Law enforcement agencies buy, distribute and then retire a vast amount of assets on an ongoing basis. Police cars, guns and radios are the most obvious items provided to officers. There’s also uniforms, boots, hats, handcuffs … the list goes on.
Obviously, all these items cost money. And if they go missing, that’s money that is unaccounted for, plus equipment that has to be replaced at the agency’s expense. This is why accurate asset tracking is an absolute must for law enforcement agencies big and small.
Unfortunately, many of the asset tracking systems currently in use are inadequate and inefficient. Whether paper-based, compiled on Excel spreadsheets or tallied on outdated software, these systems lack the ability to provide accurate and easily accessible tracking, which makes them inadequate. They are also time-consuming to populate and maintain, which makes them inefficient. Worst yet, these systems can’t provide the answers senior management needs when politicians and the media interrogate them about departmental spending.
THE POWER OF BARCODING
When it comes to asset tracking, one of the best ways to identify and monitor assets is to attach unique barcode labels to them. The labels are then scanned, with their barcodes being used to record, register and track the asset’s location in the department – like a mobile radio assigned to a specific officer, and then another – from the time the asset is received into inventory until the day it is retired and disposed of.
Historical note: Barcode inventor Joe Woodland got the idea for the barcode’s thin and thick vertical lines from Morse code, which he had learned as a Boy Scout. Woodland patented the bar code in 1952, after initially tracing out the idea in the sand at Miami Beach.
ADOPTING THE BARCODE — AND RFID TAGS — FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ASSET TRACKING
Joe Woodland and his partner Bernard “Bob” Silver developed the barcode to speed up grocery store checkouts. Collective Data has applied barcoding efficiencies to it to law enforcement asset tracking, through the company’s quartermaster software solution, along with modern RFID (radio frequency identification) tags.
The concept is simple. First, all agency assets are tagged using either barcodes or RFID tags. Next, these barcodes and RFID tags are scanned, with the identity information being logged into Collective Data’s cloud-based platform. This platform can then be accessed by users, who can configure it to easily label, assign and track assets from initial receipt to final retirement. As assets are repaired and reassigned during their operational lifespans, all this data goes into the agency’s Collective Data database.
“Twenty-five years ago, our quartermaster solution was created by a law enforcement agent who needed to track equipment in their department,” said Tim Langer, Collective Data’s director of sales. “Twenty-five years on, a lot has been changed, improved and expanded in the original platform. But it is still an asset tracking solution that was specifically designed for law enforcement and remains as such to this day.”
Watch Collective Data’s quartermaster platform in action on a Zebra tablet:
A WIDE RANGE OF BENEFITS
Collective Data’s quartermaster platform delivers a wide range of benefits to law enforcement agencies. It lets them track where their assets are located, who has them and when they’re due back. It assigns responsibility for those assets to specific employees and equipment repair vendors, so nothing falls through the cracks.
Quartermaster can create automatic alerts for all required license and certification tasks that are due. As such, the platform allows officers who are responsible for agency assets to know what they have and what state it is in at any given moment – all through a centralized online hub.
“Every asset that is recorded in the Collective Data quartermaster solution is time-stamped,” Langer said. “In the case of a firearm, its tracking history includes when the weapon was requested, approved, signed in and signed out to have its weapon qualification, to when it was eventually retired. It’s all there.”
The Collective Data platform is as thorough as it is efficient. It is also easy to audit, with a built-in Report Generator that can print or email reports right from the system. Because it is cloud-based, the system is easy to expand as an agency grows and adds new assets. And again, everything that happens that is related to an asset is recorded at all times.
EMPOWERED BY RUGGED ZEBRA TABLETS
Collective Data’s quartermaster solution is as easy to access in the field on a tablet computer as it is at the station on a desktop PC. For outdoor and mobile usage, Collective Data recommends rugged Zebra tablets that are as rugged and reliable as they are fast and dependable.
The asset management capabilities of Collective Data’s quartermaster platform make it possible for law enforcement agencies to improve and enhance the way in which they buy, assign, track, maintain and retire assets. At a time when police are under increased public scrutiny, quartermaster makes it easy for law enforcement agencies to be transparent, open and fiscally responsible. At the same time, the system makes life easier for the officers who have to track agency assets, by allowing them to fulfill their duties at a level of accuracy and timeliness that simply wasn’t possible before. If ever there was a case of a win-win for all stakeholders, Collective Data’s quartermaster solution is it.
To learn more about the quartermaster platform, visit Collective Data.
