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Are you looking to take your organization’s incident reporting to the next level?

Do you want to contain workplace incidents more efficiently?

Do you want better communication with your staff?

Or more detailed incident reports that provide actionable data?

If you answered yes to any of those questions,  you need to equip your employees with the right tools!

In this post, we’ll look at the top five incident reporting tools that will make your job, and the jobs of your employees, far easier!

So, what are the top five incident reporting tools?

1. Incident reporting form
2. Cloud-based storage
3. Mobile devices
4. Incident management software
5. Commercial test management tool

Without the right data collection tools, incident reporting can seem like a never ending mountain of paperwork. Between safety walkthroughs, audits and training, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

But with the right tools, you can share everything in real-time, save a ton of time on filing, storage and reclamation, and improve your workplace’s safety too!

Incident reporting doesn’t have to consume all your time from other important tasks. Data gathering tools can help you gather incident reports more efficiently, and more accurately, helping improve your safety decisions and build a strong safety culture in your organization.

Ready to find out more?

Then let’s dive right in!

Incident reporting tool 1. Incident reporting form

Top on our list of incident reporting tools is the humble incident reporting form.

It’s doesn’t matter whether the report is paper-based or electronic, or whether it’s stored locally or in the cloud.

You need one!

So, what separates an okay incident reporting form from a truly great one?

In last week’s post, we shared the six key elements that every good incident report should include.

In case you missed it, the six key elements are every good incident report should have are:

1. Holistic
2. Accurate
3. Objective
4. Comprehensive
5. Data-driven
6. Cloud-based

Want to know more about these key elements? Then read our full guide to the six key elements in a good incident report.

But if you’re looking for a quick summary, here goes:

1. Holistic

Good incident report forms take a holistic approach to incident reporting. This means that they cover all types of incidents including lagging indicators (reports of incidents taken after they have finished) and leading indicators (those that indicate the risk of an incident occurring).

The four main types of incidents are:

• Near misses
  Situations where people could have been injured, but, luckily nothing came to pass.
• No harm events
  Operational risks that all staff across an organization should be made aware of.
• Adverse events
  Adverse events are related to medicines, medical devices, and vaccines.
• Sentinal events
  Sentinal events are unexpected events that result in any type of harm.

2. Accurate

Good incident reports contain enough space for accurate details that leave little room for ambiguity or misinterpretation.

3. Objective

Incident reports should be fact-based, and not based on opinions or subjective comments.

4. Comprehensive

As noted by Safe Work Australia‘s best-practice guidelines for Australian businesses, all notifiable incidents MUST be reported to the local authorities. Therefore, incident reports should contain enough data to help key safety professionals in an organization investigate the incident and determine the root cause.

5. Data-driven

With companies increasingly moving towards incident reporting software, the best incident report forms are data-driven. Employees can attach photos, videos, audio recordings and other annotations and notes to any report they create and submit.

6. Cloud-based

The sixth element of good incident report forms is cloud functionality. Cloud-based software means that any employee can access the system from any smartphone or tablet. Offline capabilities mean that even remote users without an internet connection can capture data such as photos and audio files and then sync with the cloud when they regain connectivity.

Incident reporting tool 2. Cloud-based storage

When it comes to incident reporting, cloud-storage one of the most important tools. We’ve already touched on the benefits of using a cloud-based incident report, but you can also use cloud storage with a range of other offline options.

As we explained in out comprehensive guide to incident reporting systems, at the simplest level, you can use a cloud-based spreadsheet service such as Google Sheets to record, log and investigate incidents, accidents and near-misses. By sharing access to this file across your organization you can benefit from the following benefits:

• Efficient management of workplace incidents
• Real-time updates for all members of your organization
• Unlimited storage of reports, attachments, and data.

Cloud-based storage lets you use real-time alerts, detailed incident reports, and actionable data to better equip employees to handle incidents safely.

To unlock the full benefits of cloud-based storage, you need cloud-based incident reporting software. This empowered your employees by letting them access your incident management system from any device and submit a report at the time and place of their choosing.

Cloud-based software offers the ultimate in convenience, giving you an efficient, secure solution to storing reports online and letting you respond quickly to field events with the minimum of fuss.

You can:

• Capture and report incidents
• Manage and collaborate incident responses
• Notify team members about upcoming events and react to developments
• Review and summarize steps that help minimize risk
• Generate reports that help address safety issues

Wondering how cloud-based incident reporting software does all this?

Think of all the old paper incident reports that your organization keeps in a binder. Cloud-based incident reporting software lifts these forms to the cloud where members of your organization can access them via the web on any mobile device as and when required.

A cloud-based approach lets you:

• Generate and submit incident reports from any computer or mobile device.
• Create your own customized incident report forms that contain exactly the data you need.
• Upload photos, videos and audio files to any report.
• Create incident reports even when your device is offline.

Incident reporting tool 3: Mobile devices

Many firms choose to invest in cloud-based incident reporting software for the numerous advantages that this approach offers over paper-based systems. But the key tool that makes this possible is the humble mobile device. That’s why the third tool on our list that will make your life easier is mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

To get the most out of a cloud-based approach to incident reporting, you need a mobile device such as:

• Phone
• Tablet
• Hybrid tablet/laptop

Cloud-based incident reporting and mobile devices go together like peanut butter and jelly; cloud-based systems are device-agnostic meaning that they work as web apps on any device, regardless of manufacturer and platform (Windows, Android, iOS).

Most leading software also offers native Android and iOS apps designed to work specifically on those operating systems. This means that employees can even use their personal computers, phones or tablets to access the incident reporting system and generate and submit their own reports.

Why mobile devices?

Mobile devices are highly portable, so employees can generate incident reports on the spot, instead of having wait until they have access to a computer before making reports. Mobile devices are packed full of useful tech that lets users:

• Take photos of the incident and attach to the report
• Take audio recordings of victims or witnesses
• Take video clips showing damage
• Annotate and/or illustrate media to provide investigators with helpful tools

Tool 4: Incident management software

So far, we’ve already touched on some examples of how incident management software helps organizations. While it is possible to use the first three tools – incident report forms, cloud-storage, and mobile devices – to develop an effective incident reporting system, most companies decide to invest in dedicated incident management software.

Listen.

Incident management software is an all-inclusive solution to efficiently contain and manage workplace incidents. The software provides everything a company needs to run its incident reporting strategy.

