What are the advantages of choosing a global and integrated solution? What is the point of connecting these features and how far should it go?
Are there any real benefits in integrating time management and access control into a business?
The benefits of integrating these two features into the business are undeniable. But we must recognize that they are often unknown. If we dig a little, we realize that the primary data used by these Access Control Systems are common — the badge of course, but also the card “employee” and many individual data as the home service to inherit certain rights and other properties.
The question that must be put up is: is it possible to integrate time management and access control? The idea is, of course, to avoid entering this data in two places, with all the consequences that one can imagine, both in lost productivity and loss of quality of information, with possible risks on the level of security.
Let’s be more precise. What are these consequences exactly?
Take the example of the “employee” form, which contains the employee’s identifying data such as his name, his number, his date of entry and departure from the company, and other information. If time management and access control are not integrated, a double entry will be made. We spend on the cost of this double entry that could easily be avoided. The main disadvantage is primarily in the desynchronization of the data.
For example, if the contract dates are not identical in both systems, this will result in access rights that will not match. An employee left the company on June 30; this information was recorded in the time management system because obviously, we do not want to pay the employee beyond. But it has not necessarily been updated in access control. We can then have rights that remain open in the access control system after the employee leaves, which always presents a security risk. This is not a theoretical case, we can see it in practice.
Even if the HR department makes the assignment of the employee to a “service,” the rules and access rights of each service are in the domain of the security department, which remains in control of the operation of its system. We can both take advantage of automation while maintaining the desired level of security.
But is the limit to this integration, not precisely the cost or the complexity of setting it up?
Yes, communicating two time management and Door Access Control Systems of different origins, with an inconsistent technical architecture and a cross-referral of responsibilities between providers, can result in costs and complexity. This is sometimes the reason given after the choice has been made and it is a shame. But if this communication between the two applications is defined as a mandatory feature of its specifications, it changes the approach. Of course, if we choose a provider able to offer both solutions, it will necessarily simplify the integration of both systems since the connectors will be standardized and maintained as evolutions.