Implementation Examples - Entertainment & Education

Outdoor Event Equipment Event Management - Oversight

The Challenge

An events promotion and management firm rely heavily on volunteers to assist in the operations of their various entertainment events each year. For the events to be successful, venue staff and management, outside vendors, the firm’s on-site operations staff and the volunteers need to communicate with each other in real time. The firm has acquired several hundred 2-way radios that they use at each of the events and distribute those radios to the volunteers, vendors and venue staff at the start of each day before the event opens to the public and collects the radios as the people they have been issued to leave for the day or when the multi-day event is concluded. At each event, radios get lost, stolen, not returned and damaged.

The event company's goals were:

To build an inventory of all the radios that they have (including model numbers and serial numbers) and keep that inventory up to date.
To keep track of which radios get used and how often.
To record when each radio is issued to someone and who that someone is.
To determine which radios are not returned and who was last in custody of the specific radio that went missing.

Sparrow's Solution

A list of operational radios was compiled in Excel and that list was imported into Sparrow resulting in a unique Sparrow Item QR Code marker to be created for each unique radio.
The collection of imported radio Item QR Code markers was printed (24 to a page) onto Avery labels and those labels were affixed to the back side of the radios – each unique radio receiving the correct corresponding Sparrow Item QR Code marker based on the radio’s serial number.
When new radios are purchased, they are added to Sparrow when they are received and their individual Sparrow Item QR Code markers are printed to Avery labels and affixed to the radios being received.
When a radio is handed out to any of the individuals that are assisting with the operations of the event (vendors, venue staff, volunteers) the person receiving the radio scans the Sparrow Item QR Code marker affixed to the radio to claim custody of the radio. When the radio is returned, the firm’s equipment manager scans the radio’s QR Code marker to indicate that it has been returned.

ROI & Benefits

By constructing a complete inventory of all the radios that were operational and checking to see that each of the radios on that list actually worked and then using that list as the primary import for Sparrow, the firm built an inventory that is now stored in Sparrow’s secure online database.
The inventory stored in Sparrow’s secure online database is kept up to date by adding new equipment as it is received and “archiving” equipment that is no longer operational.
By mandating that each person taking custody of a radio scan the radio at the time that they are issued it and because each time a Sparrow Item QR Code marker is scanned, Sparrow records the time and date of the scan and the registered identity of the person scanning it, a log is compiled in Sparrows secure online database of who has which piece of equipment and when they took position of it.
At the end of each day, the log of current custody is reviewed and the people that forgot to return the radios in their custody are contacted resulting in fewer “missing” radios.
Post event analysis of the custody logs results in analytics regarding which unique radios are being issued more often than others and helped the firm balance the utilization rates of the radios to increase the overall operational lifespan of the units by decreasing battery cycles on overused radios.