Trend Alert: Best-of-Breed Solutions

Sharing Public Safety Software Trends We're Following 

By: Cliff Micham, Vice President of Procurement, NPSG 

Over the last few years, NPSG has noticed a trend towards agencies selecting best-of-breed or standalone solutions for their Public Safety technology needs. In fact, the last few agencies we’ve worked with have selected best-of-breed solutions, with a handful of other agencies open to considering them. 

What's Driving This Trend? 

In the past, the clear preference for agencies searching for a new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD), Records Management System (RMS), or Jail Management System (JMS) was an integrated solution from one vendor. However, many agencies are finding success when they focus their attention on finding the best solutions for each specific operational group.  

For example, the needs of CAD users are different than RMS or JMS users. Very few of the vendors provide top-tier solutions for each of those very different applications. In the case of a recent NPSG client, a vendor had a strong CAD offering, but weaknesses in RMS and JMS, which caused the agency to select two separate vendors to provide those applications. The result is no one had to compromise their needs by selecting a second or third best solution from the same provider. 

Agency Considerations 

The conundrum is that this best-of-breed trend comes with some considerations. Most of all, interfaces. Despite being separate systems, CAD (and Mobile), RMS, JMS must still work together for agencies to efficiently and effectively serve the public. Special attention to, and experience with, interfaces is critical to a successful project.  

The good news is interface data exchange methods, and the availability of APIs, have come a long way in recent years, paving the way for more agencies to select standalone solutions. Access to a vendor API, in many cases, allows the IT teams to engineer their own API without having to pay for expensive interfaces. 

Agency size may also play a role in the decision to choose a best-of-breed solution versus a full-suite solution. For smaller agencies, where there is less demand on a system, a full suite may be a good option. But for many large agencies that place more demand on their systems, there’s less chance one vendor can meet every need.