Creating a safe and efficient tower ecosystem through access control innovation

Five years ago, Sera4 was a pioneer in offering keyless access control to MNOs and towercos in Mexico. The company has now expanded its footprint across many countries in CALA as well as globally, and is driving efficiencies among towercos, their clients and vendors thanks to its integrated control access system. Sera4 provides a cloud-based Network Operations Center (NOC), electronic controllers and smartphone apps that enable secure onsite access.

TowerXchange caught up with Sera4’s CEO David Coode to hear about the company’s expansion and how their solutions are reducing losses and disruption while helping towercos and MNOs in achieving efficiencies.

TowerXchange: Please re-introduce Sera4 for any readers not already familiar with your vision and achievements.

Sera4 is a keyless access control company committed to protecting critical infrastructure while making life easier for everyone involved. Five years ago, Sera4’s engineering team came directly from Blackberry, the pioneers of mass-market wireless security. It was only natural that usability, universality and security are all core design principles we carried forward from our experience. We started out serving the telecom market in Mexico and spread throughout Latin America, and now we have a global focus with our business. We have a vision to use technology to bring great value and great experiences to our customers.

TowerXchange: Two years ago, we sat down with you to discuss your plans and activities across CALA. How has Sera4’s footprint evolved and what success stories you can share?

Two years ago, we were only establishing ourselves within Mexico. Since then, we have introduced a padlock to our product line. This padlock was specifically designed for the telecom industry and to serve critical infrastructure usually exposed to tough weather conditions and often forgotten for months at a time, and it was selected by American Tower for their sites in Latin America.

We have also launched our next generation of lock controller, the MX5. We have some very important updates in our servers, which not only enable scaling and reliability, but many new features as well. Additionally, we have expanded into four continents and some adjacent segments such as TV broadcast and transportation network infrastructure.

Our team has also grown significantly over the last four years. We have added some great technical and business talents, and have some scale to extend top quality support to all of our customers. Our ecosystem of partners has established and is really growing well. It is perhaps this ecosystem that helps to create the most value compared to who we were two years ago as it enables new models, such as Access Control as a Service (ACaaS), which is a very easy way for customers to get started with keyless access control.

TowerXchange: What are some of the main challenges and inefficiencies when it comes to controlling sites access? How are you helping to address those challenges?

We’ve discovered over 50 different challenges when it comes to more traditional forms of access control. Each of these are opportunities for optimisation and value creation. The most important challenge is anonymity, when someone knows they are not identified going into a sensitive area, they are much more likely to steal. This has been clearly proven: we have shown vandalism and theft have fallen dramatically each time we install. The other main challenge is around the management of physical keys: getting the right key to the right person at the right time, the risks posed when a key is lost, and the lost time when someone forgets their key. We have seen that no one in 2019 forgets their phone!

Our core technology of keyless access control provides operators and towercos with a way to get efficiency without trading off security. We help customers to adopt this technology by bringing in ecosystem partners as needed to complete solutions and provide a great customer experience during implementation and over the long run.

TowerXchange: What differentiates your offer and solutions from your competitors and what is unique about your value proposition?

We were the first in the market with keyless access control that covered the needs of both towercos with perimeter access and MNOs with cabinet and shelter access. We have the most experience on the market in delivering a solution across all phones that simply works when it needs to. This point is really important, as we promise operational efficiency to our customers so we make sure that it works reliably and without any need for end-user training. Earlier, we took this point for granted, but we are seeing how it is not the case with some other access control solutions.

We are also all about customer experience—it’s deeply ingrained in our company’s DNA. We support them zealously, and when they have special requests we are often able to accommodate them quickly in a way that large companies just cannot match. Sometimes those special requests are for features or customisations, and other times it is in the structure of a business deal. I am personally responsible of maintaining Sera4’s commitment to a great customer experience as we grow.  

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, we are somewhat unique in our choice to be great in something as specific as access control. We see many companies in access control spread into asset tracking, job ticketing or other adjacent value streams. These moves might make sense on paper but we don’t want to compete with experienced firms in adjacent segments while also spreading ourselves too thin.

TowerXchange: How are security and efficiency related and how are Sera4’s solutions helping MNOs and towercos to optimise their assets?

Although we use the word “security” when we talk about reduction of theft, it’s really important to note that security is not the issue: it is identification. No one wants to be identified as the last person on a site before the batteries are discovered to be missing. This psychological deterrent is very effective. But, still, there are those who are brazen and try to steal anyway. I remember meeting with a customer who was bragging about all the thieves that our solutions help them to catch and how many of them are now in prison. Thieves in prison is someone else’s mission, but in every configuration we’ve implemented we see the elimination of the majority of losses and disruptions due to site vandalism.

I think it is easy to imagine how eliminating a physical artefact like a key to open a lock can lead to natural efficiencies. I am consistently surprised when I learn about the real inefficiencies in the field and with the staff involved in key and access log management. Our customers often save more money in efficiency improvements as they do in theft recovery. As I mentioned earlier, this efficiency effect is magnified when both a towerco and an MNO on a site share the same system because the coordination between organisations is often very inefficient. Usually that benefit is most felt by the towerco because the MNO doesn’t feel the pain of how they ask for access in a secure environment, and now it can be fully and securely automated. It’s easy to see how real-time access data can feed business intelligence systems and show how to take the efficiencies to an even greater level.

With reduced losses and greater efficiencies, we can work with our customers on financial models that can save them money as soon as they deploy a Sera4 access control system. Then, with fewer losses, our customers can plan for lower capex budgets while efficiencies lead to lower opex budgets at the same time. Ultimately, this leads to greater asset efficiency for our customers.

TowerXchange: With so many different parties operating several elements of the sites, how important is communication across this complex ecosystem and how is your solution driving a dialogue among tower companies, operators and their partners?

We believe that understanding the players in an ecosystem is critical to delivering a solution that works flawlessly and is feasible to install and service. Communication is critical so that our solutions behave as we expect when installed at customer sites. Of course, this is only possible with a dedicated focus on a market such as Sera4 is focused on telecom. We are in a position to drive the discussion amongst the ecosystem because we have a solution that delivers high value to our customers, while at the same time it is a narrow piece of many RFQs and we partner well with others.

We have seen the value that is created for our customers when the towerco as well as the MNOs are using Sera4 on a given site. When we participate well in the ecosystem, we envision not only gates and cabinets, but gensets, fuel containers, fibre-optic nodes, battery shelters and anti-climbs all controlled easily and without friction from the one phone – something we all carry with us anyway.