On the surface, law enforcement organizations and retail operations don’t have much in common. But think for a minute about the sheer volume of equipment and gear police require to do their jobs.
A partial list of their daily needs includes vehicles, uniforms, radios, computers, firearms, protective gear, less-lethal force options and dozens of other items.
As departments increase in size, the job of sourcing, obtaining, issuing, tracking, maintaining and retiring all that stuff can become a big one – and not unlike a major retail environment, where inventory must also be constantly stocked, tracked and rotated. Police quartermasters and others charged with the responsibility for this require the right tools – these days meaning hardware and software – to keep close control of it all.
That’s a need that’s been heard consistently in recent years by representatives of Collective Data, a prominent provider of fleet, asset and inventory management solutions for law enforcement. It’s come from everyone from local PDs and jails to state organizations and major agencies like the FBI and ATF.
“What they all kind of had in common was, ‘Darn it, we need a better way to manage our assets, our inventory, our fleet [and our employees],’” recalled Tim Langer, the company’s director of sales, in a recent Police1 webinar, “From request to retirement: Unlocking the full value of your assets with digital workflows and barcoding.”
“We’ve kind of been able to transform the law enforcement asset world over the last 25 years because our claim to fame is [that] our platform is specifically designed for the law enforcement community and comes with the features and functionality that support it … We also integrate with any third party or any application that might be in place. That gives you kind of this central hub for law enforcement.”
To bring these capabilities to cops, Collective Data partners with Zebra Technologies, adding its software to Zebra’s rugged tablets and handhelds to help users manage their assets and keep their workforces connected.
Software partners bring value
Zebra is a company with expertise in both the law enforcement and wider commercial worlds. Beyond its range of devices for LEOs – which encompass durable handhelds, tablets, vehicle-mounted computers, e-citation printers and more – it also serves retailers and supply/logistics customers with a selection of barcode- and RFID-based solutions for asset and inventory management.
These are largely the same devices used by its police customers, differing primarily in the software that powers their specific uses.
“Our products are designed to be able to work in multiple verticals,” said Kerry Wicks, senior account manager for Zebra and a former sheriff’s deputy in North Carolina. “We talk about public safety, law enforcement, and state and local government, but those same devices are used in transportation and logistics and warehousing. So there’s flexibility from the device perspective. The intent of the design is for flexibility in integration. In most cases the power of the integrations is the power of the relationships within our partner network.”
Various integrations suit the devices for various uses. Zebra chooses its broad range of software partners carefully to ensure they provide good products that bring value to customers. Police and warehouse workers may not rely on many of the same partners, but Collective Data is one that can serve purposes for both.
For asset management, the webinar discussed the value of both barcode and RFID technologies. Many of Zebra’s handhelds have integrated barcode scanners, and its rugged tablets can be paired with external scanners. Some of its newer devices, particularly in the handheld realm, also have RFID readers. Its printers can print labels for both.
Barcoding as a method of managing assets is inexpensive, familiar and easy. For police organizations, it still works fine for linear check-in and checkout processes and items issued one at a time (radios, body-worn cameras, etc.). Its downsides include requiring line-of-sight scanning and individual scanning of each barcode. This means it’s slower for uses like inventory checks. It also can’t automatically detect items entering and exiting rooms.
RFID enables fast bulk scanning – Zebra’s new readers can top 1,300 tags a second – without line of sight, and gate readers can log items passing through doorways. It can support real-time alerts when restricted items (e.g., firearms, narcotics kits) leave certain areas, and some systems can integrate maintenance schedules and usage history automatically.
“You can print a label, it’ll still contain a barcode, so you can do your standard issuance process,” Wicks told the webinar. “But once that label is put onto an asset, the difference becomes, when I go out with a barcode scanner, it’s a 1:1 transaction … If I use a barcode scanner, I scan each individual device, and it records in the Collective Data system. If I use an RFID mobile reader, I can literally pull the trigger on a device, scan an area and in seconds get a result.”
By integrating the technologies, departments can leverage the strengths of both. Many agencies retain barcodes for things like uniforms, PPE and consumables but have moved to RFID for items like weapons and radios.
‘The user figures out what’s best’
Adding RFID capabilities to traditional barcoding methods can yield two things that are useful in any profession but especially valuable in public safety: time savings and accountability.
Think about comprehensive audits performed across multiple stations. In some cases departments using traditional methods may struggle to fully complete them. This can lead to imprecise purchasing without really knowing what’s been used, what’s needed and what may just be missing or unaccounted for.
Imagine the dangers of that for police, especially in specialized environments like corrections (a major current growth area for RFID), where missing items must be considered safety threats.
“With the barcode technology, I have to go find where things are to scan them. And if I locate, say, 38% or whatever it is, then where’s the rest of it?” said Wicks. “Then it becomes a search mission in offices, desk drawers and closets. RFID technology allows doing quick scans in broad areas and doing it much, much quicker. We think that can improve accountability levels.”
While key functions come from the software, Zebra offers several key pieces of hardware suitable for law enforcement asset management. Tablets appropriate for the challenge include its ET4, ET6x and ET8x. Handhelds and RFID readers include its TC5X, TC7X and TC22/TC27 lines, as well as its MC33xx and RFD40 series. The new EM45 RFID is an economically priced option with close-range RFID technology built in.
They’ve all proven to be sturdy, capable platforms for the integration of partners’ software capabilities.
“Whether it’s an independent software vendor (ISV) or an actual partner reseller who has their own solution and resells Zebra, incorporating their solutions into our devices lets them take advantage of our benefits, meaning the speed and accuracy of our scans,” said Wicks. “Each of them does some things similarly, but they also do some things differently, and that’s the wonderful thing about capitalism, right? They can compete on some levels, and the end user figures out what’s best.
“Now, if I’m going to use Collective Data to help me go find 5,000 missing items throughout my facilities using a Zebra device, then all those components need to be able to communicate with each other in an accurate and timely way. So we as a company take an approach, with our partners and our ISVs, where our engineers work with their engineers to ensure we’re meeting the needs of our partner and the partner is meeting the needs of the end user community. Many times we do that when we’re in meetings together, at the same table, listening and understanding what the customers’ challenges are. Zebra’s people can help our partners understand how to get the best performance for those end-user solutions.”
That in turn relies on an attentive ear tuned to customers, monitoring their needs, what’s worked for them and what hasn’t.
“Definitely the biggest thing from the Zebra perspective is our continual solicitation of information from our customers,” Wicks added. “I’ve had some who were surprised when we showed up with a new version of something and could say to them, ‘Hey, over the last year and a half, we’ve been talking about these things you brought up. Let me show you what’s in this new device.’ They’re stunned – they’re passing it around saying, ‘Everything we asked for is here!’ To me, our willingness to continue to innovate based on our customer feedback is a key differentiator for us as a company.”
For more information, visit Zebra.