This includes:

• The incident report form
• The cloud-based storage
• The management apps for mobile devices

Incident management systems let organizations use real-time alerts and detailed incident reports to help employees to handle incidents safely. They are perfect for small and medium businesses in any industry, from entrepreneurs to educational institutes and even non-profits.

The software provides everything a company needs to improve its incident management, including:

• Training (in-person and live online)
• Webinars
• Documentation
• Support

If your organization is looking to drive operational excellence, incident reporting software could be what you need.

Incident reporting tool 5: Commercial test management tool

The fifth incident reporting tool on our list is the commercial test management tool. If you’re serious about incident reporting, this tool is absolutely invaluable. Commercial tests are an essential aspect of running an organization and having a specific management tool to help you report the statistics and metrics from any incidents that occur is a must.

Why invest in a commercial test management tool?

Test management tools help you:

• Gather invaluable stats about incidents including the total number raised, whether they are open or closed, the number of incidents with each status and the average open time.
• Prioritize incidents according to available resources and manpower.
• Attachment storage – you can collect screenshots of incident reports and file them alongside the incident reports.
• Assign actions to members of your organization such as conducting confirmation tests and fixing issues.

Having the right commercial test management tool makes reporting incidents and making observations on the go a breeze with any device. You can customize the reporting categories, assign people to specific roles, add images and use statistics to analyze the risks and trends present in your organization.

Why is this helpful?

Your organization’s business process relies on your reacting and responding to incidents in a timely, effective manner. An incident may start in the field, but the response will be decided away from the field. A comprehensive commercial test management tool helps ensure that all relevant stakeholders have the data and facts necessary to formulate the ideal response. You’ll never miss an important field event when you invest in a commercial test management tool.

What are some of the benefits of commercial test management tools?

At a senior management level, test management tools offer three main benefits to any organization.

• Identifying the most common incidents
• Developing your safety systems and safety culture
• Scheduled maintenance and repairs

Let’s explore these exciting benefits!

Identifying the most common incidents
To work towards developing a safer workplace environment, the senior managers need access to up-to-date information about the most common types of incidents that occur. While it’s true that you can gather most information from your OSHA logs, having a commercial test management tool automates the process, eliminating errors and giving you more accurate data. This makes management’s job easier and lets them focus resources on areas where the majority of incidents are occurring.

Developing your safety systems and safety culture
The second main benefit of investing in a commercial test management tool is that it increases accountability for your staff. By giving them the tools and software necessary to report incidents in a timely, comprehensive manner, you make them accountable for incidents.

Commercial test management tools help you assign duties to staff and automatically track their progress, sending them reminder emails if work stalls or if a deadline is missed. This helps create a better safety culture in your organization by involving everyone in safety tasks.

Scheduled maintenance and repairs
A commercial test management tool ensures that your systems and process are regularly inspected and lets you know when your equipment is due for maintenance. This helps you schedule maintenance and repairs to prevent serious incidents and manage your budget cost-effectively. By streamlining your maintenance schedules, you can significantly reduce the loss of tools and equipment. This won’t just save your organization money, it will keep all aspects of your operations much safer.

Closing thoughts

In this guide, we’ve covered the top five incident reporting tools that will make your job easier. A well-designed incident reporting form will help your staff report incidents with enough detail for further investigations to understand what happened. Cloud-based storage and mobile devices will ensure that all members of your organization can create, save and share reports in real-time wherever they are. Rounding off our list, having comprehensive incident management software and a commercial test management tool will help you keep ahead of the curve on your organization’s incident management.

Good luck!

Related posts:

• Incident Reporting System: The Comprehensive Guide
• 6 Key Elements to Include in a Good Incident Report

Is your organization striving to make smarter safety decisions?

Are you aiming to create a culture of continual improvement?

Is achieving operational excellence in safety a top priority?

If you answered “Yes!” to one or all of those questions, you’ll understand the importance of having a comprehensive incident reporting system in place.

An incident reporting system can help any organization record, track, trend and investigate all types of incidents, dangers, and near-misses.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explain exactly what an incident reporting system is and precisely how it can benefit your organization.

We’ll be discussing things like:

• What are Incident Reporting Systems?
• What is Incident Reporting and how does it work?
• The importance of document control
• Response
• Incident investigating
• Root cause analysis
• Paper-based vs Software – what’s the difference?
• Safety incident reporting software: What to consider
• Final thoughts

What are Incident Reporting Systems?

An incident reporting system is any system that helps an organization record, track, and investigate any type of dangerous situation. It could be a hazardous condition, an incident, or even a near-miss.

The system itself can take a number of forms.

• It could be entirely paper-based, with with file folders and sticky notes kept in filing cabinets.
• It could be entirely online, with cloud-based software helping to store and manage incident reports and admin documents.
• Some organizations use a hybrid approach where some elements (such as incident report forms) are stored as hard copies and other elements (such as reports, and actions) are stored online as spreadsheets (such as Google sheets).

What is Incident Reporting and how does it work?

While the exact process for filing an incident report will vary between organizations, the basic safety incident life cycle should look broadly similar, whether a company is working predominantly offline or online.

The safety incident life cycle has six stages as follows:

• Incident Reporting
• Response
• Investigation
• Corrective Action
• Tracking
• Summary Report

Incident reporting is the first step in a much longer process. Reporting is usually thought of as what happens after an accident, dangerous condition, injury or near-miss has taken place. However, there are actually two types of metrics that should be studied.

These are:

• Lagging indicators, and
• Leading indicators

Let’s look at these two metrics in greater detail.

What are lagging indicators? 

Lagging indicators are incidents that are reported after an event has taken place.

These include:

• Near-misses – events where no actual harm occurred.
• Accidents resulting in personal injury
• Equipment or property damage
• No harm events – situations that all staff across the organization need to be made aware of.
• Adverse events – those related to medicines, medical devices, and vaccines, rather than employee pre-existing conditions.
• ‘Sentinal’ events – unexpected events such as trips, falls, vehicle accidents, the outbreaks of diseases, and natural disasters.
• Environmental incidents such as spills or releases that must be contained and reported to the Australian government.
• Vehicle incidents – including vehicle incident data that can be used to launch vehicle incident corrective/preventative actions (CAPAs).

