airplane taking off from airport

How HID Helped Avolon Re-Imagine Security – Part 5

 Getting User Buy-In

Making decisions about new security technologies can be complex at large organizations — to say nothing about getting user buy-in. In a recent webinar, Moving to Mobile Access Control, James Moore of IFSEC Global and Peter Walsh of HID Global spoke with Allan Dawson, Workplace Services Team Manager at aircraft leasing company Avolon, about his company’s recent rollout of HID Mobile Access®.

How did users respond to the new technology? Listen to the clip — or read our lightly edited transcript — to find out.

When people ultimately get on the platform and use it, they're fully bought in. It's great. From an initial rollout point of view, where you require a user action, it can be difficult to get buy-in — particularly if they have something that works. That’s why, as part of our migration, we kept everybody's old access card working, just so that there was no interruption with their ability to access the building.

But once an action was required — once users had to look at an email, download an app and put the code in, it was a bit more of a challenge to get that done. When you issue the invitation, it expires after 24 hours, and rightly so. So, if the user doesn't input that code, you now have to go in and reissue the invite again.

And we see this across the board. It's not just with this solution. Any time you require an action from the user, if they don't have motivation to take the action, it can be a challenge.

Having said that, you just need to put pressure on people to take action. And momentum builds, too. We saw that a lot. If someone didn't have it on their phone got into a lift or were walking up to the building with someone who just pulled out their phone, gave it a twist, door opens… They're like, “Wow, what's that? I didn't know about that!” You would have got an email about that. And then all of a sudden, they're approaching us, saying, “I want that technology. That's fantastic. How do I get it?” So, it does drive itself after a while.

If people aren't buying into it, you can take that step of just turning off the cards. Then very quickly, they'll come looking for you.

Seamless Visitor Management

Once everything is set up, the experience is perfect.

Our visitors from other offices can now come in into HQ and have access to what they're supposed to have access to. If they don't have access to IT rooms or other secure rooms, same thing here. It's managed by the back-end access control. And that all is seamless, all the same. So, your access levels persist, which is great.

If our IT teams are traveling out from Dublin to other locations, they can access the secure rooms in those other locations seamlessly. No problem. The convenience of the solution is great.

This is the final post in the series about Avolon’s mobile access journeyIn case you missed any of the previous four posts, you can catch up quickly by visiting the following links:

1. Why Avolon decided to go mobile

2. How access control can support mobility without compromising security

3. How HID Mobile Access helped Avolon respond to the global pandemic

4. How HID Mobile Access makes security more convenient for Avolon

Or alternatively, you can watch the whole webinar.

What’s your best approach for moving to mobile access? Book a free consultation call with one of our access control specialists to find out.

Steve Shale is responsible for leading and coordinating demand generation programs and channel marketing activities for HID's Physical Access Control Solutions (PACS) business area in Europe. He has over 20 years' experience working in B2B marketing, 15 of which have been in the safety and security industries.

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