Dakota ProActivity EHS Software

Great product

Comments: Its been very easy to use and congregates the appropriate data for me.

Pros:

Helps with compliance issues. The ease of use is very noteworthy.

Cons:

N/A. i do not at this time have any issues with the software to even give any negative feedback.

Incident Reporting, the hidden gem to transform safety culture.

Comments: Began with Dakota Scout for capturing incident and near miss data. I used it to collaborate on issues and conduct RCAs using the configurable alerts and journals. Corrective actions are created and tracked to closure in Dakota Tracer. This helped us transform our safety culture in under 3 years.

Pros:

All in one for EHS. Compliance, Auditing, Incident Reporting and CAPA tracking from all sources, audits, incidents, and compliance calendar. And the fact that I do not have to set up anything on a local server.

Cons:

Can be slow and glitchy due to the transformation between the old architecture, organization and the new Views architecture,.

Used system for 10yrs before we switched

Comments: The company really tries. Sales and Tech service are very good but they have to work with the product they have and it if subpar they have to deal with that and they try. We purchased a waste module for instance and for 3 years we cold not use it because it was not set up for our company, modifications took forever and in the end they stated they did not want to change to our needs because they are trying to limit customizations which made it unusable to use because we are not set up like a large company with one person in charge of waste. therefore we paid for a product for 3 years and could not use.

Pros:

As the title stated we no longer have this software. This software is known for it regulatory audits and information but we did not use it for that. We used it for incident tracking and environmental task tracking. The system worked "OK' for this and the cost for what we used it for is why we stayed with them for so long. My sales person was great.

Cons:

They seemed to have designed this system for companies that are very large and it is not easily customizable for other companies not set up with separate departments. When you need to change simple things it starts to get very expensive because you cannot do the changes yourself. Also the system is not inherently obvious on a user interface so it made it difficult on the back end. Biggest issue was customization and Nickle/dimeing. Also their quality control on changes was not great. Changes would be made and there were constantly issues that we found easily that they would have to go back and fix. Should never have made it our of their QC department.

EHS Manager

Comments: This is a great tool and system; this easy-to-use system is the future.

Pros:

Risk management is a great tool. The team is excited.

Cons:

Create dashboard with the risk management data.

Highly Recommend Dakota

Pros:

Fantastic tool for ease of tracking safety incidents and categorizing efficiently. The reporting feature is a significant time saver and incredibly useful when reporting information and data to all levels of management. This tool has been a significant time saver and improvement in safety data reporting from my role at Alro. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

Cons:

One opportunity for improvement would be to create a means to reorganize the sequence of fields in a table rather than having to recreate it when it is not in the order needed. Also, would love the option to rearrange the shortcuts on the dashboard as needed.

Customer support is great.

Comments: Great. Customer service was solid (they put up with me!). Design team worked hard with us and the roll out was a cake walk.

Pros:

Adapt ability. We made some huge changes to the standard program using a design team. They took time to learn our process and understand our needs. Once up and running help was a speed dial button away. They never failed me.

Cons:

Unfair question to ask me. We adapted the program dramatically. There were some hurdles we had to change what we HAD been doing to work with ProActiviy. Once we were both in alignment the program ran without a hitch or hiccup. Any dislikes I had wouldn't apply to the typical user. Set up can be intense, but once done you don't have to worry. It works.

Ok Software

Comments: Our support team for implementation has been great. They are very knowledgeable and responsive. I used velocity in the past and the customer support wasn't as good but the program was excellent and very intuitive so rarely did we need customer support.

Pros:

It has the ability to add several types of reports and audits. It has current regulations.

Cons:

The system isn't customizable enough and if we want anything more custom there's a fee. A few examples would be the email alert that leadership receives is blank for BBS. The inability to build the organization tree out in profiler without paying a custom fee. Specifically it would list site then area. The current system only allows site and doesn't have additional drop down for location. That makes it difficult to target areas and set up alerts that only impact certain leaders. The auditing program seems great but not intuitive at all. It is very difficult to set up a template for a quarterly safety inspection that all sites can copy and use. There isn't enough training offered that can be focused on a small topic. It would be nice to have 15 minute quick trainings on 1 thing.

ProActivity Feedback

Comments: Over all I find the ProActivity Suite to be a great product and have recommended it to many colleagues.

Pros:

The regulatory database is by far the best feature that the ProActivity Suite offers. As an Administrator, the new View allows me to provide specific views to enable the end user the ability to see the status of tasks that have been assigned to them. We have recently added the Management of Change module and this has enable the end user to manage the process on their own and alleviated the burden to the HS Department.

Cons:

ProActivity need to incorporate better BI Tools so we can better analyze the data and report to upper management. Recently their has been a problem with cookies that results in an "Out of present range" error and this needs to be corrected. The error results in the inability to save updates and is particularly disturbing to the end user. As a system administrator it also creates more work having to show the user how to correct the problem, only to see it re-occur.

Dakota - Incident Investigation and Action Item Tracking

Comments: PHA recommendation tracking, incident investigations (environmental and safety and asset and near misses including those requiring formal Root Cause Analysis), and action item tracking from investigations and Root Cause Analysis reports.

Pros:

As the database grows, it is easy to find past incident reports and action items. Our company also uses this for PHA recommendation tracking, and it functions well in all of the capacities we use it for. Notifications of status updates is exceptional.

Cons:

Configuring Tracer alerts to be informative and concise for end users can be a bit of a steep learning curve.

