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The Rise of Access Enablement in a World of Access Control

Access Enablement

Physical access to buildings has been fundamentally changing. Traditional approaches to “access control” are no longer sufficient on their own. Expectations and requirements of enterprises, building owners, and facility managers are shifting from the focus on “control” to “enablement.” As a result, access enablement is a new trend emerging to give employees, tenants, and visitors the ability to have on-demand, self-service experiences of seamless access to places, spaces, and things.

However, as perceptions of conventional access control have existed for decades, it’s easy to understand why access enablement is too often being confused with “access control.” The concept of connected access enablement is relatively new. It is rooted in connected experiences and syncs with connected lifestyles across work and personal lives.

Access enablement is designed to ensure that the right people have access to the right places at the right time. It delivers what traditional access control has not been able to do – striking the balance of creating a great user experience while enhancing security at the same time.

Access enablement has emerged alongside access control as a distinctive technological development that harnesses existing access control systems to solve problems and overcome barriers that an access control system simply cannot solve on its own.

The purpose of this article is to explore the differences, shared connections, and complementary nature of access enablement and access control. The new paradigm seeks to enable a fully integrated, seamless street-to-seat experience for places and spaces, enhancing facility management in the process.

The Familiarity of Access Control
Virtually every commercial building and multi-tenant residence has a form of access control. Employees, tenants, and visitors who are granted access to a building are given a keycard, key fob, or other type of credential to access a door. A back-end system, usually under the supervision of the security or facility management team, controls the access in order to do the number one thing an access control system is built for: security.

An employee stops at a security desk in the lobby of the person’s company or in the base building to check in or to verify that they have access to the building. This is called “friction,” as access control experts well know, and the traditional way of looking at it is that the more friction there is, the more “secure” the building is – or appears to be. There are processes that underlie the access privileges. If a person has a plastic badge that is held up against a reader to open the door, the belief has been that “all is well with access” and presumably it cannot be improved upon. It works, so why change anything to do with it? This is a common mindset.

Access control systems give security personnel “control” of the access to a building. They know who has entered the building, who is conceivably inside the building, and who has left the building. Security personnel and facility managers can feel good about limiting access and imposing restrictions on certain areas, such as a specific room that needs a higher level of security.

A security team can exercise tight control over authorization of certain employees based on identity. And if an audit is needed, the access control system has the history of who accessed a building or a room. To the access control traditionalist, all is well in the world of physical access. User experience is of lower priority. What’s of utmost importance is security.

However, the access control industry experienced a disruption within the last decade with the emergence of cloud and mobile solutions. This brought the juxtaposition of security and convenience into a new light, creating complications and the possibilities for trade-offs. Security and user experience advanced on parallel tracks, but with limitations and a flux that caused concern for some security managers while bewildering others.

The vision of mobile access had been admirable for years, but it did not successfully “take off” under the conventional model of access control. A mobile credential was more often than not simply treated as a digitalized credential, but generating new questions, especially on the backend of integration. The complexity didn’t seem worth it for years. Interoperability was very limited. Too many siloes and isolated building and business systems existed.

In a way, this is fine in the traditional world of access control that has persisted for decades. However, it came at a cost. The potential for connected experiences, keeping in line with the IT or logical access realm, was severely limited. Opportunities for significant gains in operational efficiency could not be realized under access control alone. Transparency and visibility across building systems and business systems were more an anomaly than the norm in the access control-driven universe.

And at some point, as users lost their plastic keycards or lent their badges to other people or entered/exited a building by piggybacking or didn’t have access to the right spaces at the right time (i.e. an employee who was terminated but whose badge still works to access the building because of the disconnect between the access control system and the HR system), trust has eroded.

Change was inevitable. New thinking was needed when it came to access. While access control is still needed and is still relevant – albeit it is evolving – a shift has happened over the past couple of years toward this “enablement.” Building owners and enterprises want to be enabled to offer their employees, tenants, and/or customers a richer set of experiences and services, while unlocking new benefits.

The New Paradigm of Access Enablement
Best practices in managing places and spaces have changed over the last few years for a variety of reasons, including the shift to hybrid working in a post-pandemic world. Improving operational efficiency, leveraging automation, and increasing visibility across domains have escalated.