These are all examples of lagging indicators – you’re looking in the rearview mirror, reporting what happened and seeing what you can learn from it.

What are leading indicators? 

Leading indicators are metrics that can be used to preemptively reduce the risk of injury or incidents.

For example:

• Safety walkthroughs – you can study the length and frequency of walkthroughs.
• Training effectiveness and the frequency that training takes place.
• Management safety meetings and the frequency with which they occur.

Leading indicators are more like looking out of the windshield and seeing what problems could arise. Some organizations view near-misses as leading indicators, although they are events that happened and just didn’t lead to actual harm or injury. Kind of like a free pass!

Incident reporting works by having employees or key members of an organization report incident, accidents, injuries, and near-misses.

How?

By using an incident reporting form!

Reporting forms can be either:

• paper-based and stored as a hard copy in a file, or
• digital and stored electronically or in the cloud

Incident reporting forms ensure that incident and injury data is accessible for reporting and helps configure investigations and workflows. It should provide enough detail for the other stages in the six-stage incident life cycle to be completed.

Following an incident report, an organization can:

• Make a response
• Plan and assign corrective and/or preventatives actions tasks
• Track completion
• Comply with injury reporting regulations.

The importance of document control

The second part of an incident reporting system is document control. Once the incident reports have been created and submitted, what next?

For the incident reporting system to be effective, all documents should be stored in a secured centralized repository.

At the simplest end, many small Australian businesses work from a paper document known as a Safety Statement. With relatively few incidents reports to deal with, many small firms use file folders or office cabinets to store incident reports. This gives them control over user access and helps ensure that information about past incidents is kept secure.

But paper-based reporting systems can cause administrative issues for medium-sized businesses. The model WHS Act requires that Australian businesses notify their regulator of certain types of workplace incidents known as ‘notifiable incidents’ as soon as they occur. With a paper-based approach, the onus is on employees to complete this work and any lapse could result in significant fines.

Furthermore, to comply with guidance from Safe Work Australia, organizations must track all versions and revisions of reporting documents to ensure that only accurate, up-dated documents are used.

For this reason, many firms turn to incident reporting software that stores all documents online. This lets staff across the entire organization see any updates and changes in real-time, helping to ensure that the latest versions of documents are used.

Moving away from paper-based storage and towards online or a cloud-based incident reporting system helps you create a complete audit trail. This gives you a complete history of when records were created and when they were archived, retrieved, transmitted, or modified. By logging the local time and date, incident reporting software helps organizations of all sizes maintain regulatory compliance.

Response

After an incident report is submitted, the organization will make an appropriate response. For small businesses, the correct protocol will be outlined in the safety statement that staff can consult for guidance.

For larger organizations, or those using incident reporting software, the software itself will be able to suggest appropriate actions in response to the incident.

Most incident report forms will include space for details about the response taken. A key member of staff, such as the supervisor, will be assigned to record this and sign off on the incident.

5. Incident investigation

For serious incidents, the organization may need to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident.

Key members of staff such as safety professionals will analyze the incident using data and evidence provided in the incident report.

They will work on defining the underlying cause with the aim of reducing risk and the chances of future incidents occurring.

The goal of an incident investigation is to implement preventative measures and reduce the risks faced by employees.

Root cause analysis

The most comprehensive way to reducing risk, avoiding future incidents and driving continuous improvement in any organization is to use root cause analysis.

In small organizations, this work will typically be completed by OHS staff. Larger organizations or those using incident reporting software may have software to help them with root cause analysis activities.

The main root causes methodologies used are:

• Basic checklists
• Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagrams,
• 5 Whys,
• Gap analysis
• and more!

These methodologies, either separately or combined, help manage or eliminate contributing and root causes, and identify and implement corrective actions. These actions can counter the identified root causes.

Paper-based vs Software – what’s the difference?

In general, smaller businesses will use paper-based incident reporting systems, while medium and larger businesses will opt for a software-based approach. However, organization of all sizes, from start-ups, to educational institutions and even non-profits, can actually benefit from a software solution to incident reporting.

So, what are the main differences?

Real-time updates
Moving away from a paper-based incident reporting system means saying goodbye to file folders and filing cabinets stuffed full of documents and reports. Unlike paper forms that must be manually retrieved and modified whenever an action is taken, software incident reporting systems offer real-time updates.

Listen.

When you move to a software system, the key details related to each health and safety incident are shared in real-time online with all relevant members of the organization. This helps each staff member learning from each other’s experiences and improve workplace safety.

Identify new areas for improvement
Earlier in this guide, we discussed lagging and leading indicators. Most organizations are good at responding to lagging indicators such as dangerous conditions, accidents, and near-misses.

But leading indicators are tougher to track and follow.

One of the key benefits of adopting a software-based approach to incident reporting is that it gives you a higher level of visibility into your organization’s safety performance.

With software, you are able to unidentified new areas for improvement than may have otherwise gone untracked, such as:

• meeting frequency
• training frequency and quality
• safety walkthrough frequency

Incident reporting software can help detect issues that are likely to cause future incidents, such as a lack of safety training and low scores on post-training tests by employees. By detecting these root causes, the software can suggest preventative action such as increasing training frequency and/or improving the quality of the training.

Another example are nonconformance applications, or NCRs. Many firms who switch to incident reporting software find that their NCRs double or even triple. This means that more NCRs are being recorded and fewer are going unnoticed, helping the organization focus on their improvement efforts.

Automated follow-ups
With paper-based incident reporting, it’s easy for a supervisor to say that further consideration will be given to a future incident – and then nothing gets done!

Incident reporting software makes the process of following up on incident reporting far easier and faster. Organizations can actively monitor whether staff members are following through on critical steps in the reporting, investigating and action process. What’s more, much of this work can be automated so that employees are sent automatic email reminders to attend meetings and training.

Safety incident reporting software: What to consider

Safety incident reporting software makes incident reporting and investigation incredibly simple!

Incident reporting software lets your organization record, track and investigate any type of incident, including near-misses and dangerous conditions.

This helps you reduce risk and keep your employees safe.

So, what do you need to look out for?

Here’s our guide to everything you need to consider when choosing the right incident reporting software for your organization.

Offline and mobile capability

Offline connectivity is a huge plus; your employees can capture date when they are working remotely or without an internet connection. They can then sync with the system and upload the data when they regain connectivity. Mobile capability means that your staff will experience a purpose-designed mobile experience no matter which mobile device they use.

