Welcome to Symposium Technologies WikiEME. The main purpose of this wiki is to allow our clients and staff to better interact and share information regarding all of Symposium Technologies various products and services as well as providing a forum for product enhancements and ideas. This wiki site is also intended to serve as an open source of information about our company and products so that anyone can use the information here to make better and more informed decisions about whether Symposium Technologies is the right company to fill their emergency management technology needs. We invite you to visit this wiki site regularly and hope it will serve as a great resource for all our current and future clients and partners.

Using a new perspective that looks at emergency response and management as an open-ended collaborative process between clients, solution provider and other third-part technology vendors has allowed us to truly unlock the real potential of modern technology. We do this by creating solutions which are infinitely adaptable to the needs of each individual department, integrate seamlessly with all other required technologies, and distribute the appropriate information and functionalities where and when their needed to make the most effective use of capabilities.

• The traditional approach taken by companies has been to build products (CAD, RMS, Mobile Data, etc.) based on what they themselves have already decided is the best way of solving specific problems.

• As a result, traditional systems are inflexible, don't work well together, and are incapable of incorporating new developments in both public safety procedures and emerging technology.

• Instead of trying to develop specific products, we instead developed a totally flexible technology infrastructure for emergency response and management. This technology-based infrastructure can incorporate any type of functionality (CAD, RMS, mobile data, alarm monitoring, etc.), and combine them in ways suited to each client's individual requirements.

Every department does things differently, with their own operational requirements and response procedures derived from many years’ wisdom and experience.

• Traditional systems are designed using a “One Size Fits All” approach, can’t easily be modified for individualized requirements and are designed to have the client change their way of doing things to match the system.

• Trying to build custom functions into traditionally designed systems is at best a band-aid solution, and usually involves a lot of time and money.

• Even then there’s no guarantee that the results will actually work the way they’re required to.

• The whole process has to be repeated with each new customization the client needs.

• The Horizon EME is designed to be completely flexible at all levels of operation so as to be easily modified to reflect each separate client’s unique operational requirements.

• Every aspect of every department and user’s individualized needs – look and feel, data, GIS, response rules, workflows and functions – can be customized and modified on an ongoing basis.

• Multiple departments can utilize the same system to share data and resources, letting them utilize their own specific operating procedures and chain of command.

• This results in the very best fit for each department’s individualized needs, while making it simple to incorporate new requirements as they come up.

Departments want all their technology assets to work together, because sharing information and functionality between systems is crucial for helping make emergency response more effective.

• Traditional systems simply aren’t designed to work with those technologies provided by other vendors.

• Clients end up “locked in” - limited to the applications offered by their CAD provider, along with the accompanying limitations in range of choice, pricing, and functionality.

• Custom integrations are expensive, time-consuming, and deliver limited functionality if they are possible at all, and the process has to be repeated for each new system the client wishes to integrate with no guarantee of success.

• On top of this, most traditional systems treat mobile data as an afterthought, making them quite limited in their ability to deliver crucial real-time information to the responding personnel that need it most.

• Not a product or application, but an emergency response and management infrastructure that customizes and integrates ALL your technology and functions in one platform.

• Unlike traditional systems the Horizon EME is designed from the ground up to seamlessly integrate with third-party technologies, providing one point of access to all their combined data and functions.

• RMS, radio-based tone-out and paging, GPS/AVL, alarm monitoring, medical call-taking Q & A, graphical reporting packages, digital voice loggers are just specific examples - the EME incorporates any current or future system that our clients may require,so they act like and appear like one seamlessly integrated system from the very beginning.

• In all cases, clients can choose the tools that best meet their needs, assured of the quickest and most effective results.

• Because mobile data capability is an integral part of the EME, information and functions from these systems can be shared in real-time with responding personnel, putting the right information gets in the right hands, at the right time.

Once again not a piece of the puzzle, but a way to solve the whole puzzle. The wiki itself as an example - The way we structure our help and feedback through collaboration, using everyone's knowledge to come up with the best solution, as opposed to imposing a solution.

Clients need a company that delivers a complete solution on time and on budget, provides the training and support they need, and is pro-active and responsive to their ongoing requests and evolving needs.

• Traditional systems don’t customize or integrate to the degree required, installations end up taking longer and costing more.

• Traditional vendors are product-based as opposed to relationship-based.

• Training, support, integrations, new features, and everything else required to make the system work are always compartmentalized, and end up taking longer, costing more, and being less-than-ideally suited to what the client wants and needs.

• Unlike traditional companies in public safety, Symposium Technologies’ isn’t just a vendor, but a true technology partner.

• Every aspect of system design and business policy is relationship-based, providing our clients with the tools and services they need to take best advantage of technology on THEIR terms, fairly and transparently.

• We actively collaborate with our clients, constantly incorporating their feedback and suggestions to improve our systems, and making the results available to everyone.

• As a result we’re able to bring every system in on time and on budget, faster and more economically than comparable projects by others.

• It also means that Symposium clients enjoy the most complete and all-inclusive solutions, with every tool and service required to make the very best of the technology, both now and in the future.