And Now for the ROI

Holbrook says that the smart card project's ROI is hard to pin down precisely. Pfizer IT has worked with its vendors to drive down the cost of the badges, from about $US30 at the start to about $US13. (At the beginning of the project, Holbrook points out, no one knew how to price the card because it didn't exist. Also, some R&D costs were loaded into pricing and the vendors didn't know what to expect in terms of volume.)

Pfizer estimates the cost of one "wet signature" at $US30 (including time to track down the signer, plus storage and scanning cost; some analysts put the cost as high as $US125.) Today, one smart card, with its unlimited number of digital signatures, costs $US13, plus $US70 for a three-year licence for the high-assurance PKI credential. Pfizer uses a Microsoft digital certificate authority for some in-house signatures, but for signatures subject to outside scrutiny, it partners with Citibank to license the SAFE high-assurance PKI credential. (SAFE — "signatures and access for everyone" — is a pharmaceutical industry consortium.) Anecdotally, Pfizer's use of FedEx to ship documents for signatures has also dropped, Potter says.

Innovation Ahead

Pfizer plans to take the technology to new places, Potter says, including biometric applications recently installed at some Pfizer facilities. The smart card stores the user's thumbprint, which is matched by a reader at the door. One benefit of this system, Holbrook says, is that Pfizer doesn't need to maintain a big database of the thumbprints — a serious privacy concern, especially in Europe, where governmental privacy regulations are quite strict.

"There's plenty of room to innovate on this platform," Potter says.