Simultaneously, the interest in living a connected lifestyle has increased among individuals, as they want to be able to be seamlessly connected, no matter whether in a permanent office suite, a flexible workspace, on the road, or at home.

Flexibility in providing and managing the users’ access to everything from buildings and meeting rooms to amenities, lockers, and elevators is key. Users don’t want and increasingly won’t accept friction. They want an intuitive experience that automatically gives them access to the places, spaces, and things they need, when they need it.

The best way to create a seamless, friction-free journey is through the simplicity of an NFC access badge in Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, or Samsung Wallet.

Connected access experiences via NFC wallets enable and support the new expectations for navigating buildings. It’s no longer just a matter of giving an employee a badge and access to a door. An effective “access” platform needs to be an enabler – an enabler of new experiences, new services, new dynamics of authorization, new visibility, and new levels of flexibility. A first-class digital native experience – such as using Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, or Samsung Wallet for access – is now considered an amenity in the workplace.

It is part of enabling a new kind of workplace. In a report entitled “Building the Office of the Future,” the world-class consulting firm McKinsey stated:

“The key thing about technology and about thinking through the future of the workplace and the future of work is to make things as flexible and as modular as you can. You have to view buildings and real estate like a machine, a tool, or a lever. You have to build them in such a way that they could be changed for any generation at a reasonable cost, so that buildings don’t become antiquated.”

Access enablement, which has already been proven in multi-national corporate campuses, is perfect for the workplace of the future. It provides the flexibility to have secure access, based on identity assurance, combined with new, more elegant, and more productive ways for people to interact with places, spaces, and things. These are core elements that will define the future of commercial and residential buildings.

Some of the most important keys to success today include leveraging multi-purpose apps, automated onboarding and workflows, and maximizing the value of NFC access in digital wallets for street-to-seat connected access.

With connected access via digital NFC wallets now available across all major mobile device platforms – iPhones, Apple Watches, Android devices, and Galaxy phones – users can tap into the ease and flexibility of using an access pass in their digital wallets, just like they already do for payments, airline tickets, loyalty programs, and much more.

Access enablement is essentially about self-service, on-demand, digitized access that combines a delightful, connected access experience, automation, stronger governance, and tighter security – all without compromise.

The approach must be one of access enablement that ensures security, as well as privacy, while connecting the right people to the right place at the right time. The dual focus on security and user experience can drive better compliance with corporate policy and nullify threats. For admins, it’s also important that physical access be treated the same way as enterprise IT access, including applying standard zero trust principles.

For the owner and the enterprise that adopts access enablement, the opportunity exists to improve operational efficiency. When done right, it combines efficiency and automation, at scale. Automation redefines operational efficiency. Building owners, facility managers, and enterprises should not settle for less. Any owner or property manager can turn their siloed and separate buildings into a network of assets. Tenants can benefit from amenities, services, and flex spaces across the whole portfolio, not just their building.

Taking advantage of the pervasiveness of access control hardware and software virtually everywhere, access enablement becomes the overlay on top of access control through easily deployable, software-only integrations. There is no need to rip-and-replace any access control infrastructure.

Interoperability is central to access enablement. This one thing that has been lacking in the traditional world of access control has been the missing puzzle piece. The access enablement platform of choice must be able to integrate with existing business and buildings systems in a finely-honed, interoperable fashion.

Examples include IT, HR, and facility management systems that centralize access and building management. Centralized office management makes hybrid and flexible workplaces possible. This centralization eliminates silos and creates new possibilities for connected experiences. Access enablement provides the capability to create a true street-to-seat experience, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of facility operations.

Overall, more enterprises and building owners aim to provide users with experiences that enrich their digital-first lifestyles, while delivering the “cool factor” of using a smartphone or smartwatch to access places, spaces, and things. Connected access enablement not only enhances user experience but also streamlines facility management, making it a crucial component of modern building operations.

SwiftConnect is an information transfer network that links access control systems (ACS) and other proptech solutions to streamline credentialing for companies and building owners. In addition to streamlining access management for entire property portfolios and global company offices, SwiftConnect links its customers to the Apple Wallet and Android NFC virtual badge – a first in the industry.