Charter Hall Enhances Tenant Experience App with HID Mobile Access

Charter Hall is one of Australia's leading fully integrated property investment and funds management groups. It uses its expertise to access, deploy, manage and invest equity to create value and generate superior returns for its investor customers.

It has curated a diverse portfolio of high-quality properties across its core sectors – Office, Industrial & Logistics, Retail and Social Infrastructure. With partnerships and financial discipline at the heart of Charter Hall's approach, it creates and invests in places that support its customers, people, and communities' grow.

The Challenge for Charter Hall

Charter Hall is committed to continuously exploring ways to leverage the latest technologies to advance sustainability and ensure security for its buildings and their surroundings. To that end, the company developed the Charli workplace app to provide its building communities with a range of services, features and benefits to create valued, convenient experiences for its tenants. From concierge services to building updates and alerts, Charli was designed to keep tenants connected with the broader workplace community and provide tenant managers with quick, convenient access to Charter Hall's property management services for service requests and to report or log issues.

Charter Hall recognized that integrating mobile access control into the app would optimize the role Charli could play in achieving a frictionless yet secure and sustainable tenant experience.

"At the same time, we wanted to streamline our access technology by deploying universal readers across Charter Hall properties in tandem with mobile IDs, so access could be easily adapted for each building but still controlled at a central point," says Loren Mellowship, General Manager of Charter Hall, who oversees the company's three adjacent Wesley Precinct buildings in Melbourne.

What was the solution?

Building upon its existing relationship with HID, Charter Hall's National Operations Team opted to deploy HID Mobile Access and HID Signo Readers for access control.

Ensuring that everything was integrated for both Charter Hall and its tenants was a crucial part of the solution. The access control system became a foundational layer to build upon by pulling together all the disparate systems in the buildings. This was done not only through the readers but also by utilizing an API-based approach wherever possible.

HID Mobile Access lets any compatible mobile device be used as a credential to securely access doors, gates, networks and more. As a result, it significantly increases convenience and boosts operational efficiency without compromising security. The mobile access solution also reduces costs by eliminating the need for physical access cards to move throughout buildings and to access secure areas, including parking, printers and lockers.

Critical to the success of any technology investment and deployment is the involvement of key stakeholders throughout the process, as well as futureproofing and ensuring the longevity of the solution. This is true whether that investment affects a single asset or is portfolio-wide.

To that end, the highly versatile HID Signo Reader supports the widest range of credential technologies via native Bluetooth, Near Field Communication (NFC) and Apple Wallet. In addition, it delivers unparalleled performance with ultra-secure storage of cryptographic keys and a connection to the future through secure bidirectional communication support. Each reader is also designed to be connected and managed remotely for easy upgrades.

"We took a precinct approach, which is why HID was ultimately selected. Everything is now on the same backbone, which makes it a lot easier to manage what is going on, and everything is talking to the same central point," continues Mellowship.

Did the solution work?

In conjunction with Charli, Charter Hall tenants and employees can now use their handsets to access the entire Wesley Precinct and its amenities, including end-of-trip facilities and FollowMe Printing. Self-onboarding for the building also allows the tenant to request and receive access any time of the day — without the delays of waiting for a physical card, phone call or someone to come to the building.

"No one forgets their mobile device so they can use their mobile ID as a backup if they forget their physical card. Security guards also save time when new credentials need to be issued. It may only take 30 seconds to open a second app to do that, but if you're doing 1,000 cards over a year that multiplies quickly. So, integration makes things more efficient. It saves time," said Mellowship.

About 4,000 people in Charter Hall's Wesley Precinct will leverage HID Mobile Access via the Charli app. Though no benchmark metrics are available for comparison, the company and its tenants are realizing significant savings through greater productivity thanks to managing access building-wide through a single app and streamlined remote credentialing.

Savings are also realized by eliminating costs associated with issuing physical access cards and deactivating and replacing them when they are lost or stolen.

"We took a precinct approach, which is why HID was ultimately selected. Everything is now on the same backbone, which makes it a lot easier to manage and to understand what is going on, and everything is talking to the same central point," adds Mellowship.

"HID Mobile Access allows secure, seamless access from street-to-seat and frees up everyone to focus on more valuable work."