LEIM, policeledintelligence.com, and a great show!

Ed Claughton
PRI Management Group

I just returned from my third LEIM conference and exhibition in San Diego and what a great time. I have been twice as my officer self and now as an exhibitor as the owner of PRI Management Group (I am a police lieutenant by night and business owner by day!).

I had the opportunity my first time around in 2006 to be a speaker on police records management for a standing room only audience.  I was shocked at the turnout but realized that law enforcement is getting around to learning the importance of sound records management operations and the feedback was great.

While in San Diego I had the opportunity to meet some great colleagues and see some impressive technology.   In particular I had the privilege of meeting Nick from policeledintelligence.com, a law enforcement technology blog recently rated as the 6^th fastest growing WordPress blog out of 20 million or so!  Nick has been an information security analyst, consultant and now rookie cop as well.  With impressive knowledge in IT security, deep interest in police technology and a strong following it’s no wonder vendors listen when he speaks (or writes) which brings me to my next topic.

While at LEIM I had an interesting conversation with a representative from a company with bat wings as its logo.  If you hadn’t noticed Motorola had completely disappeared not too long ago from the RMS market for two years because its product didn’t work.  Why? Because its Motorola and Motorola’s business model hasn’t changed with the times. How you ask? It didn’t listen to the people that mattered the most and focused on making money, not customers.

Today’s business requires, demands, driving internal focus down to the end user.  This simply means pay attention to what your customers have to say and make the product work the way it should.  Hopefully the folks at Motorola read the USA Today article about how IBM has lasted successfully as a 100 year old company.

Companies which aren’t flexible self-destruct.  The trick is focusing on and maintaining core tenets and objectives while remaining flexible in the approach.  The article quotes Vicki TenHaken, professor of management at Hope College who says “companies that last almost always put making money secondary to a broader and more ambitious stretch goal”.

The guy with the bat wings I spoke to was very bright and personable (an attribute also missing historically from folks at Motorola).  Yet I still heard a lot of complicated business-speak that is sure to turn away any cop.  Nonetheless they now have a new RMS product called Premier One and I am looking for feedback since I haven’t tried it out yet (if you have please leave your comments below);  I was too busy at the show checking out Global Software’s Global Justice RMS product.

The EVP, Jeff Pugh, gave a client of mine and I a test drive and full demo of their RMS and I was very impressed.  This company has 200 customer agencies, not too big and not too small, and serves primarily small and medium size departments.  Jeff was true to the core and if he is a likeness of his employees I would bet their customers are in good hands.  This RMS is very powerful and does everything a cop, records technician, and gold badged boss would want it to do.  Everything.  And then some.  They offer a Visual FoxPro platform and a .NET platform.  I have seen a lot of RMS products and my only recommendation to Jeff was to work on the user interface a little to make navigating the robust software easier.

Full audit trails, the ability to field correct reports even after they are in RMS, great research/analysis query functions, and a choice of over 100 canned reports make this system really really nice.  Just don’t go changing your approach and keep on listening.  Maybe the bat wings could learn something from these guys.

P.S.

IACP: Champion Exhibition is about as pleasurable to deal with as a shot of pepper spray in the eye.  Hope another company can be utilized in the future; otherwise fantastic show!