Police1’s Spotlight articles introduce the products and services of valued sponsors in their own words. This article profiles Operative IQ, which helps police, fire and EMS organizations simplify and streamline their operations with software solutions in key areas like RFID asset tracking, narcotics chain of custody, fleet management, field tools and more. These responses were provided by Marketing Manager Bora Choi.
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What was the inspiration behind starting your company?
Operative IQ was born 19 years ago from a direct, real-world need within the emergency services industry. Frustrated by the inefficiencies of pen-and-paper inventory tracking, founders Steve Puckett and Shane Garrison approached E.J. Aufderheide, our CEO, to develop a digital solution. The trio, along with cofounder Tony Dodd, famously sketched the platform’s first blueprint on a napkin. This grassroots spirit endures today, driving us to build software that handles the actual daily demands of public safety professionals rather than theoretical workflows. By staying true to these roots, we continue to provide the most comprehensive tools available to help agencies stay service ready.
What is your signature product and how does it work?
Our signature product is the Inventory and Asset Management module, a comprehensive solution designed to give public safety agencies complete visibility into their medical supplies and high-value equipment. The system works by streamlining the entire supply chain – from tracking par levels and automating reorder points in supply rooms to monitoring real-field usage against individual calls. Personnel use intuitive electronic check sheets on any device to conduct rig checks and gear inspections, ensuring every vehicle is stocked and mission-ready.
For high-value assets like AEDs and monitors, the module tracks location, assignment and maintenance schedules to extend equipment life and ensure accountability. By integrating with RFID technology for automated inventory counts, the platform helps agencies eliminate waste, reduce annual supply budgets and ultimately stay service-ready.
Why do you believe your products are essential to the police community?
By providing real-time visibility into inventory and assets, we ensure first responders never have to worry about missing equipment or expired supplies during a lifesaving call. Our platform significantly reduces the administrative burden on crews through electronic check sheets, allowing them to focus their energy on patient and community outcomes rather than manual paperwork. Furthermore, the immediate cost savings – driven by reduced waste and optimized maintenance – allow agencies to reallocate limited budgets back into their personnel and mission. In an era where data-driven compliance is mandatory, Operative IQ provides the robust reporting necessary to maintain transparency and accountability across the entire operation.
What has been the biggest challenge your company has faced?
The biggest challenge our company has faced is helping EMS agencies, fire departments and police departments modernize operations that have historically been under-resourced and slow to change. Many public safety organizations are asked to manage medical supplies, equipment, controlled substances, vehicles and facilities with limited staffing and legacy processes. Manual tracking, spreadsheets and disconnected systems often become accepted even when they introduce inefficiencies, increase costs and create compliance and safety risks.
Our challenge has been helping agencies recognize that logistics, inventory management and operational software directly impact responder readiness and community outcomes. When EMS, fire and police organizations invest in modern operations management solutions, the results are clear. Departments see reduced spending on medical supplies and equipment, improved asset accountability, stronger narcotics chain of custody, fewer lost or expired items, improved communication between crews and leadership, and reduced operational risk. Most important, frontline responders spend less time managing supplies and more time focused on emergency response, patient care and public safety.
What makes your company unique?
What makes our company unique is our singular focus on supporting EMS agencies, fire departments and police departments with purpose-built operational software. Since our inception, we have worked directly with public safety leaders, logistics teams and frontline personnel to develop solutions that reflect real-world workflows, accreditation standards and regulatory requirements.
We offer a unified operations platform that allows agencies to manage inventory management, asset management, controlled substance tracking, fleet and vehicle management, whole blood programs, facility management, training and events, service desk requests and RFID automation in one system. This reduces complexity, improves visibility and allows departments to operate more efficiently with fewer resources.
We are also industry pioneers, having introduced and scaled solutions for EMS inventory management, narcotics chain of custody, blood tracking and RFID based automation for public safety environments. Our leadership team remains actively involved with customers and daily operations, ensuring product investments are driven by real agency needs and long-term partnerships rather than short-term trends.
What do your customers like best about you and your products?
Customers consistently highlight our world-class support, noting that a culture of service extends across our entire organization to ensure their operational success. We prioritize a feedback-driven development cycle, using direct customer input to inform platform improvements and solve real-world challenges. As the most robust and comprehensive platform in the industry, we uniquely position agencies to scale into the fuller potential of the software rather than being limited by technical gaps that force a platform switch later. This breadth allows agencies to see immediate, significant cost savings – often reducing supply budgets by over 20%.
What is the most rewarding part of serving the first responder/local government community?
It is incredibly fulfilling to know our software directly supports improved outcomes for both patients and the public. Ultimately, we are driven by the knowledge that our platform provides the mission-critical support necessary for first-responder agencies to stay service ready.
Do you support any charitable organizations within public safety/community? Tell us more.
We actively support several initiatives dedicated to honoring and assisting the public safety community:
- Public Safety Appreciation Week: As members of Georgia’s Cobb Chamber of Commerce, we deliver meals and snacks to local police and fire agencies to show our gratitude.
- Cobb County Public Safety Foundation 5K: We sponsor this annual event and host a booth, with many of our employees and their families personally participating in the race.
- National EMS Week: Every May we select local agencies to receive gift deliveries as a token of appreciation for their tireless work.
- Customer foundations: We maintain a practice of regularly contributing to the specific foundations established by our customers to support their individual missions.
- Community commitment: These efforts reflect our deep commitment to the professionals who rely on our platform to stay service-ready.
Is there any fun fact or trivia that you’d like to share with our users about you or your company?
In 2013 we developed our first RFID system for emergency vehicles using off-the-shelf components. After building the prototype, we discovered the RFID reader enclosure was physically too large to fit inside an ambulance. That original reader is still displayed in our office as a reminder that innovation in public safety often starts with experimentation and learning.
That early effort led to a long-term partnership with an RFID manufacturer to design purpose-built RFID solutions specifically for EMS, fire and police operations. Over the past decade, we have become a trusted leader in RFID-enabled logistics, deploying thousands of devices and millions of RFID tags to support automated inventory tracking, asset accountability and narcotics compliance programs across North America.
What’s next for your company? Any upcoming new projects or initiatives?
We are entering an exciting phase of growth with the launch of several mission-critical initiatives designed to further unify public safety operations. This late spring and early summer, we are introducing two highly anticipated modules:
- Credential management: This module establishes a single source of truth for tracking certifications and licenses, utilizing automated reminders and centralized approvals to eliminate the risks of manual spreadsheet tracking.
- Crew scheduling: Building on our credential framework, this tool will offer AI-powered staffing recommendations and real-time visibility to ensure every shift is safe, compliant and efficiently staffed.
Our platform now features IQ Genius, a suite of built-in AI agents – including Knowledge Center, Work Order and Insights Agents – embedded directly into the system to work the way you do.
- Operational impact: As an integral part of the Operative IQ ecosystem, IQ Genius works across your workflows to eliminate administrative overhead by cross-checking records and automating repetitive data tasks.
- Futureproofing: These advancements reinforce our position as the industry’s most robust platform, ensuring that every minute saved on administrative “hunting” is a minute reinvested into operational readiness.
