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Keeping ahead of the competition

Impro hosted a breakfast at the end of 2016 in which the company highlighted its history, the products and solutions it is bringing to market, as well as how the company is progressing since the buyout by ASSA ABLOY.

Impro’s MD, Errol East started proceedings with a quick overview of the company from the formation of Digital Controls in 1982 to the current business. He highlighted various products the company released over the years, showing how technology has advanced and how Impro has incorporated these advances into its products.

East touched on a few pertinent inflection points in the company, such as its adoption of the OS/2 operating system in the ‘90s, which turned out to be a mistake. He also mentioned the company’s development expertise and the move to Agile Development principles in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Agile Development sees companies making continual improvements through small incremental changes instead of massive new releases at distant intervals.

He said one of the biggest lessons learned over the years is that one has to make products that are reliable and dependable. You can’t expect customers to remain loyal if they are continually facing poorly performing or breaking products.

The IXP range is an example of one of the innovations from Impro, initially released in 1999. Today, all its historical development and innovations are built into the company’s current Access Portal solutions. The new range was the result of a complete redesign of the company’s products a few years ago, part of Impro’s drive to keep pace with changes in the industry and the market at large.

At the same time, Impro is not abandoning its customers using older products which have a long lifespan as a result of the quality in the company’s design and manufacturing processes. East is adamant that Impro should continue to control its production to ensure the quality of the solutions ending up in customers’ hands.

This will not change with the ASSA ABLOY acquisition. East says the company’s new parent offers Impro access to a broad range of intellectual property and global expertise in a variety of fields, but it expects Impro to continue operations as normal. ASSA ABLOY buys into winning solutions, but then allows the company to continue its successful operations while giving it a broader scale in which to operate.

The power of Portal

Following East, Linda Glieman, head of client services at Impro took the floor to briefly discuss some of the newest solutions from the company. She highlighted the Portal solution and the benefits of real-time business intelligence it provides, as well as how the platform has been enhanced, for example, enabling clustering in larger installations. The customisable Portal Dashboard, a live web-based solution was also demonstrated, along with

Impro’s visitor management solutions

Impro’s ability to integrate with other systems in the market was also demonstrated, such as the work the company has done with Morpho readers, Nedap long-range readers and Aperio electronic locks. Impro has also adopted HID Global’s mobility applications which allow users to keep their access and identity credentials on their smartphones.

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