Card, mobile credential, payment and security
As supply chain issues in 2021 persist, Mark Degan from identity solutions provider ColorID offers a look at the challenges ahead and talks about ways campuses can to overcome potentially troublesome delays.
As the fall semester comes to a close, administrators are racing to make sure their card and ID programs are ready to go. That’s no easy task in the best of times – and with the pandemic still impacting many facets of daily operations, supply chains are being put under historic stress.
But with patience, foresight, and more than a bit of flexibility, colleges and universities can overcome the supply chain challenges until the situation eases.
That’s one of the main messages from Mark Degan, director of corporate marketing for identity management solutions provider, ColorID.
Degan recently spoke with CR80News about the challenges that came with servicing campus ID projects in 2021 and what administrators at those schools can expect in the coming year. Don’t expect changes overnight, he explains, but follow the right steps and you can avoid disaster.
It helps to recall just how difficult the past year has been when it comes to making sure IDs got into students’ hands. Institutions were constantly met with barriers and roadblocks related to the supply chain.
“It was really nuts to see this happening, because in 2020 we really weren’t affected by it,” he says. “But in 2021 there were shortages of everything – ID cards, color printers, ribbons for the printers themselves.”
The situation really took a turn for the worse as schools prepared for summer orientation.
“It was really nuts, because in 2020 we really weren’t affected. But in 2021 there were shortages of everything – ID cards, color printers, ribbons for the printers themselves.”
Lead times that normally stood at one or two weeks stretched to three or four weeks, or even longer. Manufacturers were shipping partial orders – for instance, five printers instead of 10 – and even cancelling entire orders, he explains.
“Our ColorID account managers were working round the clock with campus card administrators to figure out solutions to all those supply backups,” he says.
“I don’t think anyone realized how many cards they would be printing this summer,” he notes. “A ton of students didn’t use their cards last year because they were remote, and many threw them away or left them at home.”
It didn’t help that semiconductor plants were already operating at full capacity, and that was still not enough to meet the needs of the world economy. And even though factories were operating with multiple shifts, they still had to deal with pandemic-related absenteeism.
All these problems have forced ColorID to get aggressive to help meet the needs of its customers.
“When our suppliers do have inventory, we snatch up as much as we can and load them into our warehouse,” he notes.
Bottlenecks continue, but Degan believes things will get a bit better in the first quarter of 2022. However, it will take longer for things to return to pre-pandemic normalcy.
“I think big changes are going to happen in the third quarter at the earliest,” he says, though he added that every manufacturer seems to have their own opinion about what’s happening.
“I don’t think anyone realized how many cards they would be printing this summer. A ton of students didn’t use their cards last year because they were remote, and many threw them away or left them at home.”
A lot of U.S. manufacturers have 80% of their necessary components ready to go, but they are waiting on that 20% from the rest of the world, he explains. “Everything is just taking longer. Every single semiconductor facility around the world is overbooked.”
Those realities have led ColorID to adopt a more pragmatic view of the industry – a view designed to make sure it can work efficiently with customers in the coming months.
“We need to watch our inventory and assume the worst but hope for the best,” says Degan. “It really is a role of the dice whether those cards will ship out in a week or in 12 weeks. There is no pattern to it.”
Of course, not all campus card programs are the same – and those differences must be taken into account when trying to determine when card issuance operations can get back to normal.
For instance, Degan says one of the lessons learned during the great supply chain pile-up of 2021 was that campus ID administrators with technology that was relatively agnostic – say, software that works with a variety of printer manufacturers, or a having a vast array of models to choose from – tended to have fewer pain points than their peers.
"If your campus ID software was more agnostic, it didn’t matter what type of printer you were using. Those guys were winning.”
“If you wanted to scale up quickly to meet the demand for extra cards printed over the summer, you were stuck having to buy that one printer model or software license," explains Degan. "If that printer had a backlog like the majority did, then you were just out of luck, sitting there waiting for weeks or months."
"But if your ID software was more agnostic, it didn’t matter what type of printer you were using," he says. "Those guys were winning.”
As Degan explains, the most important lesson to carry forward into 2022 is try to be flexible, even down to decisions like pre-printed or blank card stock, or the type of card.
“It’s really just bobbing and weaving and figuring out what option is the best,” he says. “We know that an emphasis on flexibility can be difficult for customers to prioritize during the purchasing process. But we try to help our customers select printers, software, and card technologies that give them options.”
As Degan tells it, flexibility will play a bigger role in campus ID issuance and management in the future, thanks in large part to evolving technology. That can include mobile and contactless IDs and credentials, along with the ongoing rise of cloud-based software and its ability to connect to those third-party applications.
