6 Reasons to Go Wireless With Your Access Control Solutions

Depending on the application, a wireless option may be the best access control solution. Discover the value wireless can add for both security integrators and their customers.

6 Reasons to Go Wireless With Your Access Control Solutions

College campuses and residence halls are among the top adopters of wireless access control solutions.

4. Business Impact

Organic growth with existing customers is earned through your connection with their needs. Inherently, the more you learn about your customers’ buildings and overall operational needs, the better provider you’re going to be to them. If you are only serving the perimeter, you’re limiting your visibility.

Wireless technologies present opportunities for more conversations to occur. As a business leader, you want to understand how your end user manages the facility beyond the main door. By using wireless to learn more about the customer’s access control needs, you might find that the user also has unmet needs for video, telecom, IT and more.

Dialogue with customers around their resource management and mechanical key control processes fosters the conversation early. Don’t wait to react to growth demands from your customers; you need to be proactive.

5. Sustaining Hardware

Of course, for your business, each connected opening is a living, dynamic access point in the ecosystem that requires sustaining management. Your company delivers value in supporting and growing these environments. So you should embrace the fact that firmware changes and cybersecurity are constantly evolving.

It’s not just updating IT routers and servers. You’ve got to be thinking about how to sustain the IT door hardware as well. The idea that these connected openings are constantly living nodes on the network could be daunting to the end users at first.

In the past they had mechanical hardware, and now they’ve added 10 electronic locks with service contracts. But this is a positive to them as well. They’re getting information about what’s going on at that point of access that enables them to make more informed decisions on how their assets are deployed and managed.

Information from those nodes provides the company with the “who, what, when and where” that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

6. Future Growth

Wireless is going to aid the growth of overall access control. It allows us to expose customers to new experiences, and to connect openings we couldn’t have justified to wire before. Hopefully, wireless is used as a conversation starter to grow applications.

As adoption progresses, those in the security industry need to be comfortable capturing customer insights to articulate which applications should be wireless. It’s up to you to be that strong resource to your customers.

The industry has seen for years that access control is an ecosystem that has continuous growth. Consider how to best anticipate customers’ needs and recommend products that are easy to adopt.

Solutions that can be deployed in an economical and prompt manner will open the door to future opportunities. The goal is to get in the door and continue to deliver value in new ways to your customers.

Offer a Trial Run They Can’t Refuse

When wireless access control is run throughout a facility, a single credential can provide a frictionless experience for users.

Proactively showing customers ways to experience new value is a great opportunity to enhance your engagement. Wireless access control is terrific in the fact that it allows dealers to give end users a trial experience in an economical way. It’s noninvasive so there’s no need to compromise the door or make a huge financial investment.

A trial, or try-me program, shows the user how simple it is to adopt. Then once they begin using that opening, they experience the convenience and efficiency. Putting a wireless lock on a storage closet, or another noninvasive area, could be a good place to start.

It is a secure way to control access to that opening and it introduces the customer to the convenience of access control. There’s no need to worry about a mechanical key being passed around.

Instead everything is controlled through electronic credentials. If the goal is to introduce the users to convenience, the lock can even initially be implemented as an offline electronic lock. Consider manually loading existing credentials into the device so the building occupants experience the simplicity of accessing the door with one key that’s electronic versus mechanical.

If you want to show the customer how the lock improves operational efficiencies, it might be beneficial to connect the lock to the facility’s physical access control system. This can help with key management, especially in facilities that need greater control due to high turnover. It’s also beneficial on more secure rooms, like executive meeting rooms.

Before, the end user’s mechanical door was basically stagnant. They missed out on all of the value electronic access control offers. Now that opening is part of a connected ecosystem. After the users have had time to interact with the opening, they enjoy the new experience and hopefully realize the benefits could be extended to a greater number of doors.

Wireless Access Key to Keyless Efficiency

One of the best use scenarios for selling the return on investment (ROI) value of a wireless access control solution is streamlining or adding efficiencies to operations.

A language center in New York that was experiencing an issue with high key turnover serves as a case in point. The facility operates similar to a university, with students staying in residence halls on campus. But it lacks the routine schedule of a traditional school.

Depending on their chosen courses, students may only be with the school for a few weeks at a time. Having students arrive and depart on a weekly basis made it difficult to recoup all of the mechanical keys. The school was turning over more than 100 keys a week, which was a cost burden and headache for the staff.

To overcome these challenges, the campus upgraded its mechanical doors in the residence halls to wireless locks with electronic credentials and adopted a one-card solution across campus. The school reported that the transition significantly improved efficiency and security.


Brad Aikin is Channel Business Leader, Integrators, for Allegion.

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