Why TeamCard is the preferred Access Control solution.

By Scott Paul,
Head of Ticketing & Supporter Services
Nottingham Forest FC

I would like to think that I have a balanced approach to technical stadium requirements, having worked with all three of the UK’s leading providers at various clubs in my career.

Taken at face value, each access control vendor appears to offer a solution that, without any knowledge of the others, would appear to fit the requirements of the modern stadium.

However, when you have lived and worked with each of the solutions, critical differences start to emerge that leave me in no doubt that TeamCard have got it right by some margin over their competitors.

Their points of difference include, but are not limited to the following:

The best Support and Account Management experience:

1. Regular account management visits and calls, with updates on upcoming features
2. Live, on-call support when you actually require it, I have never needed to wait more than 5-minutes for a call-back during an event day.
3. Will usually perform system checks in the background and inform you of any remedial actions without you being aware there was ever an issue.
4. TeamCard actively asks clients what they want, listens, then develops/deploys updates quickly.

Well considered and highly featured technology that shows they understand the operational requirements currently and for the foreseeable future:

1. Great deployment and configuration flexibility allows focus where it is needed depending on the variables of each event.
2. Has capacity to run access/monitoring on several live events simultaneously.
3. Flexible set-up and templates for general admission and reserved seating events
4. Integrates into all ticketing systems easily.
5. Live monitoring of turnstiles to show quickly issues with turnstile readers (offline/connection issues etc)
6. Easy-to-reconfigure for access changes if changes in flow from one area to another are required.
7. Live camera dial-in, meaning that you can see exactly what a turnstile supervisor can see on screen for every turnstile from your own office (great for remote assistance)
8. Supports all forms of tickets type – barcodes, QR-code, RFID, digital/mobile phone.

Delivers value for money when compared to the competition on so many fronts:

1. Maintenance fees and peripheral/consumables are cheaper than their competition.
2. Offers a value-added loyalty feature whereby credits/rewards/refunds can be added rather than waiting for customer payment details…meaning everything is instantaneous, this protects cashflow and enhances customer service to members/purchasers
3. No fees for importing data into your system for game sales generated by another venue/vendor.
4. Supporters all forms of tickets type – barcodes, QR-code, RFID, digital/mobile phone

I am happy to conclude that, where the partnership between the TeamCard 3 solution and Nottingham Forest FC in considered, I cannot envisage any reason why I would swap to an alternative system, even if it were to be supplied by a vendor free of charge!