At a basic level, access control is about allowing (or not allowing) people to enter or open certain areas – from outdoor zones to buildings, rooms, lockers, cabinets and more. This is valuable in itself, but access control can offer so much more. When you have the right type of access control, and it’s integrated with your other business processes and systems, it can add significant commercial value in a variety of ways.
Integrate your systems
The most obvious process to integrate with access control is Physical Identity & Access Management (PIAM), which focuses on processes relating to physical access control – for example identity, card and visitor management.
That’s not the end of the story though. Who determines and monitors access levels for employees, visitors and suppliers to your buildings or networks? Typically, various departments are involved, including HR, facilities management and IT as well as security management.
If each of these departments has their own system that operates independently of the others it’s not just inefficient it can result in costly or even risky mistakes. For optimum value and security, it’s essential for all of your organisation’s systems and departments to be aligned.
More efficiency, accuracy & automation
The main advantage of integrating PIAM, access control and all your other business processes and systems is that everyone uses one single database to record, manage and use information.
The overarching benefits of this are:
- Increased efficiency, with time savings of up to 30%, as information only needs to be added or updated once.
- Increased accuracy as data isn’t being entered into or updated across multiple databases.
- Automatic updates – for example if HR updates a person’s role, their access rights update automatically.
- More valuable data is available for each department to make use of.
Valuable benefits across departments
There are more specific benefits for the different areas of your business too, including those outlined for the roles below.
- Access control data allows you to adjust, for example, how much food catering staff need to prepare and how each building is used.
- There’s no need to learn a new facilities management information system – you can use your existing one when it’s integrated.
- Higher security levels can be achieved thanks to orderly, single-source information and reduced errors.
- A single, central overview provides valuable information, but you can still apply local rules.
- Systems are linked rather than duplicated, which reduces complexity.
- Even if there are multiple sites, you work from one central database.
- Your system leads, so people always have the correct permissions for their current role.
- It’s easy to follow an audit trail as you’re working from a single source.
- Knowing which visitors are expected allows you to give a warmer, more professional welcome.
- You can prepare access passes in advance to improve efficiency.
A strategic role for access control
As we’ve seen above, access control can add commercial value to your organisation in a range of ways. You can use it, and the information it generates, strategically to boost not just security but productivity, creativity and performance, and even happiness and fulfilment.
Of course, in order for your access control system to enable such benefits, it needs to be the right kind of system. For us, access control (and security in general) isn’t just about technology – it’s about people and how they live their lives each day. It’s about helping them make the most of life and work.
We call this ‘Security for life’ and AEOS, our access control system, is designed around this principle. It gives you the freedom to adapt and scale your system to what you and your people need and integrates easily with other systems and processes. In this way, it has the power to become the backbone of your infrastructure.
Here to help
How do access control and PIAM support your organisation’s other business processes and systems? And, most importantly, the people using them? Could your security management work more closely with HR, facilities and IT management?
We’d love to help you tackle these questions. Why not contact us and we’ll talk through your challenges with you?
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