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Incident tracking at a modern venue is traditionally a manual, inefficient, and time consuming process. Technology can turn this critical requirement of your venue into an efficient and controlled business process, minimizing exposure, and efficiently organizing your approach to risk management.

Incident reporting for either an event or non-event related issue usually begins with a hand written form. In many venues, multiple types of forms are used for differing types of incidents. Many times incident forms are unreadable, only partially filled out, become misplaced, or are entirely “lost.” The routing of incident forms for review, action and analysis similarly are hampered by the same factors. In some cases, follow-up is handled by multiple individuals both inside and outside the venue and therefore critical documentation of the entire incident may inefficiently reside in many separate files in diverse locations.

In 2004, Major League Baseball took the first step in ensuring that, at a minimum, incident forms do not get lost. MLB stadiums are required to have field personnel radio their command center when an incident occurs. The command center issues an incident number and can at least make sure that all forms are collected and accounted for post game. This is a good start, but only a start.

An automated incident tracking system (AITS) gives you control over the information collected on the incident form. A good system will actually print new forms as they are revised. More importantly, an AITS gives all individuals working on incidents a common location (database) to enter and review the incident, store follow-up notes, store digital photographs (if applicable), perform analysis, and even route information electronically to those individuals that need to be informed.

Entering the Information: An AITS should have easy-to-follow menus for recording information on the incident including such things as victim, subject(s), witness(es), first aid or EMT information, police information, and the “who, what, when, and where” of the incident. Venue management should define facility-specific incident categories, incident types (within the categories), and venue-specific location information. Also, an AITS should allow for storing digital photographs or scanned images of important documents relating to the incident which may include items such as the police report, hospital reports, correspondence from insurance companies or attorneys, etc.

Follow-Up Notes: An AITS should have the ability to time and date stamp all notes relating to the incident follow-up in a central database. Ideally, certain types of notes should have the ability to be flagged for follow-up with a pop-up reminder to make sure that follow-ups are timely. Follow-up notes should also have the ability to be marked “confidential” with limited access by the AITS system users. “Confidential” notes would normally pertain to the settlement of an incident.

Analysis: An AITS should have a multitude of reports that assist in better understanding and managing issues at your venue. The system should provide incident summary reporting by event, week, month, or year. Similarly, you need to be able to analyze as well by location, incident categories (and types within each category), and hour into the event. Analysis tools will give your staff a precise understanding of what to look out for during various types of events. Additionally, the database can be searched for repeat offenders and venue management can take appropriate action to monitor these individuals or deny access to venue events.

Risk Management: A modern venue’s risk manager may be an individual, an internal “team,” and may also require coordination with outside individuals such as venue attorneys or insurance representatives for certain types of incidents. Typically, incident documents become decentralized and in many cases critical pieces are not available for those individuals tasked with managing risk. An AITS should be the central repository of all documents with all interested parties having access to those documents that they need to do their job. An AITS should have the ability to print any/all documents on the printing devices of connected users or be able to save them in PDF format for e-mailing when needed. Lastly, the AITS should have the ability to route notification (a distribution list) to team members via e-mail of incidents requiring review and follow-up when appropriate.

Conclusion: Using a technology solution to automate a pen and paper-based system improves efficiency for any venue. Accurate and timely management of your venue’s incidents utilizing an AITS is critical to the continued success of your venue and your risk management program. When we manage more efficiently because of technology, we minimize risk, improve the bottom line to the organization, ensure patron safety, and guarantee a continuing positive guest experience.

David Schwartz is the president and CEO of Advanced Business Integrators, Inc (ABI), an information systems, software, and professional services firm based in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at david@abico.com.