The following response needs assessment is used as a tool by HyperAlert to help you, our customers, consider and identify your critical needs. We analyze your responses to help us determine how best to assist you in solving your pressing communications and emergency response requirements.

• How does your company communicate with large groups of employees on a daily basis? during emergency situations? (For example, with email, call trees, software, etc.)
  
  
• How long would it take your company to communicate with 500 employees and be sure they received the information? If applicable, 1000 employees or more?
  
  
• What is particularly effective or lacking about the way you communicate currently?
  
  
• Do you feel that critical response time is sometimes lost trying to assemble a group of responders? How much time is lost?
  
  
• Do you use multiple software systems to communicate with your employees? If so, how many separate software licenses are required to maintain your current software support systems?
  
  
• If applicable, how much time is devoted to employee training on each system?
  
  
• If you have a notification system, is it easy-to-use? How much training is typically required for employees to effectively use the system?
  
  
• If you have a notification system, do employees use it in daily operations as well as emergency notification? If not, why not?
  
  
• Do employees report difficulty in using any of the systems? If so, what are the difficulties?
  
  
• If software is currently used to communicate with employees or customers, how easy is it to maintain up-to-date contact information?
  
  
• Can you upload contact information from your existing HR database?
  
  
• Does your company routinely send out For Your Information (FYI) pages to groups of people?
  
  
• If you or your colleagues could design your own response management system, what would it consist of and how would it work?
  
  
• Shifting gears, when you have an emergency, how do you manage your communications and implement your emergency response plan?
  
  
• What are the goals and objectives of your current response plan(s)? Which department or person is responsible for maintaining and implementing them?
  
  
• Are there agencies outside your company that you call on to help during an emergency situation? Are you able to reach them easily with your existing method of contact?
  
  
• If yes, how many agencies do you rely on, and what communications devices do they use? Are they the same devices your company uses?
  
  
• During emergency scenarios, do you designate Central Command, Mobile Command, and Alternate Command locations? Does changing locations effect the way you manage communications? If so, how?
  
  
• If you use a notification system, can it be activated by telephone as well as through the Internet?
  
  
• When assembling a group of responders, do you have a method to quickly identify their availability and their ETA to the scene?
  
  
• Is it important for you to be able to access documents associated with your response plans during an emergency? Can you currently access them using the Internet?
  
  
• If you use a communication system as part of your emergency response, do you need for that system to allow you to adapt the emergency response plan to the live conditions for that situation?
  
  
• Again if you use a communication system, do you need it to handle multiple, simultaneous contact efforts?
  
  
• What type of emergency plan logs do you currently keep? Would access to real-time logs of plan events and employee responses be helpful?
  
  
• Once plans have been deployed, can data on plan events, personnel actions and system response times be used to generate logs and various reports?
  
  
• If you have a communications system currently, is it capable of receiving external data and making 'automatic' notifications or alerts for emergency response?
  
  
• If yes to the above, can you describe these applications and how they are integrated into your enterprise systems?
  
  
• Would an integrated solution capable of managing a full range of response functions across multiple operations and locations be a useful tool?