Across the United States, law enforcement agencies collectively own billions of dollars in portable physical assets: firearms, tablet computers and smartphones, uniforms, footwear and many, many other items their officers use on the job.
Given that these items have been paid for by taxpayers, it is vital for agencies to accurately track the assigned possession and location of these items at all times. To not do so, due to the use of error-prone paper-based and computer-based spreadsheet systems, is to risk the hidden costs of inaccuracy. These costs can harm a police department’s ability to obtain further funding and may erode trust from politicians and the public when unscrupulous employees cross the line.
Meanwhile, inadequate asset management systems can make it difficult for law enforcement agencies to ‘future-proof’ themselves against problems as their department grows and their pool of assets increases in size. This is not surprising: An asset management system that doesn’t work well today is going to work even worse in the future as the demands on it multiply.
Addressing these problems is precisely why Collective Data created their quartermaster asset management solution. Designed for law enforcement agencies, their cloud-based software is an easy-to-populate, easy-to-use asset management platform that harnesses the power of barcodes and RFID (radio frequency identification) tags to label, record and then track agency assets.
“At Collective Data, our goal is to help law enforcement agencies collect as many data points as possible to efficiently automate and streamline their asset management process,” said Tim Langer, Collective Data’s director of sales. “We want our client agencies to have their asset data right at their fingertips at all times, whether you’re a police chief who needs to check what specific weapons that you have on hand or a trainer who needs to see which officers are due for refresher training on departmental equipment and who is past due. These are some of the problems we can solve with our quartermaster solution.”
WHY ACCURACY MATTERS
There are many reasons why inaccuracy in asset tracking can be costly to law enforcement agencies. Some of them are quite mundane, such as failing to notice that important supplies are on the verge of running out, or that expected replacements haven’t come in as expected. Others are more serious, such as having bulletproof vests reach their expiration dates without being noticed. And then there’s the potentially dangerous issue of missing weapons: Some may be lost for entirely innocent reasons, but others may have been stolen and resold on the street.
In this last instance, the cost of inaccuracy can be devastating if someone dies as the result of a stolen police weapon being used to commit a homicide and then being traced back to the department. There could be very few public relations disasters as potentially damaging to an agency’s reputation and standing in the community.
Thankfully, this kind of cost is unlikely to confront an average police department. But money being wasted due to lost assets, delays caused by overdue supplies and difficult questions being leveled at an agency when their asset management system is audited and found wanting? These are common problems every police chief and agency head can do without. This is where using a digital platform like Collective Data can make a difference.
WHY FUTURE-PROOFING MAKES SENSE
When it comes to information, the world is being digitized. In the world of law enforcement asset management, digitization comes in the form of Collective Data’s quartermaster platform, which records and tracks agency assets using a centralized cloud-based platform.
Such centralization allows agencies to keep on top of their assets at all times. “Collective Data provides unlimited alerts and notifications for not only when that ballistic vest is coming due, but also when that weapon requalification is approaching for a specific officer,” Langer said. Centralization also allows asset managers to put together “kits” of supplies for new officers, issuing them what they need at one shot while recording this data in one place and automatically requisitioning replacements to replenish stocks as needed.
In the long-term, moving to the quartermaster platform “future-proofs” an agency’s asset management system by ensuring that today’s and tomorrow’s data is always stored in a reliable, cross-referenced and searchable environment. As well, since quartermaster scales up easily to support growing asset management databases, the agencies who use it never have to worry about their asset management systems running out of storage room or processing power.
Because Collective Data manages its quartermaster system on its users’ behalf, this company takes care of ongoing upgrades over time. There’s no “replacing computers to support Windows 11-type scenarios” that are currently dogging the PC world. Since Collective Data is responsible for keeping the solution current, users of this platform can breathe easy. In this instance, keeping up with the future is being done for them.
One other way Collective Data keeps their solution future-proofed is by supporting its use on tablet computers like the rugged Zebra tablets that Collective Data recommends to quartermaster users. “We live in a mobile world, which means officers must be able to access everything they need on their tablets,” said Langer. “In the world of asset management, our quartermaster system makes that possible.”
For these reasons – reducing the hidden costs of inaccuracy while future-proofing asset management – it makes good sense for law enforcement agencies to use digitized platforms like Collective Data’s quartermaster system. It is the affordable, flexible asset management solution that solves so many problems for law enforcement agencies, both in the office and in the field.
To learn more, visit Collective Data.
