Postsecondary institutions today are under ever greater expectations to have the ability to rapidly notify students and faculty of an emergency situation on campus and provide immediate guidance. Through tight integration with the existing IT infrastructure, current generation solutions can offer improved responsiveness in emergency situations while often also serving as a valuable tool for everyday campus communications needs.
Multimodal Capabilities Are Key
Given that campus administrators and public safety agencies cannot predict where students will be or how they should best be contacted at any particular time, versatility is key for postsecondary institutions that are exploring emergency alert systems. Mass e-mails or legacy autodialers alone are simply inadequate and ineffective. When it comes to delivering urgent notifications rapidly and with the widest reach, a multimodal approach – one that accounts for multiple modes of communications, including phone, e-mail, and Short Message Service (SMS) – is required.