Smarter Cards, Smarter Results
Within Pfizer's research groups, digital signatures, enabled by the smart cards, are transforming those previously unwieldly lab notebooks. Despite Pfizer's need to date the lab entries ASAP in order to create evidence for potential patents, researchers used to wait to date the entries because it wasn't always easy to track down an appropriate person to witness a signature. This, in turn, encouraged researchers to have their work signed off in batches instead of in timelier snippets of data, says Holbrook. Conversely, the digital signature technology allows researchers to sign and date the day's entry immediately.
But that wasn't the end of the benefits Pfizer began to reap from its smart cards.
"We were somewhat surprised by how much of a benefit cross-site access was," says Holbrook. Pfizer employees quite commonly work at many sites, going back and forth. Under the old system, they had to physically register at a visitor centre before getting down to work. The smart cards let them use an online system to register to work at an alternate site, then swipe the card there. "Once people heard about that capability, they asked for the badge outside of R&D," she says.
There was a tipping point of such requests late last year, and IT decided to roll out the smart cards across the corporation to roughly 90,000 to 100,000 users.
The smart card project's reach continues to expand, says Holbrook, as people find uses for the cards that Pfizer didn't foresee. For example, the company is now using readers at the door of training classrooms to keep track of who attends. Training records are a big deal in the pharmaceutical industry, as some training is mandated, Holbrook says. Employees also use the cards and readers for what Potter calls "access control in a box". For sensitive offsite meetings, he says, a meeting leader can use the cards and reader to control and track who attends, guarding against corporate espionage.
Pfizer employees can even use the cards for cashless vending at company cafeterias.
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. Zones provide focussed content from CIO and leading technology partners.- White PaperJoin industry expert Martin Tuip to discover best practice strategy for the archival and removal of .PST files using email archiving. Learn how to ensure long-term email records are there when needed, and reduce the risk to your business and clients.
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How to improve employee productivity in small and medium businesses
U.S. businesses lose 5.4 billion productive hours through employees searching for information annually. Avoid the same inefficiencies occurring in your business. Read on to discover the productivity issues facing SMBs and how the Oracle Application Express (APEX) can improve employee productivity and enhance development efficiencies.
