Case Study: Vesper Boat Club
Historic boat club discovers benefits of transitioning from an outdated access system to Entegrity Smart.
The Customer
The Vesper Boat Club, located on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, PA, is one of the most celebrated rowing clubs in the nation. Founded in 1865, Vesper is a small, not-for-profit run solely by volunteers whose mission is to perpetuate its legacy of developing highly skilled and competitive rowers at all levels by providing its diverse community of members with premier rowing programs and first-class facilities and equipment.
The Challenge
On any given day, there are many people coming in and out of the historic boat house, and Vesper must protect them and the club’s boats and other equipment. In early 2016, Tom Simon, a member of Vesper Boat Club’s House Committee, inherited access control responsibility for the club and a traditional and often troublesome card/fob access control solution.
Tom quickly discovered that both the access control system’s manufacturer and installer had gone out of business, so there were no resources for service calls or troubleshooting. What’s more, when any access changes needed to be made, Tom had to use an outdated, unsupported version of Windows, and the club had only a single, aging laptop that fit the criteria. He comments, “It was an unacceptable situation. If something were to happen to that old laptop, I would have had no way at all of controlling access”.
Vesper clearly needed to update their access control solution but did not want to invest in hardware or technology that would quickly be out-of-date or cumbersome to manage.
“As soon as I saw it, it was a no-brainer. I immediately knew we could benefit from it.”
Tom Simon
The Solution
A club member introduced Tom to Entegrity Smart and their VIZpin powered smartphone access control system. He says, “As soon as I saw it, it was a no-brainer. I immediately knew we could benefit from it.” The Bluetooth door/gate controller was installed on Vesper Boat Club’s main entrance door to support smartphone access control, and the organization immediately began realizing the benefits of transitioning to the cloud-based system.
Even though Entegrity Smart’s keyless solution is simple to use, Vesper realized a transition period was necessary, so Entegrity Smart arranged for the new Bluetooth enabled door lock system to run in parallel with the old system until a total transition could be completed. Tom notes that not having to purchase fobs and keep physical inventory of them makes cost savings an additional benefit of the new keyless access control system.
Currently Vesper Boat Club has 142 users with the VIZpin Smart app and has 140 physical fobs that still need to be converted. Tom concludes, “Entegrity Smart did us a huge favor, allowing us to offer members the smartphone option. The system has already solved so many challenges for us”.