Meetings and communications management

The best incident reporting software can help you manage all your meetings and communications, helping you keep on top of your workload.

You can sit back and let the software do everything from:

• Scheduling meetings
• Send automated notifications to attendees
• Record and track meeting attendance
• Assign and track follow-up tasks

By maintaining a record of all meetings and associated tasks, incident reporting software can help ensure that incidents are properly responded to in a timely manner.

The software can also record and track of communications. This helps your employees share information, plan activities and communicate in a more efficient way.

Data import and API access

The latest incident reporting software features both data import tools and API access. Data import means that you can map data from Excel spreadsheets directly into the software – perfect for adding historical data or updating data with records.

API access means that the software can communicate seamlessly with other third-party systems. This makes pushing and pulling data one database to the other a breeze.

Business analytics and intelligence

If your organization is looking to make smarter decisions and great a culture of continual improvement, business analytics and intelligence is one of the more important areas to consider when choosing incident reporting software.

Leading incident management software gives you 360-degree visibility of your organization and lets you get the most out of your data.

How?

The software can automatically generate reports, data slicers, and dashboards, giving your employees the information they need to respond to incidents in the best way.

Conclusion

In this comprehensive guide, we’ve explained exactly what an incident reporting system is and the benefits it can offer to your organization.

Whether your organization uses a paper-based system or has already moved to a software solution, the key features of a solid incident reporting system never change. If you want to move towards a safety culture, you need to have a data-driven approach to investigating, analyzing and responding to incidents.

Related posts:

• 6 Key Elements to Include in a Good Incident Report
  
• Top 5 Incident Reporting Tools That Will Make Your Job Easier

If your organization is already using incident management software, you’ll know that leading software platforms can help make tracking, analyzing and responding to incidents a whole lot easier!

Incident management software is essential whether you want to track accidents and injuries, or are trying to spot unexpected disruptions in your IT services.

But did you know that there are several key tools that can boost the effectiveness of your incident management processes?

In this post, we’ll explore the top five incident management tools for 2019. The tools on our list will help your staff track unexpected hazards and keep everyone in the loop with extensive reporting and analytical features.

All five of the tools on our list will help your organization identify the cause of incidents as they occur and decide upon the best course of action is the shortest time possible.

Ready to discover the five best incident management tools in the business?

They are:

1. PagerDuty
2. Zendesk Suite
3. Spiceworks Help Desk
4. OpsGenie
5. VictorOps

Let’s look at these powerful incident management tools in more detail!

1. PagerDuty

Regardless of the specific incident management software that your organization is using, your employees need to be able to report, investigate and analyze a wide range of issues. Whether you are concerned with safety, environment, quality assurance, product quality or business management, your staff will need to report, measure and respond to it all.

To work effectively, your staff needs access to a reliable mobile incident management solution and that’s where PagerDuty comes in. This mobile-first solution gives your staff the ability to report incidents anywhere, right from the palms of their hands.

PagerDuty tops our list of incident management tools for 2019 as it gives you a real-time overview of how your business is performing and where incidents are occurring. PagerDuty provides you with an unprecedented insight into your business and offers a range of advanced automated options ensuring that you take the right action, no matter the type of incident or where it occurs.

So, what makes PagerDuty our top incident management tool for 2019?

There are five main reasons:

1. Ease of access
2. Timeline view
3. Multi-channel communication
4. Response automation
5. Highly customizable notifications and actions

Let’s look at each of these areas in greater detail:

1. Ease of access

Available as a native app for both iOS and Android mobile devices, PagerDuty offers unparalleled ease of access. Your staff can report incidents and track follow-up actions irrespective of which device they are using.

2. Timeline view

To track, monitor and analyze incidents, you need to keep abreast of the schedules of your team. PagerDuty helps you see the past, present and future services and schedules that your team have, helping you get an overview of your entire incident management process.

3. Multi-channel communication

To stay in touch with your staff, you need an incident management tool that offers a range of communication options. PagerDuty offers text messages, chat channels, and video calls that help you keep in touch. This reduces the time needed to respond to incidents and resolve them effectively.

4. Response automation

Leading incident management software helps you automate responses to incidents as they occur. Depending on the nature of the incidents, this could include;

• Rebooting a server
• Creating a workflow
• Notifying stakeholders
• Running diagnostics
• And more!

PagerDuty lets you keep critical stakeholders informed about your progress when dealing with incidents.

5. Highly customizable notifications and actions

Lastly, PagerDuty helps your staff stay informed about the status of incidents. Whether they are acknowledged, resolved, or escalated, you can keep everyone in the workflow aware of the status of each incident at all times. The notifications are highly customizable to suit the needs of your entire workforce.

2. Zendesk Suite

The second tool on our list is Zendesk, an innovative help desk system with excellent reporting and analysis capabilities.

If you are looking for ways of helping your staff solve problems for themselves before contacting IT staff for assistance, Zendesk Suite is the ideal incident management tool for you.

So what makes Zendesk one of the top incident management tools?

There are two stand-out features:

• Multiple contact channels
• Cloud-based solution

Multiple contact channels
Zendesk links together a wide range of systems and avenues to offer your staff a range of options for getting help. With Zendesk, contacting IT will be an avenue of last resort for your staff. They’ll have a range of ways to get the help they need, including:

• A searchable advice database
• Interactive inquires
• A chat window

Whenever your staff experiences an issue or problem, their first port of call is Zendesk’s searchable advice database. This database is continually expanded and upgraded to offer the best advice in real-time. This helps your staff find the solution to their problem with ease, wherever in the world they may be located.

If the database can’t solve their queries, your staff can try Zendesk’s interactive inquiries feature. This feature helps them pinpoint the problem they are experiencing and find the best solution fast.

Lastly, your employees can use the chat window feature. Here, they can raise a ticket so that a Zendesk agent contacts them at the first available opportunity. Tickets can also be raised through a phone call or email.

Cloud-based
The second standout feature of Zendesk is that it’s a cloud-based suite. This aspect of Zendesk means that your employees can monitor and report incidents on the go, regardless of their physical location. Provided they have an internet connection, they can access Zendesk’s functions at their convenience. Furthermore, any reports or documents they upload are shared in real-time with all relevant members of your organization, helping to streamline your incident management process.

