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RapidDeploy Ensures Every 911 Agency Wins Regardless of Size, Budget or Location

Whether located in large urban centers or rural communities, 911 agencies nationwide face the same obstacles.

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The Emergency Response Playing Field Is Not Level

Whether located in large urban centers or rural communities, 911 agencies nationwide face the same obstacles. Chronic understaffing can lead to slower response times and telecommunicator burnout. Smaller jurisdictions located away from major metropolitan areas are hit particularly hard by understaffing. A USA Today article describes the situation in York County, Pa., where there are consistently 25 openings in its 60-seat 911 center. Its staff must work 12 hours of overtime a week and the county averages $1 million of overtime annually.

Another factor slowing response times and hindering situational awareness is antiquated 911 technology. This legacy technology, often dating from the 1980s, is rife with problems: lack of relevant, accurate data, long upgrade cycles and high maintenance costs. These poorly integrated legacy dispatch systems make it difficult for 911 communication centers to adopt game-changing technology like supplemental location data sources, geospatial mapping and AI and predictive analytics. This is where the disparity between large and small becomes apparent. Municipalities at the edge of metropolitan areas and small towns in flyover country with limited budgets and with staffing constraints all suffer because they are frozen out from this improved emergency response technology.

Eighty percent of 911 agencies nationwide have four seats or less. This means greater staffing pressures and resource constraints for this core group which must contend with the expensive contracts associated with the offerings of legacy vendors. RapidDeploy believes that the size, location, and budget of a 911 agency should not be the reason they are boxed out from innovations that improve public safety.

RapidDeploy gives 911 agencies with only a few employees access to the same analytics, mapping, dispatch and first responder applications enjoyed by bigger, better-funded cities and populous states. Our Web-based cloud-native platform enables real-time updates without downtime; eliminates on-premises hardware costs; and powers scalable, remote, and portable emergency response. Now even the smallest 911 agencies in jurisdictions with limited budgets can access technology that improves response times and outcomes.

RapidDeploy is already achieving our mission of enhancing public safety thanks to lowered costs, shortened contract times, and a deployment schedule that transitions a 911 agency into the cloud within a matter of hours, not months.

How RapidDeploy Levels the Playing Field

RapidDeploy Reduces Costs by Moving Subscriptions to a Per-Seat Model While a city like Chicago might be able to justify a $75 million expense to upgrade a legacy platform, it doesn’t make sense for state and local jurisdictions that fall into the “four seats or less” majority to pay exorbitant contract fees in addition to extra fees for upgrades and interfaces. The consequence is that smaller communities or less well-funded agencies are foreclosed from technology that could potentially make their citizens safer.

RapidDeploy has disrupted the standard pricing model by making our services available on a recurring per-seat monthly fee that includes all upgrades and interfaces. And with our cloud-native platform, dispatchers do not have to wait for onsite installs by technicians from legacy vendors, an impossible ask during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, RapidDeploy customers get crucial mapping and data upgrades with the simple refresh of a browser. Over five years, RapidDeploy’s subscription model saves 911 centers 50 percent compared to the total cost from the average legacy contract.

RapidDeploy Transitions 911 Agencies to the Cloud in a Matter of Weeks The highlight of cloud-native public safety solutions is increased response times and greater situational awareness, so RapidDeploy believes the deployment timeline should follow the same trajectory of efficiency and ease. RapidDeploy transitions 911 agencies to our CAD platform in four to 12 weeks while our mapping and analytics software is operational within days. Compare this to legacy vendors that take up to two years before the move to CAD is complete, with additional months to integrate maps and data. 911 is about responding quickly to crises, so why should the speed of making improvements move at a snail's pace?

RapidDeploy’s Public Safety Experience Means We Respect and Understand Your Local Needs No other public safety solution is designed, built, and implemented by first responders, for first responders. With over 325 years of collective experience in public safety, we understand the needs of not just the larger scale, high-staffed 911 centers but the smaller rural centers which are constrained by staffing issues and limited budgets. Our technology democratizes the process by offering these centers the same capabilities previously accessible to only the better funded, more populous states and jurisdictions.

To schedule a demo and find out how RapidDeploy can benefit your 911 agency regardless of its size or budget, click here.