Bytes solves biometrics problem for All Staff All Personnel

Bytes Systems Integration’s Identify Management has helped All Staff All Personnel to solve a persistent problem with a biometric time-and-attendance system installed at one of its clients, a large courier. All Staff All Personnel manages 100 contract drivers for a large courier company.

About three years ago, All Staff All Personnel implemented the time-and-attendance system using biometric fingerprint readers in order to streamline the management of these drivers, and to ensure that accurate records of each driver’s wages are calculated accurately for the end-client’s payroll system. All Staff All Personnel’s owner, Wayne Scott, was looking to biometrics to ensure total accuracy—but the system was persistently unable to read the fingerprints of 30 percent of the staff. This high failure rate made the system much less effective because these drivers had to fill in record sheets manually, wasting time and potentially opening the door to fraud.

In addition, it meant that Scott was not able to deliver the desired level of service to his client, the courier company. He called in Bytes Identity Management to help.

“Biometrics is the ideal choice for this type of time-and-attendance application, but not all the technologies are equal—one needs a service provider that is able to match the conditions to the technology,” advises Nick Perkins, divisional director of Byes Identity Management. “In this case, the biometric readers were using technology that was not fit for purpose.”

Perkins explains that the existing system used TIR (total internal reflectant) technology, which photographs the finger surface through glass. The 30 percent failure rate was attributable to the fact that because the drivers perform a lot of manual labour in the course of their work—lifting and carrying boxes—their fingerprints can become too worn to register on the system. TIR would be an ideal solution to use in a white-collar environment, where employees’ fingerprints are not abraded in the course of work.

Having identified the problem, the Bytes Identity Management team installed a new system with fingerprint readers that use multi-spectral imaging. This technology uses different spectrums of light to read both the surface and sub-surface of the skin, thus capturing the unique fingerprint information used to confirm a person’s identity.

After deployment, the success rate immediately rose to 100 percent.

“I found myself with a biometric time-and-attendance system that wasn’t performing as I wanted it to, thus providing a suboptimal experience for the drivers, who often had to fill out a form manually, and for my client,” says All Staff All Personnel’s Scott. “The team from Bytes Identity Management was able to solve the problem and I now am able to deliver the right level of service to my client.”

Says Perkins, “Biometrics is set to transform identity management in many areas of business, but it’s important to understand that there are many different technologies out there—the important thing is to match the biometric technology with the business conditions, and that’s what we do.”