3. Spiceworks Help Desk

Third on our lists of incident management tools for 2019 is Spiceworks, a remarkable free help desk for Windows and Mac OS that lets your staff report, log and manage incidents with ease.

Spiceworks is available as both on-premises software or a more limited online version.

If you’re wondering what makes Spiceworks one of the best incident management software tools for 2019, here are it’s two standout features:

• Cloud-based help desk
• Active user community

Cloud-based solution
Although Spiceworks on-premises software isn’t cloud-based, it does has a Cloud Help Desk feature that can be accessed anywhere from any device with an internet connection. This means that you don’t need to worry about software and OS compatibility, as you can access Help Desk from any iOS or Android device.

With cross-platform compatibility, Spiceworks gives your employees the freedom to use devices that match their preferences. They can access the Help Desk through a device of their choosing. This gives them the flexibility to report and monitor issues as they occur.

Active user community
The second feature that makes Spiceworks one of the top incident management tools for 2019 is its highly active user community. There are literally thousands of plug-ins that you can use to help integrate the system with other programs you might use.

For example, Spiceworks’ agent dashboard has a note-taking and messaging extension that helps your employees find collaborative solutions to any issues they experience.

There are dozens of world-class plug-ins for almost any software you may want to use Spiceworks with, making it a must-have incident management tool for 2019 and beyond!

4. OpsGenie

OpsGenie is the fourth tool we highly recommend for 2019. Why? Quite simply, it puts communication at the heart of your incident management processes.

Let’s look at how and why OpsGenie is one of the top incident management tools for 2019 and beyond.

OpsGenie offers two main functions:

• Real-time alerting and communications
• On-call schedules for alerts and Customized notifications

Let’s look at these key benefits in greater detail!

Real-time alerting and communications
The first benefit of OpsGenie is that it lets you manage geographically distributed teams. This makes it perfect if your employees are mobile or you are looking to standardize incident management procedures across multiple locations.

With real-time alerting and communications, your teams will remain updated with the latest incidents and developments provided they can access the OpsGenie platform from any internet-enabled device.

But there’s more.

OpsGenie is also perfect if you routinely have to deal with after-hours incidents. The application is able to automatically initiate appropriate response actions, no matter what time of the day or night they occur.

This is incredibly helpful for those times that you don’t have staff available to respond to incidents such as server downtime or crashes. OpsGenie is able to create workflows that available staff can follow to get up and running.

On-call schedules for alerts and Customized notifications
The second benefit of OpsGenie is its ability to offer customized notifications. As part of its response actions, it can notify staff members in a range of ways. For instance, non-addressed alerts can be followed up via OpsGenie’s phone call service.

OpsGenie operates on an escalation management system. This system has a series of predefined rules that govern the actions to be taken according to the type of incident detected. These rules can be customized so that the appropriate management levels are notified when certain actions and decisions are taken.

For example, let’s say you want to set up the escalation management for a server outage. You would set the rules based on incident severity and outline the different tiers and management levels you want notifications to be sent to when a server outage occurs.

When this type of incident occurs, OpsGenie will follow these rules to provide an automated phone call, SMS, or email to key employees at the appropriate management levels. As all decisions and actions are made from the OpsGenie mobile app, your entire team is connected and responsive at all times, without the need for manual intervention.

As the notifications are documented for each alert, your team can retrospectively look at the steps OpsGenie took when it detected problems and make adjustments accordingly. Over time, this helps improve the efficiency of the app at detecting and dealing with processes.

5. VictorOps

VictorOps is the fifth incident management tool for 2019 that you need to know about. Positioned as an alternative to PagerDuty, VictorOps is one of the best tools for structuring and streamlining your incident management processes in 2019.

So what are VictorOps’ unique benefits and advantages?

Like PagerDuty, VictorOps offers three key benefits for businesses:

1. Real-time platform
2. Timeline view
3. Customized alerts and notifications

Real-time platform
VictorOps is a real-time platform that’s perfect for reacting to open incidents and analyzing them with a view to reducing or eliminating the chances of them occurring in the future. When a member of staff reports an incident via VictorOps, an incident alert is sent according to an on-call plan. This helps ensure that reports reach all relevant members of your organization in real-time, helping everyone stay in the loop.

However, staff members can also redirect messages and alerts themselves dynamically. For instance, they could add links to server logs, or explanations of solutions to messages before sending them. This can be done ‘on the fly’, helping to keep everyone updated about the latest incidents and solutions. As VictorOps is accessible in real-time, these solutions can be followed by team members who are nearest to the incident, or available at the time.

Timeline view
As with PagerDuty, VictorOps builds a ‘timeline’ that displays every piece of information. This helps you track incidents and see how they are investigated, responded to and either resolved or escalated. During investigations, this timeline can help you tie events together and keep track of your team members and their actions.

Customized alerts and notifications
One of the most unique features of VictorOps is its ‘transmogrifier’. This tool lets you customize everything from incident flows to alerts, notifications and more. For this reason, VictorOps lets your team modify the way they deal with incident management issues according to their specific needs and preferences. This potentially helps teams address problems faster and find solutions quicker than otherwise.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, the top five incident management tools on our list have a lot to offer in 2019 and beyond. If you’re in the process of choosing the right incident management software, you may be wondering about your next steps.

Beakon’s incident management software offers industry-leading reporting, tracking and reporting abilities. So, contact us for a demo to see for yourself how our incident management software can meet your needs!

Related posts:

• Incident Management System: A Start-to-Finish Guide in 2019
• Incident Management Processes: Key Concepts for Maximum Success

In our last post, we shared a compact guide to choosing the right incident management software for your company, business or organization. Building on that, we wanted to offer a complete overview of incident management systems, including what they are, how they work and the benefits that they can offer.

In this post, we’re presenting a complete start-to-finish guide to incident management systems in 2019. Our aim for is to give you a complete overview of these systems and explain how they help organizations of all sizes save time, keep their employees safe and boost revenue.

In this start-to-finish guide, we’ll cover the following areas

1. What is an Incident Management System?
2. Types of incidents explained
3. Why invest in an Incident Management System?
4. Key advantages of Incident Management Systems
5. Taking your next steps

Let’s go!

