“Attendance Verification” is a broad term that says, ‘we verify that someone was at a location at a date and time.’ There is an implied level of accuracy and security behind this, that the attendance actually happened.
Staff tracking, guard tour, guard tracking and ‘tour systems’ are also typical uses and names for Attendance Verification. This has expanded into many more applications; tracking cleaners, couriers, monitoring machine maintenance, monitoring any process where it is important to know that a member of staff has attended a location at a date and time.
Before we get too far into this discussion about attendance verification and where it started, let’s look at some of the issues behind it.

Why Is Attendance Verification Important?

Initially, the need was to ensure that a company delivered the labor that was being paid for. If a company wanted their buildings patrolled at night when there was no means to verify that the security patrol happened, was the patrol actually done and when? Was the area kept safe?
So the question became, “What could be done to show if the patrol actually happened?”
Why bother? If the security patrol was not done, then at a simplistic level, money was being paid for something that was not being done. Then and worse, the possibility of theft, fire, other damage was increased by the absence of staff patrolling a site.
So, a means to record that a guard actually visited a site was sought.
These were the early driving forces for Attendance Verification. Over time, the uses for these systems spread into other key areas.

Early Methods Of Staff Tracking

In the beginning, mechanical time clocks were located at properties where security guards visited. The staff member used a special key to wind the clock which made an impression on a tape inside the clock and from that, their attendance was recorded on site. Should the need arise, the time clock could be opened then the tape of attendances extracted and used for verifying attendances. Clearly this was time consuming and not amenable to any kind of reporting or long term performance monitoring. It barely solved a base-need and nothing more.
Then as the micro electronics industry was maturing, bar-codes were tried. These had the promise of being a good solution but they failed rather quickly. Firstly, the early scanners being used were fragile. Touching the read head onto the bar-code was often enough to damage the reader, and also the bar-code itself if it was not robust. Quickly it became a significant issue as a good reader was expensive and bar-codes had to be regularly replaced. The real problem however became a total lack of security and from that information integrity. Bar-codes could be copied, printed on common photocopiers and laser printers so they could be easily duplicated and this opened such systems to abuse; a staff member could use duplicate codes to fudge attendance at a site when in fact they were elsewhere.
A few other solutions were tried and one contender was magnetic stripe swipe cards. With this, readers were positioned at strategic locations, then passing staff would swipe a credit-card type device across the reader and their attendance was logged. This suffered the same problem of ‘how to get the data and make use of it’ that the clockwork mechanisms of years gone by had. It was also expensive and attempts to network the readers failed due to cost and implementation difficulties.
Around this time, simple write on time cards were starting to be kept in a holder secured to out of the way places at facilities, such as the back of a door. Some are still in use in 2018 in airports and other facilities. A guard or cleaner would use a pen to write their attendance time and date onto the card which was collected at a later date and kept or processed as required. Clearly this lacked any kind of information security or integrity check and it was annoying to use.

The Rise Of The iButton

The best solution quickly became the iButton which started use in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.
An iButton is a small electronic device approximately 17 millimeters in diameter and three or five millimeters thick. Having a secure silicon chip inside and with a guaranteed unique serial number, it was not copy-able and hence it’s security was assured. Each button is unique, attendances showing a serial number are only generated by that serial number.
Suddenly a device became available that could not be duplicated, was guaranteed to be unique, and was robust and simple to use. The elimination of the problems of information security and the robust nature of these devices means that iButton readers proliferated and ‘Attendance Verification’ in a reliable and secure form was born.
But with this ‘perfect solution’, not everything was perfect by any measure, there were real and significant problems in a newly developing industry.

Early Reporting System Problems

In the late 1990’s, a trend by one manufacturer was to use Microsoft Excel for reporting. This initially felt like a good idea as so many staff understood Excel, and it is a flexible tool. Unfortunately it was a terrible idea.
The insurmountable problem was that staff could ‘fudge’ the data, and so some did and that caused immense problems. If an attendance record was not generated by a staff member, then one could be inserted manually and hey-presto, there was data. Another name for this is fraud.
Then another company decided to use Microsoft Access database and again this was thought to be a good idea but quickly the capability of Access was tested when tens of thousands of records were inserted into data tables that had a habit of breaking. An expansion of this into a full blown SQL server running on site computers scaled to managing large amounts of data, but came at a significant software cost. All these solutions went away.
The biggest problem of all was that databases had to be kept in site PCs that had a very definite and sometimes short life. After a few years hard drives would fail and without a backup, data was lost. Not only that, before the eventual demise, the PC would usually malfunction and corruption of the database was common. Remember, this is at the dawn of available internet connections so backup systems were painful, expensive and prone to error or not used. Sure, universities and some business had good internet, but security sites, cleaners rooms and many smaller businesses did not.
As businesses came under pressure from litigation and slip and trip injury claims, the importance of long term data retention became obvious so the use of PCs on site and backup systems became problematic.

Suddenly Attendance Verification Found a New Use

Traditionally, security guards were the prime users of iButtons and the other types of attendance verification. The iButton solutions were becoming dominant as their advantages were apparent.
Soon, in the late in the mid to late 1990’s the cleaning industry came under pressure to ensure that they were actually providing labor and that it covered all the places it should.
The reason? Slip and trip injury and the resulting public liability and insurance situation. Insurers were having more and bigger claims. They wanted to ensure that clients were in fact being diligent in managing their staff and thereby reducing risk and reducing the number of claims.
Insurers are not stupid. Why would they pay for claims as a result of negligence?
Then quickly the situation became so bad that public liability insurance became hard to obtain, at almost any cost, because of mounting costs and claims. Insurers would only insure reputable companies and those who could prove their diligence, and to make it all worse, the premiums escalated along with excess clauses.
This created a whole new application and market for attendance verification.
Suddenly staff tracking and performance monitoring to show diligence for cleaners became important, and the retention of data, critical.

