Background

San Marcos Fire Department faced a forced timeline to replace an incident reporting system nearing end-of-life. Instead of swapping one reporting product for another, the department used the moment to modernize broader operations.

Across the organization, everyday workflows relied on a patchwork of purpose-built tools and improvised systems—creating friction for line personnel and administrative teams alike.

Challenge

Tool sprawl created avoidable complexity. Scheduling, overtime, and daily staffing visibility required bouncing between Outlook, Excel, and legacy tools—often reconciling data each morning across multiple logins.

Because scheduling affects pay, assignments, and overtime, change management mattered. The department needed a workflow firefighters would trust and actually use.

Solution

San Marcos ran a structured evaluation with representation from every rank and administration—about 20–30 participants across 5–6 vendors—to select a platform that could consolidate workflows.

The department chose First Due to bring scheduling and personnel management into a single shift board, with a roadmap to expand into additional connected modules over time.

Results

Implementation prioritizes the modules that touch the most people first—starting with Scheduling & Personnel Management—so the shift board can replace inbox threads, spreadsheets, and multiple daily logins.

Looking ahead, San Marcos expects connected workflows (including future incident command and next-generation incident documentation) to reduce friction, improve consistency, and support AI-assisted documentation such as voice-to-text and report-writing help.