Toronto Zoo Uses Omnigo iTrak to Enhance Incident Tracking, Reporting, and Analytics

“Over the years, we really ‘zoo-ified’ iTrak to get everything we need just by customizing the checklists and dropdowns. How it reacts in our environment is a big deal and how quickly we can disseminate our reports to our directors and managers – it’s really important we’re able to do that.” Graham Birtles, Supervisor of Safety and Security in the Health and Safety Branch, Toronto Zoo

Customer

The Toronto Zoo, Toronto, CA

Challenge

The Toronto Zoo had been relying on handwritten incident reports and notes, with papers piling up, making it a challenge to locate and search through reports later. Because of this, it was nearly impossible to get any kind of actionable data that helped the security team track trends and preplan for incidents. The staff found the process too labor intensive and would often decide it wasn’t worth the time to document all incidents. This made it challenging to fully understand what, when, and where, incidents were happening, as well as how much time was the security team was spending on specific tasks.

“We didn’t know what was going on. We knew there were problems, but we couldn’t pinpoint what the issues were. The correct people in the zoo weren’t being notified because we didn’t have the notification capabilities that sent the reports to the important people,” said Graham Birtles.

Solution

Omnigo proposed iTrak because of its superior searching capabilities, ability to gather and analyze information, and flexibility. It was the ideal solution to the zoo’s challenges with features including:

• 24-hour service
• Incident reporting
• Lost and Found
• GuardTour to track guard activity and proof of presence
• Mobile capabilities that allow staff to write incident reports in the field
• iDispatch to track time spent on calls
• Daily logs
• Customization capabilities to meet the zoo’s specific needs
• Notifications that are automatically sent to staff members that need to see them
• Comprehensive searching capabilities
  

“We wanted to get data that we could then quantify and quickly search. We wanted to be able to reference incidents and find out where our problem places, times, and people were at the zoo,” said Birtles. “It’s all really good information that was just impossible to get when we were writing this all on paper.”

iTrak was also suggested as a solution because it ensured the nurses’ center was able to create incident reports and log information, and the software’s permissions kept the security and nursing departments’ information separate and secure, ensuring staff was only able to access the information they needed.

Birtles continued, “Basically, iTrak checked all of the boxes for us, which was great. I liked the flexibility because, as a zoo, we’re not the same as everyone else out there. There’s a lot of subtle things we need to customize for ourselves.”

Results

The number of incident files increased once the Toronto Zoo implemented iTrak because it was so much easier and convenient for staff to create reports. The staff is also able to see how much time is being spent on a call and how much time is spent doing calls for other branches.

Officers use GuardTour to show staff proof of presence during the night shift, freeing up supervisors to do other tasks. They also use the mobile app, which eliminates the need for officers to type their incident reports because they can simply speak into their phones.

At the end of the year, when the security department performs their audits, they use the information provided by iTrak to write performance reviews. They recall data and use those reports to make decisions when preparing the following year’s budget. Better data allows the zoo to use real analytics to show what the security branch has done and where they need to spend more money.

“There are certain tasks we wouldn’t have even tried to tackle before using the software. If someone had come to us asking how many times something has happened on a Monday – there’s no way. We’re not even going to look,” said Birtles. “iTrak is definitely worth the investment for us.”