Is Incident Reporting and Incident Management Software The Same Thing?

If there’s one thing you can always count on in business, it’s that things will go wrong. How you deal with incidents can make a huge difference on how they impact your business and work environment. This is especially true when it comes to things like data security. Having good security hygiene in the workplace is essential, but accidents or blunders will happen. The key is to deal with those incidents in a timely and efficient manner, which is where incident reporting and incident management tools come in… but are those two different things? And if not, how are they different? Read on for answers.

Incident Reporting Software vs. Incident Management Software

First, let’s be clear about one thing: ideally, you should have strategies for both incident management and incident reporting. While they are technically different, the two terms often overlap and are even used interchangeably — thus the confusion about whether or not they’re different.

Incident Management

First, let’s talk about incident management. This term refers to the overall strategy of an organization when it comes to handling an incident. This involves a team of people in leadership positions, drawing from the executive board, IT, HR, legal, and communications.

The overall goals of incident management are to proactively assemble plans before an incident even occurs, oversee the technical aspects during response to an incident, and decide when and how to give out details of the incident to staff, clients, and / or the public. Incident management also involves following up after the incident to determine future strategies for dealing with similar incidents.

Incident management software helps facilitate this process by taking in information, tracking incidents so investigations aren’t lost or neglected, and providing custom reporting so that incidents can be explained both during and after resolution. Analytics tools can help root out the cause of the incident and help you to develop strategies to guard against future incidents.

Incident Reporting

Incident reporting is an integral part of incident management, in that (obviously) the incident must be reported before it can be acted upon. Incident reporting software provides the forms for providing information about the incident so the tracking and management process can begin, whether it’s a security incident, workplace injury, property damage, HR complaint, or anything else. Incidents don’t have to be accidents or major events, either; they can be near misses that illustrate a need for preventative measures going forward.

Why You Need an Incident Management Plan

There are a number of reasons why your organization needs an incident management plan, but the most important ones are these:

Being able to deal with incidents in a timely and efficient manner, with minimal chaos.
Ensuring your organization remains in compliance with regulations, laws and statutes.
Prevention and mediation of future incidents.
Continuous improvement of the workplace environment.
Identification of potential threats and weaknesses.

Typical Software Features

Now let’s talk about the most important features to look for in incident management software.

First, look for real-time incident reporting and tracking. Real-time reporting is crucial in today’s fast-moving world: the faster an incident is reported, the more readily it can be addressed before it escalates or causes more damage. Immediate capturing of details can potentially make a huge difference in damage control and harm prevention.

Also, look for a centralized incident database where reports, follow-ups, and outcomes can be stored for easy retrieval. Having one central, accessible place to store relevant information is vital to avoiding confusion and lost details, especially when audits, compliance checks, and other reports are involved.

Automated workflows and notifications are also important, to make incident reporting and management as streamlined and simple as possible. Notifications can help keep relevant parties informed about incidents via email, SMS, or other messaging systems.

Finally, look for analytics and root cause analysis capabilities. As mentioned previously, finding the root of an issue is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to preventing similar issues going forward.

What to Consider When Buying Software

When comparing incident management and reporting software, take into account things like budget, the size of your organization, and scalability. While there are free and open-source incident management software suites available, they may or may not have everything you need — but at the same time, an expensive enterprise solution might be overkill for your small business or organization. Keeping scalability in mind is important because ideally, you should have an incident management solution that can grow as your business grows, saving you costly downtime and re-training if you have to switch software down the line.

Don’t wait for the worst to happen before you create an incident management plan — today is the best day to get started.