Making a Dog’s Job Easier With Mass Notifications

Time-sensitive situations require immediate action, ensuring that a goal or task is achieved within a restrictive deadline. This is the case for Search and Rescue Dogs of Colorado (SARDOC), a non-profit organization dedicated to finding missing persons in mountainous and wilderness regions. 

In our latest case study, we discuss how SARDOC streamlined its incident response performance by adopting OnPage’s BlastIT mass notification system, allowing its teams (i.e., canine handlers) to receive immediate, simultaneous mission alerts. 

Here’s a snapshot of the case: 

Challenges: Prior to Adopting the BlastIT System

Before adopting the BlastIT system, SARDOC wrestled with a slow and error-prone notification process. For instance, the organization relied on an answering service to:

1. Speak with a requesting agency (i.e., law enforcement)
2. Notify SARDOC coordinators of an agency’s request
3. Relay the request to its canine handlers

Unfortunately, the answering service didn’t fully understand SARDOC’s work and operations. This lead to the generation of inaccurate messages, causing confusion among the canine handlers and delays in responding back to the requesting agency. 

Even worse, the messages weren’t always received by all the handlers and there was no efficient way to confirm message receipts. Consequently, the organization worried that they were perceived as unresponsive and unorganized by law enforcement.

Due to these inconsistencies and the time it took to compose messages, handlers didn’t receive immediate alerts, hampering speedy incident response in the process. At its core, this complicated, manual workflow would take over 20 minutes of back-and-forth communications and alert corrections. 

In summary, SARDOC was challenged with:

• 20+ minutes of time wasted in the notification process
• Perceived unprofessionalism
• Communication errors and inaccuracies
• Some messages/alerts not being sent or received by handlers

Adopting the BlastIT Mass Notification System 

With these obstacles in mind, SARDOC turned to OnPage to streamline and automate its alerting process, to ensure that all team members receive timely and accurate alerts for every situation, every time. 

Through BlastIT, requesting agencies now simply dial a dedicated OnPage phone number to reach SARDOC directly or by leaving a callback number, briefing the team on the details of a mission and its requirements. This eliminates the need for an external intermediary (i.e., answering service).

Additionally, SARDOC coordinators simultaneously receive a callback number from the requesting agency and use BlastIT’s contact lists to select and notify the desired canine handlers. There’s zero lag time during this process, as all handlers receive timely and accurate mission notifications at the same time and coordinators see message acknowledgements within the BlastIT console. 

SARDOC also uses BlastIT templates, allowing the organization to compose a single standardized mass notification alert. This way, coordinators can select from an already drafted BlastIT template—and its message—to speed up the alerting process. 

Benefits of the BlastIT Platform

It didn’t take long for SARDOC to notice the benefits of the OnPage BlastIT system. For instance, the solution allowed the organization to:

• Improve productivity and transparency through an automated and intelligent alerting procedure
• Enhance team collaboration and communication
• Reduce communication errors
• Expedite the crisis notification process by 20 minutes or more
• Boost its reputation in Colorado and surrounding territories

As demonstrated by this post, the OnPage BlastIT mass notification system streamlines alerting in times of crisis or whenever urgent. For SARDOC, BlastIT boosted its incident resolution performance through immediate handler contact, guaranteeing that its certified teams rose to the occasion when missing persons were reported throughout the year. 

Interested in a mass notification solution? Contact us or talk to sales directly at sales@onpagecorp.com for information on the OnPage BlastIT mass notification system.