CIO Bulletin

Kastle Systems is a leading provider of property technology solutions, protecting commercial and multifamily real estate

The real estate sector is known for following the traditional ways of interacting with sellers, buyers, and lending institutions. However, with disruptive technologies changing the way businesses are conducted, investors today seek more out of their property construction, buying or selling experience. They look towards platforms that allow them to streamline their work or handle multiple activities at the comfort of their home. Luckily, with the advent of Property Technology, the real estate landscape is now transforming.

Buying a property is a careful investment, and buyers priority is the protection of their premium properties. Security, solid performance, delight, and data insight altogether is rarely found, and Kastle System is one such vendor who provides everything in one offering.

Haniel J Lynn, CEO will help us understand more about the company

Q. How has Kastle evolved with the changing times?

Kastle has been a leader in managed security for 50 years and we’ve always been at the forefront of emerging technologies – for instance, we were using cloud-based systems before “the cloud” was a term that people recognized.

Access control, visitor management and video surveillance are still at the core of what we do, but we’re leveraging that foundation to provide more solutions that not only secure our clients’ spaces but make them more productive and more valuable to tenants and residents.

As the workplace is changing we’re leading conversations on return to work and hybrid scheduling, because access technology is at the center of understanding how spaces are used and can be leveraged to make space management simple.

Q. How is Kastle Systems helping organizations get their workforces back to offices safely?

We mentioned before that we’re leading the conversation around returning to office and hybrid workspaces. During the pandemic we saw an increased need for providing more than security in the office, but also wellness. Offices see a changing variety of occupants in and out each day, and with the pandemic, employees are more vested in knowing that their colleagues, and more importantly visitors, coming into the office are healthy. We launched KastleSafeSpaces to meet this need. It incorporates daily health screenings into our existing access control and visitor management systems, only allowing entry to individuals that are not showing symptoms of illness. Through our integration with CLEAR, vaccination status can even be tied into access privileges.

With our smart mobile access, employees can move through buildings using their smartphone to open doors and call elevators for a smooth and touchless experience, greatly reducing the chance of infection. This can be offered to visitors, as well. We can administer the screening and deliver the temporary one-time visitor access via QR code and all scheduled through Outlook or Google calendars using email communications.

But returning to the office is also about enabling businesses to implement and embrace the complexities of hybrid work, managing who has access and when to shared spaces in the most productive, efficient and transparent way possible. Cloud based access control and remote management of access privileges are at the center of this transformation.

Q. What are the current challenges in today's visitor management space? How are you tackling these challenges?

Its challenging these days since many employees and visitors are still working from home at least part of the time, many still work from home at least part of the time, including office administrators who are often responsible for scheduling and managing visitors. A traditional system, where visitors check in at the desk, is not manageable in a hybrid working environment where there may not be a receptionist at all. In this new arrangement, employees are often tasked with managing their own visitors, and oversight into who is coming and going is difficult.

Kastle’s cloud based, smart visitor management solution solves for exactly these challenges. Workers can grant temporary access credentials to visitors remotely, via Outlook or Google calendar invites. Guests are automatically sent a QR code ahead of time that grants access for only the allotted timeframe. Plus, visitor movement, not just entry, is recorded in the same system as employees, so managers have quick access to the coming and goings of everyone in their office. Unexpected visitors can use iPad based kiosks to check in and receive a QR code for access, so there isn’t a gap in the data of whose movement is logged. The key here is that everything happens remotely, is managed by the participants only, and all the access data is tracked and managed on one system.

Q. How is Kastle revolutionizing Security as a Service?

For most of the commercial and multifamily real estate industry, Kastle’s “managed service” model (a.k.a. Security as a Service), that we launched 50 years ago, is still quite revolutionary. Most integrators, even today, sell, and maybe install their hardware and software, then hand them over to their customer to run themselves, as if they were security experts.

Our philosophy is that most businesses are not in “in the business” of running security technology – it’s not a core function of their purpose. So why spend capital, operational costs and labor overhead to manage a function that has nothing to do with their performance success?

Our end-to-end technology model takes this burden off the client. We take ownership of our client access management or video surveillance operations, from design and install, to ongoing monitoring and maintenance, so they can focus on their core business. We keep it updated with the innovations necessary to keep it performing even as technology continues to change.

What is more revolutionary now is that in the era of smart buildings and hybrid workplaces, our technology is expanding its purpose far beyond merely securing space to actually helping buildings and business perform more efficiently.

Our access control, visitor management and video surveillance solutions not only secure their spaces, but they monitor occupancy, track space use, integrate into systems they’re already using, so oversight and management of their entire workplaces are easier, hybrid work patterns are workable, and productivity is higher.

Plus, the data and insights that are produced by these systems can provide for actionable insights for, better decision making and cost savings. For instance, tenants may look at occupancy data for their suite and realize that they need less space, renegotiate their lease, property managers can use Kastle’s access scheduling capabilities to reimagine, unused space into hybrid work pods creating a new revenue source at a higher premium.

Q. The company's innovation has been recognized widely during the pandemic. What's next – as we (possibly) move past the pandemic?

Hybrid work and smart buildings are here to stay and will only grow more rapidly. Our technology informs business operations in terms of how workers are using workplaces day-in, day-out, as seen in the Back-to-Work barometer that became the country’s de facto index for gauging office occupancy during the pandemic.

This occupancy data is even more important in a hybrid work environment to gauge space use, create staggered work schedules, and track visitor access when people may be working remotely. Additionally, in the realm of smart buildings, our data informs building systems how to perform more efficiently and save in energy use. So, we feel confident our innovations will only become more valuable in post pandemic world.

Meet the pillar of the company

Haniel J Lynn, the CEO, joined Kastle systems in 2018 with more than 25 years of global operating and executive management experience growing and scaling enterprises from startup to $1 billion. He has the unique ability to oscillate between high-level vision and tactical execution while inspiring a culture of teamwork.

He spent 16 years at CEB (now Gartner) and served as Group President of its Best Practices & Decision Support business and member of the company’s executive leadership team responsible for product strategy, direction, and operating a $600m business globally.