Calcagni Real Estate offers services from residential brokerage to new construction marketing and representation to commercial sales. Calcagni employs 120 agents who work from five offices in Connecticut.
As with any bustling real estate office, a steady stream of visitors, agents and staff comes and goes throughout the day. Additionally, realtors' work often takes them to the office late at night to write offers, contact sellers, answer critical questions from buyers and process paperwork. With a substantial number of agents and staff across five communities, Calcagni Real Estate faced the challenge of providing streamlined access to these sites without constantly issuing keys and keeping track of them.
“We wanted to secure our building and assets, while also offering our agents a convenient way to come and go,” said Antonio Liguori, CFO, Calcagni Real Estate.
Traveling throughout the state, agents work from a number of the company’s locations, requiring multiple keys for access. A lock-and-key system became cumbersome and hard to manage, necessitating a different approach for increased efficiency.
A long-time customer of integrator and alarm monitoring provider American Total Protection (ATP), Calcagni had considered cloud-based access control a couple of years prior to this project. Then, Calcagni decided to close one location and open another, prompting the discussion on best practices for accessibility. Calcagni learned more about the ability to incorporate mobile credentials in the system, which appeared advantageous.
“When we first looked at updating the access control system, mobile credentials weren’t an option, but over the last two years, they’ve become more mainstream, which was appealing to the leadership at Calcagni,” said Joe Montini, president of integration, ATP.
The use of mobile credentials fell in line with the real estate company’s top priority of leveraging innovation and convenience to improve the experience for all involved. “Calcagni Real Estate is constantly looking for technology solutions to help our clients and our agents,” Liguori said.
ATP recommended the Vanderbilt ACT365 cloud-based access control and video management solution, coupled with Farpointe Data Conekt mobile-ready contactless smart card readers and credentials to streamline access to all five locations.
Vanderbilt ACT365 enables Calcagni to remotely manage entry to its facilities from any device at any time and without the need for a dedicated IT department, giving the team the ability to deploy a robust security solution while saving money on significant infrastructure investments. ACT365 is a cost-effective option for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with multiple locations and a number of access readers and users. Oftentimes, these organizations lack the infrastructure and work force to provide oversight of the system, so having a cloud-based solution that facilitates automatic updates and remote management can save time and resources.
ACT365 is integrated with Farpointe Conekt Readers, which read data from mobile credentials stored in a smartphone’s wallet app via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology, allowing an agent’s smartphone to function as a contactless electronic access control credential. The readers communicate with ACT365 to provide real-time situational awareness to the Calcagni team, along with the ability to grant and restrict access to a door.
“Mobile credential use is on the rise in many of today’s SMBs as a way to remove the burden of key cards, while embracing the power of smartphone technology,” said Thomas Piston, Eastern regional sales manager, Farpointe Data.
ACT365 was instrumental in simplifying access, allowing a single user the ability to manage the system. ACT365 also gives Calcagni’s IT Development Director Heather Harwood the ability to streamline the addition of new cardholders to the system.
“We’ve discovered that with the installation of the new readers and the ACT365 solution, our facilities are more secure, and our agents have more flexibility with their schedules,” Liguori said.