A Commercial Advantage Resulted

Some companies used this emerging situation and new technology to significant advantage.
They ensured that staff met performance goals and from that, they had information to fight legal claims of negligence. But also, right at the very start, by being more diligent the number of claims was reduced so it was a win-win-win situation; less claims, less litigation cost, easier insurance.
But there was an extra ‘win’ they leveraged.
They used their proven diligence as a marketing advantage, and from that they were able to better compete and win more contracts. Behind and underpinning it all, their staff by virtue of meeting all their performance goals were actually going a good job and were able to prove it.
Proof of performance, being able to extract information from logged data, managing staff all became driving forces for the most successful companies.

Elite-ID Changed all this in 1998

As a result of decades of experience in computer hardware and software and speaking with cleaning and security contractors, Elite-ID developed the XL-Data wand, XL-Unloader and EliteReporter reporting software.
At the time of release in 1999, the millennium was about to change and year 2000 compliance issues were significant for some companies. Of course, this had been taken into account by Elite-ID, but also the design innovation in these products meant that suddenly impediments to successfully implementing Attendance Verification systems were removed.
Most importantly and for the first time however, the Elite-ID systems directly targeted Risk Management applications with its new reports. For the first time “loop time” also known as the “return time” became a directly calculable number from staff attendances. Also, being a closed system, it was not possible to tamper and hence assured information security.
The era of Attendance Verification, Risk Management, and the ability of management to measure and manage staff information was born.

Elite-ID Research and Developed Did Not Cease

Suddenly, Elite-ID had many of Australia’s major security and cleaning companies as their clients. Products were in demand, the EliteReporter software was constantly expanded and the future looked assured.
Shopping Centers quickly become a large market for Elite-ID and their iButton solution. While this solution did and still does work well, Elite-ID perceived it as not ideal for high volume repetitive logging when staff were busy and did not want to be distracted from their normal work.
After investigating new and emerging technology and after much in-house research and development, Elite-ID released the Voyager RFID system in 2003 which quickly spread through hundreds of shopping centers across Australia.
At the time, this was the only such system in use, anywhere. It was innovative, it revolutionized the ability to collect staff attendances as all staff had to do was carry a data logger, called a Wand, and nothing more. Previously they had to touch their wand onto an iButton which disrupted their daily routine and in busy work spaces could be disruptive.
Now all staff needed to do was pass within a few meters of an RFID point and logging was automatic.

The Internet Provided New Possibilities

After developing the best iButton solution then the revolutionary RFID solution, the existing problems of running databases on site still remained. PCs still crashed, backup were seldom taken, site staff really were not and still are not the best at running databases on site no matter how simple and robust they are built.
So in 2009 Eite-ID released Nexus-WebEye as an internet based full featured solution for Attendance Verification data. Along with this Eite-ID provided a simple application that collected site data files and automatically fed them into Nexus-WebEye.
Not only that, Elite-ID provided more and better reports and the ability to schedule reports for automatic delivery via email. Again, Elite-ID was a leader in releasing innovative solutions.
So all of a sudden, site staff had all their problems solved; PC problems would not cause loss of data, Elite-ID were able to better support their clients and the problems of updating software packages in PCs was removed.
Not only site staff were helped, management had better access to data and suddenly, management had more tools at their disposal so that information became knowledge.

Looking Toward The Future

The only way for businesses to survive in the modern era is to constantly innovate and improve.
We understand that. As innovators and developers, this is exactly what Elite-ID have always done, and we have survived 20 years in business as a result.
Since 1998 Elite-ID have developed innovative reports giving customers the best possible options for understanding their data and then from that, making informed management decisions.
Innovation has always been done at Elite-ID as new systems have been rolled out when new technologies have become available. A great example is AtSite.
The emerging technology of iBeacons in 2013 made available a new means of capturing staff attendances in smart phones and similar devices. So the AtSite system was created that produced the lowest cost and easiest to install and use attendance verification system on the market which assured its rapid uptake across Australia and New Zealand.

The Evolution Has Produced Tangible Results

As a client said to us recently, ‘Lets get ahead of the problem and make sure we are compliant.’ This pleased us greatly as it embraced the technology and the results that can be expected.
How are they doing that? They are using Elite-ID products and services but most importantly, they are actually managing their staff with the information generated.
An example of topical accurate information being used to create ‘knowledge’ is the Attendance Analysis report. This best of breed report has been designed to help the cleaning and security industries measure staff performance in multiple flexible and powerful ways that no other report can do.
Key features are;
* Enhanced time profiles with performance targets for return time and for hits,
* Industry best reports; Gap Analysis and improved Risk Management reports,
* Reporting through midnight to suit night staffing,
* Exception option – to only show non-compliant locations.
* Support for managing many sites and a new email contact management system.

So what does the future hold? Simple answer; plenty, but we’re not saying just yet. We constantly monitor trends in technology and we are in fact developing new products, systems and reports. Stay tuned for more!