San Francisco Solves Mass Communication Needs with Regroup

SAN FRANCISCO - July 1, 2015 - PRLog -- Following a highly successful first term, the City & County of San Francisco (CCSF) announces they will continue to leverage Regroup’s industry-leading Mass Notification platform to streamline and enhance communication between the City’s more than 60 departments and 30,000 employees.

CCSF has implemented Regroup’s technology across many of CCSF’s departments and services, including: the Department of Technology, the Department of Emergency Management, the Fire Department, the Department of Public Health, 311, Board of Supervisors, Health Service System, Human Services Agency, the Public Library and Public Information Officers.

The Department of Technology (DT) implemented Regroup during their citywide email migration from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Office 365 as a solution for business continuity, email list management and customer service team efficiency. Other departments have used Regroup for outgoing communication to the community. The Fire Department has incorporated Regroup into their Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) to deliver community announcements about upcoming classes and events, while 311 has used the technology to deliver email notifications to more than 100,000 residents.

Regroup has also completed a prototype of what would be the first-ever Early Earthquake Mass Notification solution in the United States. Under the guidance of the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Emergency Management, Regroup developed a system that would send text and voice messages to residents in advance of earthquakes hitting San Francisco. This system would be in the multiple languages required by SF City Ordinance, English, Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog. At the 3rd International Conference on Early Earthquake Warnings in Berkeley in September 2014, Mayor Ed Lee spoke about his excitement in working with Regroup and his desire to implement early earthquake warnings as soon as possible in San Francisco.

“We originally thought of Regroup as a disaster recovery and business continuity tool, but upon further investigation and interdepartmental collaborations the ideal grew to cover a wider spectrum and became an everyday tool,” relates Herman Brown, IS Project Director at DT. “Regroup gives us the ability to reach out to both internal and external contacts through multiple paths including text, voice and social media and has solved many of our communications challenges.”

Regroup was chosen because it was a system that would not only make communication easier and more effective, but would also be fully autonomous and independent from the City’s network and power grid in case of a disaster. CCSF required a mass-messaging platform that could be used simultaneously by multiple departments internally and could also be expanded to deliver external announcements to the more than 800,000 residents of San Francisco and the Bay Area.

“With Regroup, CCSF has not only drastically improved the speed and effectiveness of internal and external communications, our cloud-based platform ensures that during localized and widespread outages time-sensitive messages can still be sent out,” says Joe DiPasquale, CEO of Regroup.

DT considers effective communication fundamental to their success in serving the other departments, employees and the constituents of CCSF and hopes to continue improving communication as they further explore Regroup’s mass-messaging capabilities.

For a live demo of Regroup’s Emergency & Mass Notification System, sign up here: http://1.regroup.com/sf-free-live-demo/

About Regroup:

Regroup, the leading provider of Emergency Notification and Mass messaging solutions and the DRI 2015 Notification System of the Year, was founded at Stanford University in 2006 to solve the need the campus had for effective messaging across multiple communication channels, such as, mobile devices (text/voice), landlines, email, social media, websites and forums. Regroup stands apart from other messaging platforms with its user-friendly one-click messaging, integration with social media and client databases, unparalleled reliability, and unlimited text/voice/email/social media messaging. Regroup offers 24/7 support and saves clients money — on average 50%.

To learn more about how Regroup’s Emergency Messaging and Mass Notification System can streamline your organization’s day-to-day communications, as well as provide rapid communications during a crisis situation, call 917-746-6776 or email inquiries@regroup.com for a free customized online demonstration.