Is it safe to assume many of us wouldn’t have guessed we’d still be dealing with the repercussions of COVID nine months later? I believe this is the third or fourth time I have written something around it in this blog. And to think of the impact this virus has had on pretty much everything including businesses both small and large and across every industry…it’s unreal. I live in Chicago and we have had several long-standing bars and restaurants go under as a result. Places like Lawry’s The Prime Rib which opened 46 years ago and is expected to permanently close at the end of 2020. Or, Southport Lanes whose building was built in 1900, turned into a bowling alley in 1918 and added a speakeasy in 1922. The list goes on. These were staples in my city that are, or soon will be, no longer.
While many working in Government or Public Safety will likely not have to worry about a shutdown, I have heard from several of those that are Genesis customers that their previously planned 2020 projects have either been put on hold or worse, are off the table altogether as funding has either been suspended or reallocated. It’s, for this reason, I thought I would revisit the Genesis Grant Assistance Program (GAP) we introduced on May 1st of this year. My hope is by doing so customers who are interested in any of our Genesis products may have a shot at resurrecting the opportunity to take advantage of what our software offers to Radio System Managers or Dispatch Operators, for example, because they were able to secure the funding they needed.
Speaking of those “moments”, when you think about the types of decisions dispatchers have to make per call multiplied by the number of calls they handle per day it’s kind of unbelievable. I read a statistic that the average number of calls answered on a busy day is between 300 – 500 PER DISPATCHER…WOW! With that in mind, imagine needing to ask them to remember the specifics about each and every one of those calls days, weeks, even months later; talk about impossible. Not to mention, would you want to relive some of those more emotionally charged moments? It’s bad enough they aren’t able to find out if the person on the other end had a happy ending or not in some cases.