Providing an easy and affordable migration path to new technologies or products is key to winning in the market, said Larry Reed, CEO of ZKAccess, in a recent interview.
Providing an easy and affordable migration path to new technologies or products is key to winning in the market, said Larry Reed, CEO of ZKAccess, in a recent interview.
While offering his viewpoint on the security industry over the past eight years, he found that one thing had always held customers back when encouraging them to change to a new technology.
“The ‘cost of change’ is a huge barrier. These include the cost of labor, labor unions, capital expenditures for new equipment, employee resistance, re-enrolling users’ cards into a new security system, re-training employees on newer systems, limited network/Internet connectivity, and managing non-integrated security systems,” Reed said.
“This is why, sadly, some of the most advanced regions in the world are behind the times in technology,” he added. “Advanced regions may have installed the most advanced system back in the day, but too many ‘change factors’ prevent them from spending money on upgrades to modern-day systems.”
On the contrary, the absence of this “cost of change” is a major reason why many emerging economies are actually ahead of the times in technology, Reed observed.
“Developing regions are only recently entering the new-world economy and now have sufficient wealth to invest in modern-day systems. They have no prior security systems to ‘upgrade’ and therefore no ‘change decision’ to make,” he said. “End users in lesser developed regions have the luxury of installing brand new high-tech security systems without having to pay for the labor necessary to replace miles of cable and related infrastructure.”
Citing his own experience, Reed recalled that back in the days when most U.S. firms were still using card readers, he introduced fingerprint readers, which were a more cost-effective access control method. Little did he know that he would meet strong resistance to the technology.
“I was unaware that it was often the installing dealers/resellers who chose the products, rather than the end user. And the resellers preferred supplying their customers with ‘consumables’ associated with ID card readers (including the ID cards),” he said. “I didn’t account for the fact that there's a significant high-margin recurring revenue stream produced by ID card replacement. In addition, fingerprint readers had no consumables associated with them and therefore no associated recurring revenue.”
Sensing that biometrics would get him nowhere, Reed switched to RFID readers, which he thought were another easy and cost-effective way to implement access control. “However, I soon discovered that many U.S. companies had long before adopted bar code technology. So, if I wished to win over customers, I’d have to go even further backwards in technology and offer bar code readers,” he said.
Now, ZKAccess offers a range of access control solutions, and Reed reached the conclusion that suppliers of next-generation access control technology must provide a simple, affordable upgrade path for customers. “If not, their respective products, no matter how technologically advanced, will remain on their respective drawing boards and in their testing labs,” he said.