Picture Yourself Selling ID Badging
An organization with sites on installing an access control system will likely require some type of card credential. Whether it is a photo ID, smart card, proximity card, barcode card, magnetic strip or a multitechnology card, all should be considered an opportunity to sell the client the means to print and encode the cards.
Despite what is seemingly an otherwise naturally added profit stream, only 31 percent of security integrators routinely include ID card printers as part of their project proposals, according to the 2008 SECURITY & SALES INTEGRATION Annual Installation Business Report. That means more than two out of three integrators are leaving potential revenue on the table.
In addition to the printer sale, a comprehensive card identity system may bundle technology cards, a digital encoder, card design software, cardholder database management software and training – all of which can add to the value of most security installations.
Card identity systems also create the opportunity for high-margin recurring revenue streams, such as printer ribbons, additional cards, secure foil stamp cards and overlaminates, and accessories such as lanyards and cardholders. Security contractors that sell these components will yield not only additional revenue, but more frequent customer interactions. That opens the door to building stronger customer relationships.
Integrators that do offer card identity systems estimate the products account for about 10 percent of their total project revenues. The profit margins for card printer/encoders and database management solutions are comparable to other security hardware, peripherals and software.
Card ID Now Offers Efficiency
For a period of time, identification technologies rapidly evolved along separate tracks for visual security, access control, logical security, compliance and vending. This resulted in many end users having to cobble together a hodgepodge of disparate systems to meet their requirements, then equipping employees with multiple cards and access codes that were tracked through redundant (and often inconsistent) databases.
Today, with a diversity of card technologies, open software platforms and advanced hardware, integrators can provide their customers with a convergent path to join these previously disparate systems. Customers are realizing increased security and increased operational efficiencies in the process. And the piece that ties it all together is the card.
For a growing number of integrators every comprehensive security solution must include a card identity system as a component. The card ID system has evolved into a critical focal point.
SecureNet Inc., headquartered in Carrollton, Texas, has been successfully integrating card identity systems into customer solutions almost since the business was established in 1996.
“Card identity is more than just a picture and a name,” says Eric Rohleder, account manager for enterprise/national accounts at SecureNet. “Each card identity system we offer can produce IDs that function as a single comprehensive credential for each cardholder, incorporating visual identification, access control, vending/cafeteria, compliance, logical access — every aspect of the cardholder relationship with the issuing organization can be integrated.”
A well-structured card identity system will yield greater efficiency and productivity across a broad range of end-user organizations — from high-volume, high-turnover applications like schools and service industries, to multiple facility corporate and government applications.
This is where Rohleder says integrators have to rethink their sales process a little. “Multitechnology credentials and changing regulations place an increasing burden on our customers’ IT departments” with the increased dependence on networks and database integration, he says. As a result, IT departments are much more involved in the buying committee than ever before.
“As an integrator, we’ve had to develop a skill set for the logical access piece, so we can better assist customers in logical access security. It’s also allowed us as an integrator to deliver on the promise of physical and logical convergence,” Rohleder says.
Affordable, Easy-to-Use Solutions
Advances in card identity systems – from the cards themselves to card printer/encoders to ID management software – are making sophisticated ID systems more accessible to end users from both a cost and usability standpoint.
“The nature of IDs has changed dramatically in recent years,” says Tami Heimer, photo ID coordinator at VTI Security Integrators in Burnsville, Minn. “When I started at VTI 13 years ago, it used to be a Polaroid photo laminated on a piece of cardboard. The cards have evolved to do much more.”
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