1. What is an Incident Management System?

An incident management system is any system that helps an organization respond to, manage or prevent any incidents that occur on their premises or that affect their staff or customers.

The system should cover the following five factors:

1. Procedures
2. Software
3. Communication systems
4. Equipment
5. Personnel

These five factors are a critical part of a company’s incident management system, regardless of whether it is paper-based, electronic, or a hybrid system.

Let’s look at them in greater detail:

1. Procedures
The backbone of any incident management system is a list of procedures that staff must follow in the event of an incident, accident, or event.

Traditionally, incident management systems have been paper-based collections of handwritten or printed documents that are filed and stored.

In Australia, most small businesses create a written document called a Safety Statement. This document outlines how the business plans to minimize risk on their premises. It will cover the control measures and risk assessments that need to be conducted to ensure that staff and contractors remain as safe as possible at all times.

While this method of procedure documentation may be referred to as paper-based, documents may be typed on MS Word or Excel and stored electronically, or printed out and stored as hard copies for safekeeping.

2. Software
Many companies utilize incident management software to help them track, manage and respond to incidents as they occur. This software is available to, and used by, all members of the organization, from junior employees to senior stakeholders.

The software is used to:

• Report incidents.
• Respond to specific situations.
• Resolve problems as they occur.

The main benefit of using incident management software is that all members of an organization are kept updated and informed about incidents in real-time.In the event of a physical incident, incident management software can notify the relevant stakeholders and suggest an appropriate workflow for responding to the incident. In the case of IT-related software, the software itself is able to initiate certain responses to problems, such as rebooting a server in the event of a crash, for example.

3. Communication systems
All companies need a communication system in place in order to implement their incident management system.

A communication system could include some or all of the following options:

• Telephone
• Email
• Instant messaging platforms
• SMS

One of the advantages of investing in incident management software is that it provides a communication system for a company’s employees to use. Staff can use the software’s platform to keep in touch with each other and monitor incidents as they occur.

For example, when an incident happens, staff can use the incident management platform to file an incident report. The software then sends email and/or SMS notifications to other members of the organization and critical stakeholders, alerting them to the situation in real-time.

As all communications are in one place, the platform provides a holistic communication system for all members of the organization to use. They can track, monitor and resolve incidents along the way, through a variety of channels including messages, notifications, and updates.

4. Equipment
The fourth key factor in any incident management system is the equipment used by employees. This includes the physical devices used to access the incident management software (such as laptops and mobile devices) as well as any equipment required to deal with the incidents.

Common communication equipment includes:

• Computers and laptops
• Mobile devices
• Handheld communication devices such as walkie-talkies

Most incident management software platforms have their own app designed to work with iOS and Android devices. This means that personnel can simply install the app on their work or personal mobile devices to gain access to the platform at their convenience.

5. Personnel
The fifth factor necessary for an incident management system to be effective is personal. This includes a company’s employees, but may also include contractors who must be trained to respond to incidents.

Employees must be trained to:

• React to incidents
• Understand the nature of various incidents
• Follow the correct procedures when responding to incidents

To ensure that all employees work together in the event of an incident or emergency, the employer must provide comprehensive training. However, today’s incident management software is able to generate workflows for staff can follow. These are written procedures that help staff deal effectively with specific incidents.

Software-generated workflows help ensure that those who are first to respond to an incident have as much data as possible. They are better able to respond in the shortest amount of time and maintain effective communication during emergency situations.

2. Types of incidents explained

Now that we’ve looked at what an incident management system is, it’s time to turn our attention to the types of incidents that are commonly dealt with.

Incidents will tend to fall into one of the following three categories:

1. Physical incidents
2. Environmental issues
3. IT-related issues

Each of these four categories requires different types of responses, with different procedures.

1. Physical incidents
In this category, you’ll find general or community complaints, general illnesses among staff, and serious injuries or illnesses involving staff and contractors. This category also covers incidents such as fires, explosions, motor vehicle collisions, and near misses.

2. Environmental issues
This category covers damage to either the organization’s premises or equipment, loss of environmental containment (spills and leaks) and security breaches.

3. IT-related issues
IT-focused incident management software helps employees resolve IT issues such as using specific software, dealing with server failure, or other issues that lead to downtime. Unlike physical and environmental issues, IT-related issues can often be responded to automatically by the software. This may help resolve the incident without any human intervention. For example, if a company’s server crashes, incident management software may be able to restart the server to resolve the incident.

3. Why invest in an Incident Management System?

As we’ve shown, most organizations use paper-based incident management systems, built around Safety Statements to respond to and address incidents. So why would an organization invest in a software or cloud-based incident management system?

There are four main reasons why an organization would want to invest in improving or upgrading their incident management system:

• Improving employee safety
• Saving time
• Minimizing risk
• Maintaining and/or increasing profits

Improving employee safety
Well-designed incident management systems can give a company a powerful combination of data and communication tools that can help it respond to incidents faster. Potentially, this can save time and, in emergency situations, it may even save lives.

Saving time
The main benefit of having a software or cloud based system is that all communication channels are combined. Organizations that use incident management software can accomplish more in less time than if they were using a paper-based system. For example, incident reporting with a software-based system takes a fraction of the time of compiling a paper-based report.

Minimizing risk
Incident management systems help improve employee safety by giving a company real-time situational awareness. This helps ensure that employees receive the most appropriate support at the earliest opportunity, helping to prevent incidents from escalating.

Maintaining and/or increasing profits
In Australia, firms are legally responsible for reporting serious harm incidents to the relevant statutory authorities. Robust incident management systems can help automate this process, ensuring that the organization doesn’t fall foul of laws and become subject to fines that may adversely affect their profitability.

4. Key advantages of Incident Management Systems

A well-designed incident management system offers the following key advantages:

1. Preparedness to deal with incidents
2. Effective communication within an organization
3. Increased safety for employees, clients, and contractors

To understand more about these key areas, we’ll look at each in more detail.

1. Preparedness to deal with incidents

One of the top advantages of a robust incident management system is that all employees are sufficiently prepared to deal with a wide range of incidents. In the event of an emergency, first responders will have a clear idea of any hazards they may encounter and will have been trained how to respond.

In addition to training, the incident management system will give employees the tools they need to deal with various scenarios. This may include interactive maps of the location, CCTV points, utility shut-off points, first-aid kit locations, and access points.

