How to Buy a Lone Worker Monitoring and Alerting System - 14 Questions

If you’ve decided to upgrade the ways you currently look after your lone workers, you’ll need to establish your set of requirements. What do you need the system to do? If you’re not quite at this step, have a look at this post.

If you know your requirements, your next step is to evaluate your alternatives. If you haven’t done this before, or you haven’t done it for a while, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between different suppliers. How do you find the right supplier for you?

To be more precise, it’s about how to find the right supplier for your requirements, and that’s about what you need, and what they have. Here are 14 questions to ask your suppliers, to help you determine whose overall solution – what they provide, how they provide it and when – is the right fit for you.

1. What is your experience of lone worker protection systems? What about other alarm systems and process control systems? (our view: you want a company that knows the space)

2. What work have you done in our sector? (you want a company that knows your space)

3. Can you share stories of customers who were able to improve their business as a result of your input? (you want a company who can share similar success stories)

4. How big is your range of alerting and signalling devices? (you want choice)

5. Do your devices and systems each have their own monitoring and communications, or are they connected into one master view for us? (you want simplicity)

6. Do you use traditional methods like serviced call centres or do you use technology to automate the alerting and communications process? (you want value and return)

7. How long does it take on average for an alert to reach three-to-five first responders? (you want as quickly as possible, ideally in seconds)

8. Do we contract with just you or do we have to engage with other suppliers as well? (you want simplicity)

9. What are your different payment models, in case we want to minimise our up-front investment? (you want choice)

10. How easy is it for us to start small and add or upgrade as we go? (you want simplicity)

11. How cost effectively does your solution scale if we doubled or tripled our numbers of lone workers? (you want cost effectiveness!)

12. How will you manage this project? (you want effect project management)

13. How will you manage our account and provide support? (you want direct and responsive support)

14. Where do you provide your support from? (you want support in your time zone)

This post is taken from our ebook entitled ‘The Worry-free Guide to Lone Worker Monitoring, Alerting and Communications Compliance.’ It’s a long title but quite a short, informative read. You can get the guide here. (You’ll need to part with your name and email address so we can send it to you, but that’s all.)

To talk to us directly about your requirements and how these translate into the right lone worker system for you, feel free to get in touch.