John Hemp, Director of Sales – Northeast US for Aiphone tells SJA why intercoms should not be an afterthought for businesses.
I’ve been with Aiphone for eight years now and I am the Director of Sales for the Northeast, which includes New England and the Mid-Atlantic.
Overall, I’ve been in the security industry for almost 30 years.
Security is all about verification.
When you’re protecting a space, one of the best ways to do that is to control the foot traffic and authenticate who is coming in and who is coming out.
Intercoms add a critical interaction layer to that process by allowing people to safely interact with visitors.
Unlike access control, where someone uses a badge to enter, intercoms allow people to talk to one another.
A lot of the time, people equate intercoms with simply letting somebody in the front door, but they encompass a lot more than that.
Intercoms can be used to spread mass notifications during emergencies, they can page people to let them know about extreme weather events and tell them to take shelter or be of use any time a message needs to be spread more widely.
It’s much more than just perimeter security.
There is no kind of verification like human verification.
Badges can be faked, and AI isn’t perfect, so allowing a person to take all the presented information and make a decision provides the complete access control solution.
The world is a different place since the pandemic, and intercoms and security solutions play a large role in facilitating the way we interact with each other now.
Since 2020, remote work and staffing reductions and led to the requirement for new ways to control access and interact with people, especially in commercial, educational and government spaces.
Sometimes, there are also multiple deliveries to a business in a day, or repairpersons and technicians that need to be let in.
The incorporation of intercoms can allow human resources to allocate employees in a more efficient manner, as mobile applications can be used so that someone doesn’t have to be tied to a desk with a telephone all day, increasing efficiencies in the overall business and making it easier for employees to do their job.
In this same time period, there has been an explosion of small businesses utilizing intercoms for convenience and safety on a different scale to achieve similar results.
I think that integration plays a huge role in creating effective and efficient security solutions.
By incorporating the three main facets of security (surveillance, access control and intercoms) and allowing them to work together seamlessly, a single, more intuitive platform is available users.
This also helps users to save money within their budget, both from the costs of the solutions and from a training perspective.
Unfortunately, what still happens today is that intercoms are an afterthought.
Organizations often look at their access control, then their surveillance and then the final aspect is intercoms.
However, access control and surveillance systems are one-way.
They gather information and then send this back to a dead-end somewhere.
An intercom, though, allows for information to flow in both directions.
Lastly, an advantage that stretches across security and the wider business is making customers feel safer.
When they see that intercom system, it works to provide an atmospheric sense that someone is close by, which is why two-way communication is so important.
One key market is schools and colleges.
Audio systems including blue light towers can help students and staff feel more supported and increase campus security.
We’ve also seen a big spike in healthcare, where intercoms can aid communication but also prevent nurses and doctors from having to enter wards with infected patients.
This was something that arose during COVID but is still being used today in hospitals and medical facilities to prevent the spread of other infectious diseases.
One particularly interesting use case we’ve seen recently is in the fast-food sector.
With the rise of delivery applications, many fast-food restaurants are now setting up a special pickup window for drivers so that they do not clog up the customer drive-thru window.
Intercoms are being used to communicate with these drivers to let them know when their orders are ready to collect.
This also means that they do not have to enter the main restaurant, reducing their impact on the experience of sit-down customers.
One technology that we will see a lot more of in tangent with intercoms is facial recognition.
While this biometric modality has been around for a while, it has not been perfected – once this has been refined it will be a useful feature of intercoms.
For example, if someone arrives at a school saying that they want to collect their child, how do you know that is the child’s parent?
These kinds of software can help to make the identification and authentication of someone more reliable.
Many modern buildings are also designed to be “mixed-use”, where they are developed with retail or hospitality space, apartments and parking garages on the same campus.
When property management companies look after these spaces, they like to have one piece of software that they can use to find all the information they need about tenants.
So, if they enter one name into their database, it should then show all the other information relating to access control and parking etc.
It can also present the related information from the intercom system, with any details about visitors included on that database, meaning the property management team only need to log into one system.
Another key development is that when you add the cloud to intercoms, it means a technician doesn’t have to physically go to the location of the system when there is a maintenance issue.
Instead, it can be fixed remotely which saves money, time and liability potential.
A lot of our future plans involve migrating products to the cloud and Aiphone is making huge strides in this area.
We’re releasing our cloud platform and remote programming and system management services in the next quarter and many of our future solutions will involve the cloud.
One thing I’d like people to think about is that an intercom is not just about security.
It can help to solve critical everyday business issues for your clients and end users.
It’s not just about when there’s an emergency, it’s about creating an environment that helps people do their jobs.
There’s a common trend in security at the moment for “as-a-service” products.
This usually involves a monthly or annual license fee.
I believe that if an end user is using this kind of payment model, then the product should not just be used during an emergency.
You should be able to use it every day, not just when something goes wrong.
Additionally, as integrators and installers become better at solving actual business issues for the end users, it can strengthen that relationship and keep it moving into the future.
I am excited to see the security industry embrace intercoms and security communication now more than ever.
Aiphone has recognized the importance of security communication since 1948 and strives every day to continue to keep people safe and provide a peace of mind.
We’re ready to meet the needs of this quickly-evolving world.
This article was originally published in the June edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.