Using the incident management software platform, staff can report incidents and keep the entire organization aware of their actions in real-time. The platform enables other employees to offer guidance or advice and lets critical stakeholders see the specific actions that were taken and how the incident was resolved.

A key advantage of using incident management software is that it lets senior management retrospectively look at how past events unfolded. They can identify pain-points that prevented the issue from being resolved faster and find ways of improving response times in the future.

2. Effective communication within an organization

The second key advantage of having a well-designed incident management system in place is that it provides staff with effective communication channels at all times. All leading software platforms are cloud-based meaning they can be accessed from any computer or mobile device with internet access.

This ensures that incident reporting takes place in real-time, with all members of the organization able to track incidents as they occur.

The communication channels can be highly customized so staff can receive communication according to their preferences. This could include SMS messages, emails or push notifications, as they choose.

In an emergency situation, the incident management software provides a timeline of communications so that senior managers can track the flow of communications and see whether the incident was escalated or resolved, and how. This gives key personnel real-time situational awareness.

Some incident management software is able to act as an emergency notification system. This means it can be used to report emergency incidents such as fires or spills as soon as they occur. During an incident, the system will keep contact with all employees via a range of communication channels including voice, SMS messaging and email.

For example, in the event of an emergency situation, the first staff member on the scene could initiate contact with emergency operators, all via the incident management system’s platform. This reduces the response times of emergency services.

3. Increased safety for employees, clients, and contractors

The third key advantage of incident management systems is that risks to employee’s safety can be minimized and managed. Incident management software that offers a smartphone app provides employees with direct access to the incident platform at all times. If they notice a problem, see something suspicious or have any issues, they can alert their supervisors and senior managers with ease.

Some incident management software even lets employees called 911 or alert onsite security with the press of a button. This can ensure that critical data is delivered instantaneously and can help shorten response times.

5. Taking your next steps

This start-to-finish guide has explained everything you need to know about incident management systems in 2019.

While some organizations will continue to rely on basic safety statements and paper-based procedures, an increasing number of companies are choosing to adopt incident management software to facilitate their overall incident management system. The right software can help any organization achieve its goals for a safe and secure workplace.

Contact us for a demo to see for yourself how our incident management software can meet your needs!

Related posts:

• Incident Management Processes: Key Concepts for Maximum Success
• The Top 5 Incident Management Tools for 2019

Are you curious about how to choose the best incident management software for your organization?

If so, we’ve got you covered with this compact guide!

We’ll explain everything you need to know about how to choose the best incident management software for your company, business or organization.

Choosing the right software can be challenging, and, while investing in software can bring plenty of advantages, there are also plenty of traps and pitfalls to watch out for along the way.

So whether you’re a small business owner looking to improve the way you handle incidents, or you’re looking for a way to harmonize incident management procedures across multiple facilities, we’re here to help.

We’ll explain the benefits of the leading incident management software packages on the market today and show you the exact steps you need to follow in order to choose the best software for your needs.

In this compact guide, we’ll be discussing things like:

• What is Incident Management Software?
• Who needs Incident Management Software?
• Types of Incident Management Software
• What can Incident Management Software do?
• Why is Incident Management Software important?
• What to look for when choosing Incident Management Software
• Taking your next steps

Sound fair? Then let’s go!

What is Incident Management Software?

Incident Management Software is any software that helps a company, business or organization record, manage and investigate any incidents that occur on their premises or involve their staff.

When an organization starts using incident management software, it will typically make the software available to employees via computers, smartphones, and tablets. As everyone has access to the same software, members of staff can report incidents as they occur. Senior stakeholders such as members of the management team can track how each incident is responded along the way.

Incident management software can help with:

• Reporting incidents
• Investigating incidents
• Analyzing incidents
• Taking proactive actions

Who needs Incident Management Software?

Incident management software is available for companies, businesses, and organizations across almost all work disciplines.

This includes fields in the following areas:

• Safety
• Environment
• Quality assurance
• Product quality
• Business management
• IT/DevOps

Organizations across almost every industry can benefit from having some form of incident management software.

Types of Incident Management Software

We can group incident management software into two main categories:

• Incident management software for physical operations
• Incident management software for IT/DevOps

Let’s look at both of these categories in greater detail!

Incident management software for physical operations

Many businesses are primarily concerned with physical incidents such as injuries, spills, and accidents that occur on their premises. Firms in the building and construction sectors and agricultural sectors will generally fall into this category. They need incident management software that helps them monitor when accidents take place and how to minimize the chances of similar incidents occurring in the future.

These organizations are generally less concerned with logging and dealing with IT-related incidents, however they may have separate incident management software for that purpose.

Incident management software for IT/DevOps

IT-focused incident management software is specifically designed to address IT challenges such as crashes and errors. Firms that invest in this type of software may be less concerned with logging physical incidents, although they may have separate software for that purpose.

IT-specific incident management software is used as part of an organization’s overall IT management strategy alongside identity management, mobile device management, and service desk solutions. This software can help automate tasks, reduce downtime, increase coloration and unify projects.

Let’s look in greater detail at how incident management software does this.

What can Incident Management Software do?

Incident Management Software, whether it is focused primarily on physical incidents or IT issues can help with the following tasks:

1. Reporting incidents
2. Investigating incidents
3. Analyzing incidents
4. Responding to incidents

Let’s break these tasks down:

1. Reporting incidents

The main purpose of incident management software is to help an organization’s staff report incidents. Every organization, large or small, experiences incidents from time to time.

These could be categorized into one of three main groups:

• Physical incidents
• Environmental incidents
• General incidents

Physical incidents include:

• A near hit or miss
• Staff/contractor injuries/serious illness
• Fires
• Explosions
• Motor vehicle collision

Environmental incidents include:

• Plant or equipment damage
• Loss of environmental containment (spills/leaks)

General incidents include:

• General complaints
• Community complaints
• Product withdrawal or recall

Incident management software helps organizations streamline the process whereby staff and contractors can report all of these types of incidents. With the incident management software platform shared among all staff and senior management, incidents can be logged in real-time.

Incident management software that focuses on IT/DevOps can help with reporting of:

• Digital incidents and errors
• Frequency of downtime and crashes

2. Investigating incidents

The second benefit of incident management software is that it helps an organization investigate any incidents that occur.