“We know that an emphasis on flexibility can be difficult for customers to prioritize during the purchasing process. But we try to help our customers select printers, software, and card technologies that give them options.”
The key is to determine what works for a specific college or university and not just follow the pack.
“What we don’t want is to get into a pattern of saying ‘Hey, this is what I had before,' or 'let's do what that other school did,’” Degan explains. “You need to look at your ecosystem to determine the best fit for your campus. You might really like utilizing desktop software, for instance, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook cloud-based solutions.”
While Degan and the team at ColorID will be happy to see the end of 2021 from a logistical standpoint, there were certainly valuable lessons learned. The most important of which is one that every campus can benefit from.
“This past year really strengthened our commitment at ColorID to make sure our customers know that there are slew of options out there today, and that careful selection can help future proof their programs.”
As campuses return to normal in the wake of the pandemic, an ongoing dining services push at the State University of New York at Buffalo is reinforcing the utility of self-service checkout and the mobile technology that powers it.
That’s the main message shared by Keith Curtachio, the university’s director of IT for Campus Dining and Shops, the campus department that provides dining and associated services to students, employees and faculty. The ongoing effort to improve the food service experience at the University at Buffalo is bolstered by the GET app from longtime partner CBORD, as well as Nextep kiosks and Oracle’s Micros Simphony POS.
The University at Buffalo has more than 30,000 students and nearly 4,000 full-time employees across three campuses. To help serve its campus population more efficiently, Buffalo has deployed kiosks, which Curtachio says offer some clear advantages over traditional cashiers when it comes to ordering and paying for meals and snacks.
“A kiosk cannot smile but it will always be on time,” explains Curtachio. “And they help bridge cultural and language barrier.”
That is important for an organization that attracts a large population of students from abroad. Those consumers can navigate digital menus via pictures as they learn the language and new culinary options.
Kiosks aren’t just changing food service in the campus space; they’re also making an impact in the larger world of fast food and fast casual dining. Along with advances in digital ID and payments, kiosk technology is helping restaurants and dining hall operators to speed up services, reduce mistakes and deal with the ongoing labor shortage.
The University at Buffalo has similar goals – though, as Curtachio explains, the job is not about installing a bunch of kiosks and calling it a day. The effort is more complicated and nuanced than that, with lessons still being absorbed and best practices established.
He traces the food service kiosk effort at the university back at least five years and highlighted the ongoing One World Café project. This $38 million facility is scheduled for completion in spring 2022. The three-story, 53,500-square-foot building will seat more than 800 people, offering both a variety of cuisines and various ways to order and pay.
“It has a lot of meeting spaces, a lot of seating and an international eatery,” says Curtachio.
Design work on the project started three years ago and initially excluded in-person ordering altogether, offering only kiosks and self-checkout. “But we have a really good culinary team and wanted to include some personal interaction,” he says. “So we pivoted a little bit.”
Explaining the layout of the One World Café, Curtachio points out different “through line journeys” that enable diners to access meals, beverages and snacks in a variety of ways. Some kiosks will offer ordering services but not payments, which can be handled by traditional cashiers or self-checkout kiosks later. Some areas have in-person ordering only. A future plan will enable customers to place orders for pickup at a later time.
This multi-prong design allows customers to order via the kiosks or an app then wander around and pick up impulse buys and other items from the grab-and-go areas. “People often change their minds,” says Curtachio.
ADA considerations play a role in the deployment of the technology, which should enable a customer with a disability to order food without needing the help of an associate, he adds.
The heart and soul of the One World Café is the self-checkout area – a concept increasingly found in convenience, retail and grocery stores. Amazon has famously become an aggressive player in moving toward a totally cashier-less experience, and Curtachio sees this as an ideal model.
At the campus level, payments could be handled via closed-loop student meals cards or other payment apps, completing the entire transaction process in a contactless manner. Folding in the cashier-less concept could employ cameras and software to automatically charge consumers for what they buy, as well as keep track of products going out the door so that inventory and shelf stocking don’t fall behind.
Even with a system that uses kiosk stations for self-checkout, security remains key.
“There are a lot of cameras there,” Curtachio says, addressing worries about theft. “You can see every square inch of the operation.”
The need for a watchful eye via cameras is one lesson that other campus administrators should be mindful of when considering similar plans. Curtachio offers other emerging best practices as well.
