Affordable Access Control Helps Retail Sector Meet Its Needs

Retail, banking and convenience store sectors face unique challenges, making reliability and affordability of an access control system paramount.

Today’s physical access control systems offer a greater level of security, convenience and accountability than ever before. Despite an industry wide trend toward greater sophistication, most systems still rely on legacy platforms that require a dedicated workstation or server in each location. And, since the scope of legacy platforms ranges from one door to hundreds of doors, there is usually a substantial range in price and complexity.

Retail, banking and convenience store sectors face the unique challenges of high employee turnover, “floating” employees, internal fraud/shrinkage, and cost center for key/lock/card management and, therefore, it is easy to see the importance of a reliable and affordable access system. A member of the Kaba Group, e-DATA and its Linux-embedded, IP-based platform and optional fingerprint biometrics, can help the retail sector with its needs.

With e-DATA, access control works with any IT infrastructure or resides securely on the WAN. Users manage their locations’ access system from any Web-enabled device or browser, without the need for external servers or software installations. Traditional client/server systems rely on a local host and local software management for any access control changes.

Because e-DATA products feature an embedded Web server/software and data is stored in the control panel, the reduced total cost of ownership is an advantage. Benefits include:

no PC or server cost up front, and no server replacement cost 3 to 5 years later;
no database licensing cost;
no client software installation/seat licensing costs;
no e-DATA annual maintenance cost;
no software updates;
no Windows upgrade or migrating issues between operating systems – and no virus issues;
and no moving parts.

In today’s challenging economy, cost does play a role. The estimated MSRP of a new legacy system controlling 20 doors is $29,000. Controlling 20 doors using e-DATA’s system is $11,000, plus labor, power and locking hardware for both scenarios. The company’s advantages stretch to the networking/installation side as well:

Few components mean installation is simple and environmentally friendly
GUI is intuitive and easy to operate
Scalable over multi-sites with .NET support
Features open architecture
Supports standard card readers, plus e-DATA’s fingerprint biometric readers

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