Bent Ear Solutions
Enabling Public Safety Agencies to Leverage the Prowess of Esri

Modern technologies have the potential to improve and transform public safety’s ability to meet their mission(s). With location intelligence, especially leveraging the Esri Geospatial Cloud and real time data, safety and security communities can obtain a deeper understanding of where to focus their efforts to prevent, mitigate and respond to natural disasters and hazards. However, there are numerous practical challenges for safety agencies, as well as any organization for that matter, while adopting technology solutions. This is where Bent Ear Solutions steps in. We help organizations achieve the right balance between modern technologies, personnel, and operating procedures to meet their missions.

In an interview with CIOApplications, Chris McIntosh, CEO and Ron Prater, COO of Bent Ear Solutions share the company’s journey and how their solutions mitigate various challenges that public safety agencies face while deploying GIS technology solutions.

What are some trends and challenges in Esri consulting space, and how has Bent Ear Solutions aligned itself accordingly?

Many organizations make substantial investments in technology solutions and then struggle to implement them to their fullest potential. This can hamper response efforts during a crisis and can result in organizations struggling to effectively use these systems to support their missions, especially during a crisis.

From our experience, we have learned that bridging the gap between the operations and technology staff is crucial for organizations to work effectively. Bent Ear Solutions was founded to focus on this challenge. We use both consulting and technology expertise to bring operations and technical staff together. This enables our clients to maximize their investments in technology and optimize their tools by grounding implementation in operational outcomes.

Organizations need to leverage their technology to manage many types of complex incidents. We use a consultative approach with subject matter expertise to help our customers identify the questions they need answered and identify the critical issues they must operationally address. Once these are recognized, our team, with extensive experience in developing plans, policies, and procedures, helps them implement efficient ways of doing business (process) while our technical experts identify the appropriate data, tools and techniques to deliver the needed capabilities. Location intelligence from Esri, as well as the increased adoption of web services, enables organizations to quickly obtain data and information about various incidents and events. This data allows our clients to answer questions quickly and accurately.

Many of our customers don’t have a deep understanding of the powerful capabilities Esri tools and the Esri Geospatial Cloud provides. In fact, usually they are utilizing a fraction of the capabilities that their Esri license offers. We help customers implement the required solutions with the licenses they already own to accomplish critical tasks. This is challenging as other vendors are constantly presenting interesting tools to our customers who unknowingly already have those capabilities within the Esri platform. Additionally, Esri updates their software almost every quarter and we help our clients understand how to apply these new resources to support critical missions. This can include analytics, comprehensive real time situational awareness, and mobile applications that connect organizational staff regardless of where their location.

“We are dedicated to being a trusted partner. Actively listening to your needs, we work with you to develop innovative solutions that address your most complex challenges.” Please walk us through this statement and shed some light on your client engagement model.

Our team members have extensive experience in public safety, technology, and consulting and are passionate about helping organizations succeed. Our team understands first-hand that every client has different challenges. We listen to their issues and meet their key stakeholders. We help them identify the real problems they’re struggling to solve both routinely and on a bad day and the critical questions to answer before, during, and after an incident. This enables us to determine the appropriate solutions for the client, design the most effective standard operating procedures to evolve their operations, and point them towards applicable best practices. In many cases, our clients already own Esri software. We help them configure and understand how to optimize and unleash the powerful capabilities Esri technology provides to execute their important mission(s).

We also help clients configure their Operations Center to most effectively use the tools that they have developed. This includes the positions of the displays, codifying what goes on those displays, and advising how an Operations Center can be physically configured to facilitate information sharing.

Our engagement with customers looks at several aspects or “lanes” of how they do business. The first is governance, which relates to the strategic planning and oversight framework they have developed for their missions. We help evaluate their governance processes, and check to ensure they have engaged the right stakeholders who influence or support them.

The next phase or lane is the development of standard operating procedures. We review all their existing standard operating procedures and identify what they have, what they need, and what alterations are required for them to be more efficient to utilize the technical tools they deploy.

The third lane of our engagement is a review of their technology to determine what they have and what, if anything, they need. We help them fully utilize and optimize their current capabilities and assist them in acquiring additional technology, if required.

The final phase of our engagement involves establishing a training and exercises plan which assures personnel are comfortable with and use technology on a daily basis, which prepares them to scale and operate effectively during complex emergencies and events.

Our goal is to assure our customers maximize their effectiveness and efficiency during a crisis by providing them the best plans, policies, and tools available.

Could you narrate one or two customer success instances that you’ve had in the recent past?

We helped a utility company deploy a system that monitors all events that affect company operations and their personnel’s safety. Starting with minimal capability, we helped them obtain higher-level situational awareness by implementing the Esri platform they already owned and configured their applications to address operational needs. These solutions are now used daily to meet their mission objectives. We continue to help them grow and expand upon their capabilities as they realize what’s possible.

Another project we completed was for a large government organization whose staff has exposure to multiple hazards, including earthquakes, hurricanes, pandemics, and more. They requested we help them protect and maintain operational capability for hundreds of locations around the world. To help them meet this objective, we assisted in developing and implementing a system that provides comprehensive situational awareness for their various facilities, located thousands of miles apart. In addition, we worked with their organization to identify, develop and implement standard operating procedures to maximize the use and effectiveness of the system. They now have real time situational awareness and understand all current threats to every facility using the Esri platform.

What differentiates your company from the rest?

We have a very experienced team with deep domain expertise across emergency management, public safety and GIS. This is rare in the GIS industry. This allows us to develop trusted relationships with our clients, understand their challenges and requirements quickly, and tailor focused solutions for them.