’re prepared to handle every eventuality as it arises. A widely accessible web-based emergency response plan can maximize your emergency response while minimizing impacts on workplace operations, facilities, employees and customers.
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