For starters, while it’s worthwhile to use this technology to keep up with what he calls “the cool kids” – for example, chain restaurants and other businesses that already offer similar services – each college and university has to come up with its own specific plan. These plans rely heavily on gaining the appropriate metrics.
“You have to test; you have to use gap analysis,” Curtachio advises. “Make sure you know your meal plan features and identify any gaps.”
Another important consideration when deploying this type of multi-channel food service system is the time required to get up and running – especially given the required participation of partners and the probable need to integrate point-of-sale software and other technologies.
“It takes a lot of lead time setting up a new revenue center,” says Curtachio of the kiosks.
Even creating the graphics for a new kiosk ordering system takes time. He stresses that custom images of all that tasty food can go a long way to helping make the overall system a success.
“The graphics and creative work can be costly,” he says. “But they do increase the impact.”
Backers of this technology should also acknowledge potential drawbacks, even short-term ones.
For instance, can kitchen workers keep up with a quicker stream of orders, especially given ongoing labor shortages? And can a mixed software environment handle recalled orders? Will the campus IT department be able to quickly fix any problems?
“It’s added pressure on IT staff,” Curtachio says. “Anytime you are adding a piece of equipment you are adding a point of failure. You have to have enough personnel to address those issues in real time.”
Even with all that in mind, he expresses deep optimism about the One World Café and associated progress in bringing more digital efficiencies to campus food service. The potential upsides – increasing sales, elevating the reputation of a college or university, making a happier dining experience for students, faculty and employees – make the legwork worthwhile.
“The customer experience is more consistent than it is with humans,” Curtachio concludes. “And, luckily, in higher-ed institutions, most of the students are good with apps.”
Network security means more than preventing criminals and pranksters from breaking into computer networks. As a new e-book from ASSA ABLOY demonstrates, true security—including for higher education classrooms and administrative buildings—requires the use of existing network infrastructure to protect people, equipment and data.
In the book, “Network Security Redefined: IP-Enabled Access Control,” ASSA ABLOY walks readers through the latest developments in access control technology, and shows how current technology can tie together such gear as card locks and sensors into a “single integrated system accessible from your Ethernet network.” The e-book also shows why legacy access systems that depend on hard-wiring discrete, non-networked components can be more expensive and inflexible than IP-enabled technology.
Mission critical openings–such as perimeter entrance doors and rooms that store vital records–might be best served with a Power over Ethernet system, while low traffic opening are best for WiFi.
While the network security solutions and case studies offered in the new ASSA ABLOY e-book apply to various types of buildings, higher education is an especially rich area for deployment of these technologies.
That is because campuses typically include multiple buildings of varying use and security needs. This can become, in essence, a showcase for the flexibility of network security controls.
Campus buildings include a mixture of old and new construction, making them a challenging environment for communication and wiring. But this challenge also opens doors to a wise return on investment if the access control solution is correctly architected, explains Jim Primovic, ASSA ABLOY’s director of campus EAC sales.
Building and network administrations have two general paths to better secure their buildings, whether in higher education or elsewhere. One involves a “Power over Ethernet” configuration, which relies on the “standard LAN infrastructure to deliver power to network devices over the same cable used for network connection.” According to ASSA ABLOY, such a system uses 86 percent less energy than do traditional electromagnetic locks. The other path is WiFi, which employs 99 percent less energy.
ASSA ABLOY e-book: Network Security Redefined: IP-Enabled Access Control
So when it comes to colleges and universities, which path is the better one?
“Retrofits tend to be WiFi,” Primovic says. The best fits for WiFi access control systems tend to be in residence halls and for dorm rooms. “Rooms that have a really low traffic schedule are best for WiFi,” he explains. “For other rooms, the opposite is true. Mission critical openings–such as perimeter entrance doors and rooms that store vital records–might be best served with a Power over Ethernet system.”
Already, Primovic says, higher education is proving to be a perfect fit for these newer approaches to security technology. The University of Southern California and Duke among the hundreds of colleges and universities using ASSA ABLOY IP-enabled solutions to boost their access control and security.
“We’ve moved beyond early adopters,” Primovic says. “Security is on everyone’s radar.” Strengthening access control makes obvious sense for schools located in urban centers, where officials strive to push better security as deep as possible into buildings. But even rural institutions want stronger security perimeters, he said, underscoring the appeal of the technology.
The ASSA ABLOY e-book on network security and access control provides a checklist about what installation—Power over Ethernet or WiFi—best suits particular uses. Check out the new eBook, “Network Security Redefined: IP-Enabled Access Control,” and contact an ASSA ABLOY campus security expert for assistance creating your security plan.
