What is Enterprise-Class Emergency Notification?

Business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management professionals understand the many reasons for an effective emergency and incident notification solution. There are many names for an Emergency Notification System (ENS) such as – Crisis Communication System, Incident Notification, Alert Notification, and sometimes Mass Notification. And there are many different vendors to choose from, but not all stand up to the rigorous requirement of large organizations.

Regardless of what it’s called, what makes an ENS solution enterprise-class – versus simple mass outbound messaging? Enterprise-class solutions are comprehensive, flexible, resilient, private, secure, and provided by service-oriented vendors.

It's Secure

An enterprise-class system provides the confidence that when you need your ENS the most it will be there and not affected by the same disaster. The Advantage system, and related data, is stored in facilities with the most-up-to-date technological and physical security – combined with automatic failover should a facility be affected by physical threat or disaster. Our system is both locally and geographically redundant with an active-active SaaS based system and elastic infrastructure model that rapidly grows with our customer’s requirements. Our enterprise-class cloud based infrastructure is backed by ITILv3 framework, SSAE 16 Type II compliance, and certified to the ISO 20000-1 standard.

Local and Geographical redundancy
Automatic failover
24/7 physically monitored and firewalled facility
Active-Active SaaS based system
Elastic infrastructure model
Dedicated servers

It's Flexible

Large organizations need flexible solutions that support existing processes, a system that can integrate (when required) with existing databases through comprehensive APIs, and a system that has advanced functionality provided as a complete cohesive solution – not sold piecemeal.

Additionally, an enterprise-class ENS should be configurable in a manner that aligns with an organization’s continuity and recovery plans and not how their vendors tell them it should be used. During implementation, any Advantage module can be activated or deactivated. Powerful administrator functionality provides business continuity professionals with the ability they need to ensure their ENS behaves in the way that suits their organization best.

Stakeholder security role names and settings, activation options and reminders, as well as stakeholder reports, group types, names, and aliases.
Modules accessible to stakeholder members
Audio library content to allow for the development of pre-recorded messages
System defaults including device order as well as notification message acknowledgement, call transfer, message, voicemail options, and strong password management
System-wide lexicon defaults to ensure the most accurate pronunciation possible
Creation of reminders, reminder rcipients, reminder delivery method, and delivery time(s)
User interface by uploading multiple organizational logos and the language to associate with each logo, as well as choose from 12 different color schemes to coordinate with your organization`s brand
How to import stakeholders database options include via manual entry, .csv import, or integration with existing databases through the most comprehensive emergency notification system API
Export stakeholder database via .csv