EHS Software Guide
What is EHS Software? Define EHS
software. EHS stands for Environment,
Health and Safety.
This is a wide arena which can further be broken down
into three main data management categories:
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Environment and Waste Management
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Occupational Health and Medical
Records
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Industrial Hygiene and Safety
The purpose of this
EHS software guide is
to help explain relevant terminology, processes and
pitfalls when implementing environment, health
and safety software. Because EHS can be such a vast
topic simply by nature of its acronym (Environment,
Health and Safety),
one of the most important aspects of any software
package becomes our number one bullet point.
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A Modular Solution: Modular
systems let you pick and choose just the components you
need at the time, thus saving you money. And they
let you add on down the road as your business rules and
requirements change or grow. Look for a system
that has modules for every aspect of an EHS program that
your organization will grow into at some point.
Some systems do one thing very well and that may be fine
right now but remember, you will grow and your data
collection and compliance needs will expand. Eventually
you will either combine with another department which
can utilize another module or your data reporting needs
will require expansion.
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Flexibility Means Power: Can
the system you choose adapt to your ever changing
business rules or does your business have to change to
meet the requirements of the software? The answer
to this question is very important because a software
package that limits change will stifle your growth in
every way. You will want to change the way you do
things from time to time and you need a system that
allows you to make changes on the fly and also, add
custom triggers, processes and interfaces.
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Price - License and Maintenance Fees:
Most systems have a license or subscription fee plus a
yearly maintenance fee. The industry average for
the maintenance fee is roughly 18-22% of the license
fee. DataPipe is currently at 15% and has been the
lowest maintenance fee in the industry for EHS software
for decades. This is because for the most part
DataPipe sits there and works and we don't get a lot of
calls to our support staff. When we do, customers
talk directly to the programmers that wrote the code and
get hands on and immediate, personal customer service.
Its one of our best features and the lowest price in the
industry to boot.
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Look for Longevity:
We have seen companies come and go in a year.
Even large stable companies like Oracle have come in
an out of the EHS software field. In the end
Knorr Associates is the only company that has the
experience and the longevity to say they really know
EHS software. January 2009 marked our 30th year
doing EHS Software. We started out in 1979
interfacing instruments and EHS data. We were
truly an EHS software company right from the get-go.
When Windows came out in the late 80s, DataPipe was
released as one of the first database driven windows
applications. Since then DataPipe has undergone
several technology upgrades as new frontiers have been
reached in software development. Now the latest
version of DataPipe is entirely MS .NET driven.
We have been able to add innovative features that
truly benefit the customer experience. Over 30
years in the EHS software business and the one thing
that our clients can say is that DataPipe just sits
there and works - all the time.
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Personal Attention - Customer
Support: Every vendor offers some form
of customer support. You might get a 24-7 phone bank
that will always have some teenager available to
answer your call and perhaps help you with a check
list or script. You might get an operator or
some nice music that you can listen to for 30 minutes
while you wait. There is no one in the industry
who can come close to the level of personal attention
that Knorr Associates provides its customers.
Ask them - we encourage it. We have no phone
bank. We have no music for you to listen to.
We simply connect you to our most experience
developers who most likely wrote the portion of the
program that you are calling about. We work with
you on your schedule and you get connected right away.
We work diligently to answer all your questions until
the problem is resolved. We are very proud of
this effort and we challenge anyone to find a better
level of customer support and client satisfaction.
DataPipe is a complete EH&S information
management software solution. If you are interested
in taking a look at our modules or want to learn more
about
occupational health software and the various modules
within that suite or if you want to look at
industrial
hygiene software and the various modules that make up
that suite, please review our
modules page.
Knorr Associates Inc. (KAI) is the leading US and Global
provider of Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) and
Risk Management software. The company, headquartered
in Butler, New Jersey was founded in 1979 as the first
EHS Software developer on the scene, integrating EHS
instruments long before PCs were on the market. It
wasn't until 1989 when the very fist windows based EHS
software application - DataPipe - was released (and it
really was one of the first windows based software
applications - period). Since then KAI has grown to be
the premier EHS software provider with a global client
base representing companies of all sizes from every major
industry sector.
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