Nothing is more important than keeping your campus community safe, and Singlewire Software’s industry-leading mass notification and visitor management solutions help enhance safety and security, streamline communication and manage critical incidents seamlessly.
In this interview with Campus Safety, Singlewire Software President and CEO Terry Swanson describes how his company’s products can help campuses detect incidents, initiate mass notifications, and manage emergency communication needs.
Singlewire Software President and CEO Terry Swanson. Photo courtesy Singlewire Software
Campus Safety: What is/are the top emergency notification and/or panic alarm/mobile duress system or app from your company, and what makes it special? How does it apply to healthcare facilities, schools and/or higher education security, public safety and/or emergency management?
Terry Swanson: InformaCast is our flagship mass notification and incident management platform. Its real power is its ability to connect to the existing technology a campus has in place to help create a single hub to manage safety and communication needs.
With InformaCast in place, campuses can instantly detect threats using everything from panic buttons to AI video surveillance, automatically initiating text, audio, and visual notifications to all of a campus’s communication tools. This helps reduce the time it takes to get a message out, grab people’s attention, and get them to the steps they need to stay out of harm’s way.
From there, campuses can use InformaCast to view maps of where an incident is taking place, coordinate with first responders, gain real-time insights, and gather key stakeholders using virtual collaboration tools to assess a situation and deploy an effective response.
CS: What other products or offerings would you like to highlight, and what are some of their qualities and benefits?
Swanson: Our other product is Visitor Aware, a visitor and safety management tool. It helps verify visitor identities by requiring them to present a photo ID and have their picture taken at a check-in kiosk. That information is then scanned against national sex offender databases and government watchlists to identify potential threats.
What makes Visitor Aware unique is the lack of proprietary hardware. There is no special equipment campuses need to purchase. They can simply add the app to an iPad and begin enhancing security at their entrances with more rigorous visitor screening.
CS: How do your company and its offerings address the needs of hospitals, schools and/or universities?
Swanson: Safety and communication go hand in hand. Every campus needs to be able to share information quickly when an emergency occurs. Our offerings expand a campus’s ability to detect threats, notify everyone, and manage incidents.
With our software in place, emergency messages can go out automatically or with the simple push of a button. Simultaneous text, audio, and visual alerts reach everyone on campus with the same information, reducing confusion and leading to faster response times. We simplify the alerting process and provide a reliable communication method to reduce the chance that someone misses a message that impacts their safety.
CS: What else is new or noteworthy about your company for 2025?
Swanson: We have several exciting developments in store for 2025. Our InformaCast platform will be evolving to help campuses better address their daily operational needs while continuing to address critical safety requirements. Visitor Aware will soon expand to offer campuses two new tools for dealing with end-of-day dismissal and excusing students from class.
We’re excited to be able to continue developing innovative and effective solutions for campus safety and communication challenges.
CS: What is your company’s overall value proposition to schools, universities and/or hospitals? Why should they do business with you?
Swanson: Our mission is to provide solutions that help keep people safe and informed, wherever they are, whatever the situation. We’re a technology company, but people are at the center of everything we do. We’ve been doing this for over 20 years and continue to provide reliable solutions that address a wide range of safety and operational needs.
Whether it’s trying to find a better way to respond to an active shooter or simply trying to figure out ways to modernize campus communications, we have the tools, experience, and resources to address any safety or communication challenge.
CS: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Swanson: When people think of Singlewire Software, they often consider us a company that helps modernize overhead paging, which we do very well. Paging is a great starting point for any campus to begin rethinking its safety strategy because if people don’t get the information they need, everything else falls apart. However, safety is about more than just sending a message, and it’s why we have developed our InformaCast solution to do so much more than paging.
With a full range of threat detection, mass notification, incident management, and technology integration capabilities, we can help campuses greatly enhance their responses to critical events. singlewire.com
