Sorting through all of that data can be a challenge. Even in internal database systems, users have to search for the information and convert it into the format they need. It’s time-consuming and ineffective, especially for those in the fire service currently who are under budgetary pressures and must provide instant proof to city officials and administrators about how their department’s services meet the needs of the community.

While various software suites on the market offer a depository for data, accessing it truly can be a pain. Many times, the information must be pulled from multiple databases, reconfigured into a readable report and then converted into PDFs for viewing. Not only does this take many hours to complete, but it also can take a firefighter away from training or other duties or increase labor costs because personnel have to work overtime to complete the task.

That’s changed with the advent of FIREHOUSE Software’s analytical software module, dubbed FH Analytics. I recently sat in on a WebEx demonstration of the software. What I was most impressed with was how a novice like me could find information easily. Instead of pulling data from one database and transferring it into a readable format, the intuitive software lets users toggle from one screen to the next to find real-time data quickly. It also lets users click on tabs to view call and run data, staff profiles and more and can easily convert the information into graphs and charts.

Such functionality can be essential to fire leadership. They no longer have to depend on computer savvy personnel to provide them with data. Instead, it lets them evaluate the department’s successes and gain insight into areas that need improvement because it offers year-to-year — even day-to-day — data sets with a few clicks of a mouse.

Information overload practically could be a medical condition in today’s day and age. But with the new module from FIREHOUSE Software, fire administers now have a solution to stave off the ailment and access the right data when they need it.

“Defending a budget and proving performance takes more than a stack of graphs, charts and maps,” said Sanjay Kalasa, vice president of FIREHOUSE Software. “It requires administrators to present facts effectively and in an easy-to-read and understandable format. They need to look at performance metrics; they need live views into their data not possible with standard reports and queries.”

Now making those live views possible is FH Analytics, an integrated dashboard and analysis module available to current and future FH customers. Built on the Qlikview platform, FH Analytics lets users visualize data, search through it and make it available on mobile devices.

FH Analytics offers real-time information at a glance, giving immediate insight into staff training and equipment needs, turnout and reaction times, incident compliance rates, standards of coverage, and more. Kalasa said the analytical software incorporates data for all FH Software modules and lets users toggle between charts, graphs and raw data with one click; export data to Excel, print graphs, pages or dashboards for monthly reports; and provide multidimensional data analysis for better decision-making.

Field-tested
The Greensboro (N.C.) Fire Department has been using FIREHOUSE Software since 2004 to host the department’s data, such as fire incident data, inspection data, preplan data, hydrant data, training records, staff profiles and more. Bttn. Chief Todd Tuttle said the product created inherent efficiencies and provided needed functionality from an administrator’s standpoint.

“FIREHOUSE let us place additional requirements on certain fields to help with quality control,” he said. “Now, we have a records system that collects 90% of the data.”

FIREHOUSE Software approached Tuttle to beta-test FH Analytics for six months. During the beta-test, he stressed to the company the importance of standards-of-cover reports that are used to ensure their accreditation stays current.

“We had a need for a standards-of-cover report that would evaluate the components, such as when did the first unit arrive on the scene and what was that arrival time 90% of the time,” Tuttle said. “We didn’t have any reports inside of the software that would do that.”

As a result, Tuttle had a tough time making crystal reports, a business intelligence application used to design and generate reports from a wide range of data sources.

Tuttle and Kalasa regularly scheduled conference calls to review the software’s beta version via WebEx in FH’s test environment. In the meetings, Tuttle expressed his department’s needs, such as including flexibility like a slider bar that measured calls in minutes and seconds to determine whether first-in companies arrived in the expected 6 minutes, 90% of the time.

“I needed to know if we weren’t meeting it, in seconds and minutes at the 90 percentile,” Tuttle said. “And he was able to come up with something that met our needs.”

In Tuttle’s opinion, one of the company’s main challenges was to build software that was flexible to be used in any department, as many administrators “do things differently,” he said.

“I may measure standards differently in my department than another department,” Tuttle said. “So their challenge was to build software that was flexible for all departments.”

One of the finest tools built into the software was clean and intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), Tuttle said.

“I didn’t have to ask where the data was,” he said.

Another plus was the ease of use. FH Analytics can be operated by anyone with at least basic computer knowledge, Tuttle said.

“I think you could put it out there with any department that doesn’t have the IT resources we have, including the staff allocated to performance and measurement,” he said. “To the departments that don’t have that, it becomes very difficult to collect this type of data for accreditation and standard to cover. And this tool is going to make it much easier.”

Tuttle said the return on investment can be realized in saved labor costs. In fact, it will cut down on the hours he invested creating reports from scratch and running them on a regular basis, saving them as PDFs and getting that data to the fire chief.

“It’s staggering how many hours I put into that,” he said. “And this is something where the fire chief or assistant can pull up the software at a moment’s notice and look at the data for the year, get an idea of what’s going on, close the application, makes some decisions and come back in 10 days and re-evaluate.”

While the software hasn’t been loaded at the fire station as of yet, Tuttle said he is “highly impressed with the product.”

Tuttle said FH has been great to work with.

“They always have an open ear,” he said. “If they can’t incorporate your needs into the current version, you know that they will incorporate in the next release.”

Fire chiefs should reach out to vendors and express their needs, Tuttle said. A great way to express an opinion on their technical needs is to meet with vendors at user conferences, such as Fire-Rescue International. In fact, he credits his chance to beta-test the product with meeting Firehouse technical personnel at such conferences.

“If I had not been going to the user conferences to learn more and meet the people and staff, we wouldn’t have this relationship,” Tuttle said. “That’s where it came from. There’s been many times that I’ve talked to a person on the telephone for technical support and I don’t know who they are and can’t put a face to a name. You just sit in a class and you recognize the voice because it’s the tech support person you’ve been talking to for the past year.”