Why Customer Engagement is Vital to BlackRainbow

The Head of Law Enforcement and Government for UK and Europe at BlackRainbow, Nikki Moscrop, explains how marketing and customer engagement are vital in supporting our business operations.

As a young girl growing up in Africa, Nikki Moscrop dreamed of moving to England and working in equestrian eventing. Her wish came true, and she moved to England in 1998, but her career took a very different trajectory and after a spell in law, she fell into forensics by chance and has never looked back.

Nikki, who is the Head of Law Enforcement and Government for UK and Europe at BlackRainbow, started her forensics career as a case coordinator in the phone laboratory of CCL Solutions Group.

‘It was a fantastic but challenging experience. I had two weeks to learn everything there was about forensics and policing but who doesn’t love a challenge?’ she explains. ‘Working my way to operations manager and being part of the team to grow CCL into one of the largest multi-disciplined digital forensics companies, it is here where I really found my true passion for wanting to support the fight against crime. In addition, I also met my ‘partner in crime’, my husband.

Industry Perspective

After eight years, she was offered the opportunity to be the Managed Service Operations Manager within the Met Police which gave her another perspective in the industry she was in, seeing both public and private sectors coming together and the need for this collaboration.

‘It was here that I reconnected with Dr Jim Kent and the BlackRainbow Team and discovered the ground-breaking NIMBUS. I, as did many, went through years of not having a fit-for-purpose CMS that could also deal with quality standards such as ISO 17025 / 17020. I was excited to have the opportunity to use NIMBUS; however, this turned into me joining BlackRainbow and having the opportunity to really be a part of this exciting journey.’

Excellence in Law Enforcement & Government

She admits to thoroughly enjoying her current role in heading up the Law Enforcement and Government side of BlackRainbow to lead, manage and develop this division to ensure it is always delivering a high standard of excellence in all our activities to this sector.

‘The role is about good account management, building trust between you and your customer and maintaining your integrity – my career has very much been built on this,  being open and honest and it is one of the reasons I joined BlackRainbow is to continue this ethos,’ says Nikki. ‘We work very much side by side with our customer as they go through their journey and challenges.’

Expanding the NIMBUS Ecosystem

She reveals that BlackRainbow is continuing to expand the business as it has had considerable uptake from investigators utilising NIMBUS. It is now used by a number of forces, law enforcement agencies and corporate customers.

‘Once it lands in a force and all eyes are upon it, everyone wants it which is a great position to be in when it comes to driving new business. NIMBUS is so adaptable to different use cases that is hard not to want to put it ‘everywhere’ and this is where it can get challenging,’ Nikki tells us. ‘Ensuring that we listen and understand customer requirements is important to us as we want to help make our customers successful in the fight against crime so we must consider when NIMBUS is deployed, the use case, in what environment and at the right time,’ she continued.

The fact that the business is growing at such a rate makes it even more important for it to attract experienced staff who are committed to promoting the BlackRainbow business ethos. She explains that account management is from the pre-sales stage, supporting the customer with business cases through to procurement and writing tenders, all of which can be a lengthy process in the public sector, so being patient and diplomatic come hand in hand.

‘From this point, handing over to our delivery team who are extremely good at what they do when it comes to implementing NIMBUS – their ability to be agile and work with the customer, this teamed with our product NIMBUS is second to none.’

The Best Form of Marketing

The company has a unique approach to marketing with ‘word of mouth’ being a key driver, which Nikki describes as ‘the best marketing’. She believes the fact that customers are so supportive and keen to act as a reference for the product and company is a very valuable and vital part of the overall marketing efforts.

BlackRainbow is a popular and familiar face at key conferences and exhibitions as it considers these opportunities a vital way to stay in touch with the community, share challenges and ideas as well as supporting law enforcement CPD which it does both virtually and physically.

‘Engaging a successful audience can be difficult but we love to show off NIMBUS, so we always have it on a screen to give demonstrations,’ Nikki explains. ‘NIMBUS covers a wide use case, so we tend to attract a varied audience which allows us to show features across the system whether it is tracking evidence, logging decisions and tasking, visualising a sequence of events, linking staff competencies to operations, managing documents and risks and lets not forgot disclosure.’

‘I think being able to gauge a person to know what they are seeking is an art as well. Do they want to just browse, look at merchandise or want to know more about NIMBUS? and then building on that to start a conversation.’

Complex Case Investigations

In terms of current projects and products that BlackRainbow is marketing, its core product is NIMBUS case and quality management solution (including NIMBUS Forensics) that covers a number of modules for that single interoperable ICT solution for organisations. It is built specifically for Law Enforcement around complex case investigation and intelligence with underlying quality management.

NIMBUS can be quickly transitioned across divisions (from rural to urban volume crime offences, including operations where the threat to public and officer safety may be high, murders, serious and organised crimes) due to the ease of configuration, flexibility and cross-discipline design.

It enables centralised workflows and automations to be built, delivering significant efficiencies, greater collaboration, and improved case transparency from initial incident and evidence seizure through to disclosure and the subsequently generated intelligence.

As investigations become more complex and time-sensitive, physical and digital information needs to efficiently make its way into the central source of the investigation/operations command. NIMBUS absorbs this information rapidly to understand and build a visual sequence of events.

‘Gathering this data and converting it into relevant, useable information for presentation as potential evidence has historically not been simple,’ explains Nikki.

Four Key Principles

Nikki tells us that NIMBUS follows four key principles: data capture; case productivity; case data analysis; and case disclosure and reporting.

‘Every bit of information is recorded in a coordinated way enabling investigators to see the bigger picture in real time and be provided with a reliable and defensible audit trail into the justice system,’ she says.

NIMBUS captures and links staff training, competencies and assets to cases ensuring procedures are followed in line with policing standards. It is also streamlining the way policing has previously managed investigations by providing a single solution which is configurable and agile to evolve and adapt to emerging challenges, cost-effectively brings transformational benefits, is robust, interoperable (on-prem/SaaS) and mobile-device compatible.

Nikki confirms that there is no other solution in the market that offers this level of integration, transparency, risk management, orchestration, and operational efficiencies for end-to-end case management, contemporaneous recording of decision-making and operational responses.

Future Plans for the NIMBUS Ecosystem

Looking to the future, the company has exciting plans to develop and improve NIMBUS Investigator and will announce its plans shortly. Nikki cites her proudest achievement as being able to deploy NIMBUS into customers and see how the system helps make their jobs better and easier.

‘Every day I wake up and look forward to speaking to our customers or next customers and seeing what challenges they face and how can we at BlackRainbow solve it. Working within law enforcement is a real honour and to be able to support our emergency services to help improve their way of working is a success in my eyes.’

You can download a PDF version of this article here and if you’d like to know more, please get in touch today.

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