Access Gets a Digital Makeover
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- September 25, 2023
Some of us who began our careers in the last century can remember when a uniformed concierge at a front desk granted access to workplace buildings, who might ask you to fill out a form and include your signature.
Depending on the concierge, it was a system open to mistakes and abuse and certainly added no value to the business.
It was simply about getting into the building if you were recognized or managed to convince the concierge, whose job was not much changed from a sentry guard at any point in history.
The 21st century and digital technology, however, have re-imagined access. Not only are the tools wholly different and the concierge largely superfluous, but there's now a whole range of applications in the stack that play into themes of mobility, customer experience and the smart building story.
Going frictionless
One case study from the Australian office group Charter Hall illustrates this. The group curates a diverse portfolio of more than 1,500 properties with multiple tenancies and tens of thousands of users needing access.
Charter Hall has implemented a precinct-wide access solution for around 4,000 people at its Wesley Precinct in Melbourne.
The mantra of the solution was to deliver a "frictionless yet secure and sustainable tenant experience." The result was a downloadable app called Charli, which provides access and replaces older key card technology and includes a range of services and benefits.
"The digital credential can also be easily modified and revoked, so if someone leaves the organization, it is just revoked on their phone."
At the heart of Charli is access, delivered to a mobile device, but it is bundled in with property management services, service requests and the ability to report and log issues.
The access control system became a foundational layer to build upon by pulling together all the disparate systems in the buildings.
The mobile access solution also reduces costs by eliminating the need for physical access cards to move throughout buildings and to access secure areas, including parking, printers and lockers.
Self-onboarding for the building also allows the tenant to request and receive access any time of the day—without the delays of waiting for a physical card, phone call or someone to come to the building.
Digital credentials
The Charli app was provided by HID Global, which began life as a subsidiary of the Hughes Aircraft company to develop RFID technologies in the 1990s and is now owned by Swedish access control company Assa Abloy.
Steve Katanas, head of the region in Australia and New Zealand for HID Global, says there is growing interest from corporates in understanding “digital credentials”, the value they can deliver and the process of migrating to them and integrating them with other applications.
“The advantage from the digital credential perspective and the difference with the physical is that I either have to physically hand over a credential or put it in the mail and send it to you,” says Katanas.
"So it's generally a face-to-face transaction of handing over a card, which can be problematic when you've got remote workers. The digital credential can also be easily modified and revoked, so if someone leaves the organization or moves, it is just revoked on their phone."
A single identifier enables multiple authentications beyond the front door to parking, elevators, vending machines and printers, delivering a frictionless user experience and saving time and money for the organization.
HID provides access and digital credentials, but other applications can be integrated through APIs, such as the automation of lights, heating and cooling, which reduce costs and make the building more sustainable.
Occupancy counting drives more efficient planning, and there are also safety applications where digital credentials integrate with fire evacuation protocols to send messages to marshal tenants so they can understand if people might still be in danger.
A new phase will come with the further development of location-based services, where data from several sources, such as positioning beacons and WiFi, track the positioning and movement of devices—or, more importantly, the people who use them.
These can activate push and pull applications, from checking in at concerts and restaurants to triggering alerts and tailored and highly personalized offers.
This is a market that Fortune Business Insights has tipped to surpass USD95 billion by 2030, growing at a compound rate of 20%.
That is a lot of value to create without simply knowing where people are.
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their business models. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/peshkov