Modernizing global corporate access control

The company

SYKES was founded in 1977 with a desire to help other people. Over 40 years later, the company has become a leading provider of business process outsourcing and IT support services. With headquarters in Tampa, Florida, United States, the organization now serves some of the world’s largest public companies from 72 locations around the globe. Though SYKES has expanded its international reach and service portfolio over the years, the company’s core purpose remains true in everything they do— ‘We help people, one caring interaction at a time.’

The challenge

SYKES has over 55,000 employees worldwide and effectively managing the changes in the workforce is critical to its security operations. The problem was that each office had an independent access control system. Local badge custodians were responsible for removing or updating access rights as soon as employees left the company, were terminated, or transferred to new offices. For the physical security team at SYKES, also known as the Agile Team, it became difficult to oversee this process and ensure all protocols were being handled promptly. Managing updates and renewing maintenance agreements for each system also became very time-consuming and costly.

The solution

• Unified and centralized monitoring
  If there’s ever an access denied event or another alarm at any SYKES office, operators at the Global Security Operations Center can investigate by retrieving cardholder information and associated video.
• Streamlined access control upgrade  
  SYKES relied on the Genetec Professional Services team and a built-in import tool to easily transition cardholder data, door schedules, and other information into the new security platform.
• Simplified credential management
  When employees leave the company, the platform will immediately de-active their access control credentials. This is all automated through the Active Directory integration feature within Security Center.
• Built-in occupancy reporting
  “With COVID-19, we’re doing a lot more occupancy reports which help us manage this transition back into our corporate spaces while ensuring that all protocols are being respected,” said Slone.

Results

Today, the Genetec Security Center platform has been installed at 48 SYKES locations across North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and the EMEA. Globally, the SYKES team is using the Security Center Synergis system to manage over 2,200 doors. They have also deployed the Omnicast video system across a few corporate offices using Genetec Streamvault appliances, which facilitated the migration of over 530 cameras into the Security Center platform.
 
“Since standardizing on Security Center, we have really been able to maximize our strengths and resources. The employees on our Agile Team are located in different regions around the world, but everyone can investigate alarms or events, troubleshoot issues with the system, do custom programming with the software development kit (SDK), and handle maintenance all within one intuitive interface,” said Slone.