14 Dec 2020
2020 Year in Review
Vanderbilt U.S. Reflects on 2020
When we popped the champagne on New Year’s Eve, so many of us looked forward to a year full of possibilities. And when we began to see the effects of the pandemic around the globe, we quickly realized this year would be one like no other. But as our organization around the globe transitioned (sometimes in and out) of working remotely, we came together to adapt our training, customer service and product updates/promotions updates toward a more web-based audience. In this blog, we reflect on the news that came out of Vanderbilt U.S. over the last 12 months:
In January, we made some predictions about what was coming for access control, intrusion detection and integrations, with a central theme around cloud-based solutions, wireless capabilities, mobile credentialing and ongoing integrations with our valued technology partners. We flushed out some of those conversations around building integrator relationships in this list, “5 Ways to Nurture Integrator Relationships.”
Around the time we were all wondering whether ISC West was REALLY going to happen, Vanderbilt was notified that it was awarded with a Secure Campus 2020 Award for its Security Management System (SMS) with Allegion Von Duprin Remote Integration. The integration helps close the gap that many organizations have between external and internal doors with regards to lockdown protection.
The conversation around cloud-based access control grew going into April, as more and more organizations realized that remote management via the cloud was a crucial part of their success. We discussed this in a roundtable with some of our internal experts.Then, we added some crucial updates to each and every one of our products, including lite blue, bright blue, Vanderbilt SMS, and ACT365, bringing crucial integrations to the forefront and ensuring that our customers had the best possible feature sets for their solutions.
As COVID-19 upended so much of the world and businesses, we looked at ways that existing technology could be used to address common challenges, such as contact tracing. ACT365 released a new feature around contact tracing that allows businesses to track potentially infected employees and the doors they accessed while on-premises. Zero-touch features became a huge focus area, and in the fall, Vanderbilt adopted ACT ID, free mobile credentials that integrate with the suite of U.S. products to help organizations leverage smartphones for access to facilities.
Integrations continued to be a big part of the year for additional functionality, and Vanderbilt worked toward more of them with the ACT365 integration to Schlage ENGAGE Series locks, which provide even more options for wireless electronic access control beyond external doors. And Vanderbilt rounded out the year with even more ways to use SMS (hint: the added COVID-19 functionality that is already present in the system), outlining all of these in a blog.
As Vanderbilt U.S. says “see ya later” to 2020, there are so many things to celebrate about 2020 around increasing functionality, more ways to use its access control software, and even more partnerships to leverage. We’re excited to bring a new kind of energy to 2021 alongside our partners and customers.