With the IAHSS Conference coming up, I thought it would be fitting to sit down with our Director of Implementation Services, Dale Yushchyshyn, for a chat about how users in the Healthcare industry benefit from our incident management application. Dale has vast experience with over 20 years in the Healthcare industry and is an awarded Certified Protection Professional and former Director of Security. He was a power user of PPM’s software at Caritas Health Group (currently known as Covenant Health) prior to taking a senior position 6 years ago with PPM 2000 to run our Professional Services department.
Frank: Dale, you were a long-time user of our Incident Reporting application. Can you tell us what you used prior, and some of the reasons that led you to PPM 2000?
Dale: The system we had before moving to PPM 2000′s software was pen and paper. We had progressed from a physical typewriter to a word processor, but at the time, even getting that one computer into our office (that wasn’t dedicated to our access control system) was difficult. Though I wasn’t directly involved in the decision to migrate from paper-based incident tracking to a computerized system, it only made sense. The ability to see people’s histories and track statistics without having to depend on staff to manually count the number of records in a filing cabinet; all were helpful features and obvious reasons for the switch.
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With Perspective 3.1, the goal was to expand the visibility and flexibility of loss information for incidents so that we have the forms and reports to best track financial information as it relates to incidents. It is important to track loss information with the record of events for any incident so that metrics beyond what is occurring, and how often, can be accurately reported. By measuring the monetary impact of those incidents, costly trends can be identified, the savings of new initiatives will be known, and recovery rates of investigation can be easily demonstrated.
With Perspective 3.0 and earlier, we allowed a single loss amount to be entered for physical items and/or vehicles. With each loss, we also had the ability to track the amount of that loss that was recovered. This approach allowed us to measure simple physical losses and recoveries. Perspective’s list was preset to track direct, indirect and averted losses only, and did not have the flexibility to track any other type. Because of these limited system values, it wasn’t flexible enough to track addition loss information.
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I am 35,000 feet above the Arctic enroute to London, England, and the gentleman sitting next to me is watching the latest episode of Suits, a relatively new television show about the Legal profession. This reminds me of a recent discussion I had with the Corporate Security stakeholders at one of our larger enterprise customers and how their Legal Department wants to start using their Perspective system. Corporate Security championed our application and brought it into their organization, but now their Legal team is also interested in having access to consolidated incident reports and the ability to add specific information to an incident or case.
This is not typical but, for many companies, Legal (amongst other departments) is becoming more and more involved in the Incident Management process and has even started to own the budget for many Corporate Security teams. It is not hard to understand why this shift has happened, as the end result of many incidents can become huge litigation issues for an organization.
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Q: What is the fundamental benefit of any Incident Reporting and Investigation Management system?
A: The ability to reference and learn from past incidents, either alone or in compilation, in order to prevent future incidents. In other words… metrics and analysis.
It comes down to the security department’s ability to track, reference and analyze incidents in order to improve security and mitigate risk. Sometimes, it’s about referencing stats so that you can justify your budget for the necessary countermeasures. In other instances, it’s about referencing stats that showcase how well your security department is performing… one month over the next, one year over the next, compared to other organizations in the same geographical area or industry, etc.
Recognizing that we wanted to take a deep dive into the world of security metrics and how it has evolved in recent years, we contacted a former editor of Security Management, Peter Ohlhausen, to get his take on the subject (and to take advantage of his research skills), and we paired him up with our own resident expert, my Co-CEO, Brian McIlravey, CPP. We compiled their findings, then added some fresh insights and examples. The result is a new white paper entitled, Metrics and Analysis in Security Management.
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We showcased it at ASIS, started shipping a few weeks ago and issued the press release last week… Perspective 3.0 is now installed, in production and being used by corporate security departments around the world.
A Milestone Moment
Perspective 3.0 represents a significant milestone for PPM. It’s the culmination of a 2-year initiative that saw Perspective evolve from an Incident Reporting software system to an end-to-end Incident Management solution. The difference between the two might seem subtle, but, from my Co-CEO’s standpoint as a security professional, it was huge. More specifically, every time I tried to use the phrase ‘Incident Management’ in our marketing materials, Brian would come back at me with… we’re not really Incident Management, we’re just the back-end of it. Until now…
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