Bottom Line Up Front:
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- Your CAD vendor doesn’t have to be your RMS vendor. Modern integration standards make it easy for a dedicated RMS to exchange data with any central CAD platform.
- Local operational knowledge matters. A vendor familiar with your state’s reporting mandates and your department’s daily workflows builds compliance and efficiency directly into the system.
- You gain faster, more responsive support. A locally focused vendor resolves issues without routing you through layers of national support infrastructure.
- You keep control of your agency’s configuration. A dedicated RMS vendor tailors the platform to your department’s size, structure, and priorities — not regional consensus.
- Enforsys Reliant RMS is already there. With operational interfaces to major CAD systems, Reliant gives departments real-time CAD data access to inform field personnel and streamline report completion.
For many police departments, the Computer-Aided Dispatch system is a regional or county-level decision. A central CAD platform serves multiple agencies, streamlining 911 call handling and dispatch coordination across jurisdictions. That arrangement makes operational sense — but it also creates an assumption that can quietly undermine a department’s effectiveness: the belief that Records Management must come from the same vendor.
In reality, choosing an RMS provider with deep familiarity in local police operations — independent of your CAD vendor — can deliver significant advantages that a one-size-fits-all approach simply cannot match.
Understanding the Distinction
CAD and RMS serve fundamentally different purposes. CAD is about real-time response: receiving calls, dispatching units, and tracking incident status. RMS, on the other hand, is the long-term backbone of a department’s institutional knowledge — managing arrest records, incident reports, evidence tracking, personnel data, and compliance reporting. While the two systems should communicate seamlessly, they don’t need to come from the same vendor to do so.
Modern data exchange standards and API-driven integrations make it straightforward for a dedicated RMS platform to receive CAD data and incorporate it into the records workflow. What matters is whether your RMS vendor truly understands how your officers, detectives, and records clerks work every day.
The Value of Local Operational Knowledge
A vendor embedded in the daily realities of local policing brings something a large, centralized CAD/RMS provider often cannot: an intimate understanding of state-specific reporting mandates, municipal workflows, and the practical challenges officers face on the ground.
Consider a state like New Jersey, where departments must comply with specific NIBRS and NJTR-1 reporting requirements. A vendor experienced with these obligations builds compliance directly into its workflows, reducing the administrative burden on department staff. That level of specificity is difficult to achieve when your RMS is a secondary module bolted onto a CAD platform designed to serve a broad, multi-state customer base.
Local knowledge also translates into faster, more responsive support. When a records clerk encounters an issue during end-of-month reporting or an officer needs a workflow adjustment, a vendor who understands the department’s processes can resolve problems quickly — without routing requests through layers of national support infrastructure.
Flexibility and Agency Autonomy
Tying RMS to a centralized CAD vendor can also limit a department’s autonomy. Configuration decisions may be driven by regional consensus rather than individual agency needs. A dedicated RMS vendor, by contrast, can tailor the system to the department’s specific size, structure, and operational priorities — whether that means customized reports, case management or specialized modules matter most to command staff.
A Smarter Approach to Integration
The smartest technology strategy isn’t necessarily one where every system shares a logo. It’s one where each component is purpose-built, deeply aligned with the people who use it, and connected through reliable integration. Departments that pair a regional CAD solution with a locally knowledgeable RMS vendor get the best of both worlds: coordinated dispatch across jurisdictions and a records platform that truly fits the way they work.
Choosing an RMS vendor should be about operational excellence — not vendor convenience. The department that recognizes this distinction positions itself for stronger compliance, better data quality, and a technology partnership that evolves alongside its mission.
Enforsys Reliant RMS: Built for This Approach
The Enforsys Reliant RMS System puts this philosophy into practice. Reliant maintains operational interfaces with major CAD systems, enabling multiple police departments — regardless of their dispatch platform — to have real-time access to CAD data directly within the records environment. Officers in the field receive up-to-the-minute incident information that informs their response and decision-making, while the seamless flow of CAD data into Reliant dramatically streamlines report completion. Instead of re-keying dispatch details or waiting for manual data transfers, officers and records staff work from a single, accurate source of information from the moment a call is dispatched through final report approval. The result is faster reporting, fewer errors, and a records system built by a team that understands the operational realities of the departments it serves.
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