London, 23 September, 2010 - PageOne Communications, the UK’s leading provider of mobile messaging solutions to the public and enterprise sectors, today announced the results of its survey of 500 Operations Managers at fire stations throughout the UK. As government spending cuts take hold and organisations are asked to do more with less, the survey provides an interesting insight into current trends in technology adoption, changes in fire service expenditure and Operations Managers’ views on future social and environmental threats.
Technology
In the current climate, all fire professionals surveyed envisage a drive towards efficiency savings and cuts in the service yet investment in technology remains a priority; only 15.8% of operations managers state that they believe technology will be cut within their station with the majority of operations managers expecting to save in the future through new technologies.
Positively, the vast majority of respondents believe cuts will not be allowed to negatively impact on response times or service delivery, with over 70% of managers stating that increased efficiency and faster response times are the key benefits of implementing new technology. Three quarters of fire professionals surveyed (77%) have seen an increase in the need to co-ordinate communications between the emergency services, citing technology as the key enabler.
The survey also emphasises the importance of location enabled two way communications systems for the future, with 100% of respondents identifying the ability to locate subjects as a valuable addition to a managers communication capabilities. 41% would use this technology for resource tracking with a further 28% defining the co-ordiantion of staff as a key benefit of this technology.
Disaster and threats
Natural disasters have wreaked havoc in some areas of the UK in the past 12 months, while issues such as environmental pollution and terrorism remain highly charged in public opinion. When asked which non-fire issues they expected to see taking greater promninence within the next two years, members of the fire service – frequently involved in the fallout of any disasters – identified flooding and environmental as their major concerns
“Operations Managers clearly believe investment in technology will be a key driver in enabling them to do ‘more with less’, operating on a tighter budget without negatively impacting on service delivery or response times,” said Clair Cawley, Director of Marketing, PageOne Communications. The government must take into account the potential for technologies such as our location enabled 2-way pagers to deliver efficiencies and cost savings in the fire service over the next few years.”
To download PageOne Communications’ full fire survey report, go to
http://www.pageone.co.uk/downloads/surveys/fire_survey.pdf-End-
About PageOne.
www.pageone.co.ukPageOne is the leading provider of award-winning wireless messaging solutions to the public and enterprise sectors. It has a proven track record of introducing innovative products and services and owns and operates a UK-wide paging network and provides business SMS messaging solutions; PageOne Paging and PageOne Connect respectively.
Note to editors
The PageOne name is written as one word with a capital 'P' and capital 'O'.
Press Contact:
Geraldine Fernandez/ Robert Hickling
Say Communications
Tel: 020 8971 6400
Email:
[email protected]