Auditor's Dream

Comments: This review is one person’s opinion. The author has over 30 years of hands on practical experience with environmental compliance programs. He was also the Northrup Grumman lead system analyst for Air and Hazardous Waste modules for the development and rollout of the US Air Force’s EESOH-MS compliance program. ProActivity Suite is a robust compliance tool that appears to provide the user with the latest in compliance requirements as they hit the Federal Register. But from a first time user’s point it is not a very user-friendly system to set up, is not out of the box a EMS, and does not appear very well suited for the smaller user with the smaller budgets. The company sale’s representatives are very knowledgeable and good at selling the system. As in all good sale’s presentations there is the showing of the shinny exterior whiz-bangs, but there is no ‘test’ driving allowed. There is no basis for the company reason of no ‘test’ driving due to protection of ‘proprietary information’. There is a user’s requirement questionnaire you fill out in advance that is supposed to help the sales/technical staff recommend solutions. The ‘Dream’ system is then presented which is the Cadillac. You will then be quoted a price, which will most likely be higher than expected, which will bring a ‘base-price’ for the Chevrolet without options. Of course this means all the items you really need and were sold on in the sales pitch are additional add-on costs, not mentioned in the newly

Pros:

Strong compliance monitoring Auditing Module Based Questions for tailoring

Cons:

No 'trial' period Auditing function only Basic system "ProActivity Suite" features and benefits are not easily understood Requires a lot training to setup Requires a lot of time to setup No 'trial' period

Excellent tool for Compliance and ISO14001 Conformance Management

Comments: Excellent tool. With the proper training, this is the best environmental and safety management program on the market.

Pros:

The decision trees for understanding what is applicable in Auditor. Ability to add site specific permit condition questions to the audit.

Cons:

The additional information needed to help those with little to no experience respond to emails sent from a task for their attention to properly respond.

Dakota Auditor

Comments: Good software but some days, very frustrating. Not sure what the problem is but there are times when the system responds quickly and other times where it takes 5-10 seconds (or longer) to update. This may not sound like a long time, but when you are in the middle of an audit and have 100's of questions to answer, this adds up. Also, occasionally, the system goes unresponsive.

Pros:

The audit questions can be customized and are frequently updated. The help desk is excellent.

Cons:

Some of the features like moving an audit from auditor to tracer are not intuitive. That said, if I use the software frequently this is not a concern. The software does tell me when a word is misspelled, but offers no correction. There's got to be a better way.

Easy to use, Great for tracking!

Comments: We use Auditor, [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] and love that they all interact with each other. It's really helped our organization keep track of action items and due dates. Customer service has been excellent to work with when we have questions!

Pros:

We love that we can track audits and non-conformances together within the software. We also like the calendar option to set up monthly reminders for our sites.

Cons:

The Organization View can take longer to load, but our company has many sub-folders set up.

Dakota EHS Software For Regulatory Compliance Auditing

Comments: I've been a Dakota user and administrator for over 10 years. I would not consider any other software at this time as Dakota is meeting the needs of our organization.

Pros:

The Dakota software works well for our organization. We have over 40 North America sites that we manage multiple EHS audits with over 100 users. Users find the software relatively easy to use.

Cons:

The mobile feature could use some improvement.

ProActivity Suite

Comments: Remaining compliant in all requirements.

Pros:

Tracer and MOC It allows us to track changes and regulations and requirements

Cons:

I like all aspects of this software. The integration into our system was easy.

Use of system

Comments: Have been using the product for 9 years to develop, conduct and document corporate based audits. Ease of use and functionality is a plus.

Pros:

The linkage between regulatory content (Profiler) to the audit function (Auditor) and to action item tracking (Tracer) is seamlessly integrated and functions well.

Cons:

There are times when the system slows down when working through regulatory applicability.

Dakota is a helpful tool for EHS Management and Compliance

Pros:

The program auditor. It makes conducting Audits easy.

Cons:

I wish there were easier ways to create reminders for a compliance calendar and assign responsible persons.

Dakota Review

Comments: I like the overall concept. I have only worked with the system for about a year and a half, but I see the value it provides in helping us stay organized with our tasks and compliance tasks.

Pros:

I like the calendar feature where I can see all dakota tracer items due for the month

Cons:

Creating dakota tracer tasks.....theres got to be a simpler way to create them and assign them to individuals

Dakota Review

Pros:

The ability to record incidents, filter results and track corrective actions

Cons:

The ability to enter items in the new views and the ability to create and adjust required fields

CSD

Comments: Excellent !!

Pros:

User friendly keep me up-to-date on task regulations and print out my reports easy

Cons:

To slow to load pages, when try to open auditor needs improvement

Review

Comments: I was on the team that created a site. The tool is pretty good but the development process was at times very frustrating. QA/QC process would fix one thing but in the process break something that was previously fine.

Pros:

Customizable. Functionality is pretty intuitive.

Cons:

Main issue was how long it took to load.

Dakota Software

Pros:

This product is very user friendly. I like the fact that I get emails on what I need to enter for the month prior to the deadline.

Cons:

I have no complaints about this program.

good

Comments: Nice.

Pros:

sorting out relevant regulatory requirements of KOREA Chemical industry. (not necessary for us to look at hell a lot of laws..)

Cons:

Not being able to use Korean language in the tool.. But it got solved by the DAKOTA IT team after a while

Incident and Observation tracking

Comments: overall I am happy with this product.

Pros:

Integration was easy and once you learn the system it is good.

Cons:

Wish that it were easier to add or change things that were not caught while in the trial phases and pricing.