The incident management software platform contains a clear record of:

• Where the incident occurred
• Who witnessed and documented it
• Any follow up actions that were taken

Incident management software can streamline the investigation process by giving access to all members of an organization.

However, IT/DevOps software can go one step further. It can not only alert staff of an incident with their company’s software or hardware, but it can automatically generate a report of the problem and initiate a workflow as well. This helps ensure that the error is responded to in the proper sequence and reduces the response time, helping to address the incident sooner.

3. Analyzing incidents

As we’ll explain in our upcoming start-to-finish guide on incident management systems, incident management software not only helps with reporting and investigating incidents. It also helps with analysis too.

For example, incident management software can track where incidents are occurring and notify senior management, prompting them to take action.

If a spate of incidents occurs in a particular location, specific safety precautions and procedures can be put in place to help manage the risk.

As we discussed, IT/DevOps software can automatically generate a report of the problem and create a workflow. This helps ensure that the error is responded to in the proper sequence. It also curbs the effects of major IT incidents by bringing the right information to the right people instantly, for faster response times.

4. Responding to incidents

Incident management software used to report and log physical incidents will lead to faster response times. It can bring critical information to the right people to ensure that problems are dealt with promptly. The software can provide immediate notifications to all affected staff and senior management.

IT/DevOps software also offers similar benefits as we’ve discussed.

Why is Incident Management Software important?

Incident management software has a number of benefits including;

• Automated incident reporting
  When it comes to incident management processes, streamlining the process of reporting incidents is one of the key concepts for maximum success.
• Instant notifications
  Notifying relevant persons with inbuilt workflows for incident management and investigation.
• Quick reporting
  Notifying senior management, investigation, corrective actions – all in one centralized database.
• Ensuring regulatory compliance
  In Australia, certain incidents (such as those that result in significant harm) must be reported to the relevant statutory authority. Incident management software can help automate this process and ensure regulatory compliance. This limits a company’s exposure to potentially expensive compliance offenses that may result in large fines or other punishments.
• Reduced risk.
  Lowers the risk of excessive costs to the business (from fines).

What to look for when choosing incident management software

When choosing incident management software for your organization, there are certain key features and functions that you’ll want to look for.

Broadly speaking, these can be grouped into two main categories:

• General incident management software functions
• IT/DevOps-specific features and functions

The category you’ll want to pay the most attention to will depend on your organization’s field and the reasons why you’re looking to implement the incident management software.

General incident management software functions

Regardless of whether you want to log physical incidents or IT-related issues, you’ll want to look for the following features and functionality

1. Safety, Environment, and Quality functions
The first thing to look for when choosing incident management software is that it offers a broad range of functions.

At a bare minimum, the incident management software should be able to:

• Monitor and alert staff about incidents and critical errors
• Integrate with team collaboration tools to notify responsible parties

These functions ensure that your organization remains aware of all incidents and you’re your staff are updated in real-time as to progress about how these issues are being dealt with.

However, leading incident management software offers safety, environment and quality function tools, all in one convenient package. This lets you manage any incidents that occur in those three areas through a single incident management software platform. This helps you streamline your incident management processes.

2. Customizable dashboard and reporting options
When choosing incident management software it’s important to look closely at the dashboard and reporting features. Incident management software with self-configurable dashboards and reporting options will give your staff a broad range of ways to configure their dashboards to suit their own particular tastes.

Why’s this important?

If your staff are able to set up their dashboards just how they like them, they’ll be faster and more accurate when they use the incident management software. This should help boost your incident reporting rates and the accuracy of the reports that your staff members generate.

3. Comprehensive notification suite
The notification suite that comes with the incident management software should be comprehensive and customizable. After all, you will be relying on notifications for a wide range of activities such as;

• Reminding staff to file incident reports
• Monitoring and alerting staff about incidents
• Prompting staff to take followup action, following an incident workflow
• Notifying the relevant statutory authorities whenever a significant harm incident occurs
• Notifying senior management to conduct investigations and take corrective actions

When choosing an incident management software, you want to ensure that its notification suite can be customized to suit the particular needs of your organization.

Ideally, you’ll want an incident management software that can offer workflow, SMS and email notifications. This will help streamline your organization and ensure the smooth running of your incident management procedures.

4. Analysis, allocation, and tracking
Leading incident management software can conduct root cause analysis whenever an incident occurs to help you identify whether a pattern is occurring. If it is, the software can alert key members of your organization so that they can take preventative, proactive measures.

You’ll also want to look for incident management software that can perform action allocation and tracking. This helps your staff stay informed about the practices and procedures that they need to follow throughout the workflow.

With the incident management software sending automated notifications to remind staff of their duties and responsibilities, you can be assured that incident management software investigations will proceed smoothly.

5. Ease of use
Whichever type of incident management software you choose, there’s no substitute for hands-on testing. Request a demo of the incident management software and see whether it’s easy to use

Ask your staff the following questions:

• Is it accessible from a range of devices? (tablets, smartphones, computers)
• Are the devices in your organization compatible with the software?
• Is the software platform flexible and easily customizable?
• Does it complement your business processes and procedures?
• Can the platform be easily used and quickly understood?
• Can you collate all your important data and documentation into one simple interface?
• Is the data easily sortable??

Evaluating these areas will take practical hands-on use by your staff. This will take time but will ensure that you pick incident management software that can meet the needs of your staff and your organization.

IT/DevOps-specific features and functions

If you’re choosing an IT-specific incident management software for IT and/or DevOps, you’ll want to consider the above factors. But you’ll also want to consider the following specific areas, too.

1. Can you create a standardized workflow for IT incident management?
   Just as Safety, Environment, and Quality function-related incident management software should be able to create a standardized workflow to help staff address and tackle incidents as they occur, so too should IT-related incident management software be able to create workflows. This will help you respond to incidents faster, or set up an automated response that is triggered as soon as the incident is detected.
2. Can the software respond to, report, and investigate IT errors?
   One additional feature that IT-specific incident management software should be able to manage is automatically investigating IT errors.

Taking your next steps

This compact guide has explained everything you need to know about choosing the right incident management software. You know that spreadsheets, paper systems, and carrier pigeons don’t work, so electing the right incident management software that can help your organization achieve its goals for a safe and secure workplace should be your next step.

Contact us for a demo to see for yourself how our incident management software can meet your needs!