As integrators and dealers look to expand their product and service offerings, they might want to consider providing mobile credential access management as a service to their existing legacy customer base.
NFC mobile access has emerged as a strong area of growth within the access control industry, but it is still often overlooked as managed service that integrators can provide to their customers. Integrators and dealers have an extensive install base, with customers running access control systems old and new. One of the simplest and fastest ways is to provide managed mobile credentials as a service is one that doesn’t involve reader upgrade. This enables integrators to reconnect with their extensive legacy customer base and provide a software only integration for their legacy access control system that they are running.
With the right readerless mobile credential software solution, Integrators can deliver NFC mobile access without reader and infrastructure replacement. Legacy access control systems can be future proofed with state-of-the-art NFC mobile access and NIST compliant cryptography.
Removing the cost barrier to mobile credential migration
Up until now, upgrading physical access control systems meant replacing readers, and coordinating on-site work all of which introduced financial barriers, disruption, hesitation and delay from customers commissioning the work.
Today, integrators can offer mobile credentials as a managed software-as-a-service (SaaS) upgrade that works with customers’ existing access control systems. No new readers to install and no new hardware capital expenditure shock for the customer.
End users benefit from mobile access user experience and the convenience of not needing to remember their physical card or fob, and enterprises benefit from a security upgrade and have the option to stop provisioning new cards or can decommission their dated and vulnerable reader technology. While integrators and dealers have the option to provide a simple access management user-based service layered on top of the legacy access control system that is already installed.
Disparate access control systems make for a global market opportunity
Across the globe, millions of proximity cards and readers are still in active use, supporting a security risk and enormous installed base of legacy and highly fragmented access control systems; serviced, supported and managed by integrators and dealers worldwide. Multiple systems are spread across the same office buildings, campuses, healthcare facilities, education, retail, and industrial sites. Historically, the challenge has been enabling NFC mobile access under one platform across these disparate systems without hardware replacement.
That’s where Sentry Interactive comes in.
Sentry Interactive addresses this challenge by delivering a reader-free, system-agnostic NFC mobile credential solution. This allows integrators and dealers to upsell mobile credentials as an additional managed client service across their diverse portfolio of customers and access control platforms, regardless of manufacturer or age.
Scalable, remote, and built for security integrators and dealers
Sentry Interactive’s mobile credential software is designed to support integrators and their end users no matter the location, region or country as system integration and deployment can be carried out remotely.
Key benefits include:
- Scalable deployments across individual sites or global building portfolios.
- Faster rollouts without the customer waiting for hardware upgrades or site visits.
- Remote setup and system integration, reducing operational overhead and on-site labor.
- Centralized management for both Integrators and their customers.
- Cost-effective expansion as new users, locations, or buildings are added.
Because software integration and deployment can be handled remotely, integrators can deliver mobile credentials efficiently and maintain consistent service delivery across all customer locations.
Turn mobile access into a managed service competitive advantage
By adding mobile credentials to their managed services portfolio, integrators and dealers can:
- Deliver scalable access management experience for end users without disrupting existing infrastructure.
- Strengthen long-term client relationships through ongoing access management as a service.
- Increase customer satisfaction and retention with cost-effective, flexible, smartphone NFC mobile access.
- Differentiate from competitors still focused solely on maintenance contracts and ‘rip and replace’.
- Future-proof legacy access control systems by not forcing costly hardware upgrades that they don’t want.
Mobile credentials are no longer limited to ‘rip and replace’, reader and hardware installation upgrades, they are a software-driven service that aligns naturally with how Integrators can provide a managed service to their customer-base that they already support.
The Bottom Line
NFC mobile access that requires new reader upgrades is stalling, due to the complexity and cost of ‘rip and replace’. But the desire and global demand for NFC mobile access continues to rapidly grow, particularly from the install base of customers running legacy access control systems.
Integrators and dealers can modernize these systems with a simple software upgrade and without hardware cost and disruption and are uniquely positioned to deliver scalable value easily and efficiently.
With Sentry Interactive’s mobile credential software, integrators gain a reader-free, scalable, and remotely deployable solution that enables NFC mobile access across existing systems, turning mobile access upgrade into a seamless extension of their portfolio of products and service solutions.
