Unified Access system for 13 production entities (ERG Access)

Implementation of a system for enabling paperless access inside the perimeter of Eurasian Resources Group's 13 business and production entities.

One of the priorities in ERG digital strategy is “paper-free processes”. This project was a major step towards achieving this priority.

It has contributed to overall enterprise efficiency in the following ways:

• Reduced visitors’ waiting time at the entry gates by 90%;

• Increased the reliability of employee and visitor data;

• Greatly reduced corruption risks by eliminating falsification of access papers and entry passes;

• Reduced time spent on submitting and managing access requests by 60%;

• Reduced the risk of unauthorized entry, e.g. by a dismissed employee;

• Achieved some monetary effect by eliminating printers and printing consumables;

• Has been saving ~7 trees annually by printing less paper.

Web application was developed from scratch using Java stack and Postgres SQL.

A separate integration service was developed for interfaces with SAP HCM, Access control system SIGUR, corporate mobile application Qollab, corporate document management system based on WSS docs platform, electronic signature interface.

The project team faced and successfully overcome the following challenges:

• Complexity of the business process – all production sites had different access approval processes and different formats for access requests;

• Traditionally, physical safety is a very conservative field; it is also a subject to strict governmental control.

• Complexity of training the security personnel at the entry points. Many security guards are not familiar working with PCs.

• The need to train over 3,000 end users over a period of 2 months for a productive launch of the system.

• Large number of integration interfaces and dependence on data quality in the source systems.

The ERG Access is a system that enables automatic management of access of employees, contractors and visitors (about 90 thousand people annually) inside the security perimeter.

The system connects to HR systems and access control systems (ACS), and manages automatic revocation of access during vacation or long absence, updates information in the ACS automatically. It automatically updates information for more than 500 entry points as a new employee has been added or transferred from another entry point, a surname has changed, etc.

ERG Access consists of the following modules:

• Applications module for submitting an entry request from a user, using data from related systems, such as SAP HCM;

• Photo update module for managing employee photos. The photo can be uploaded or taken using a corporate mobile application and then verified against the national identification database (GBD FL). Another source of the photo is the personal employee profile.

• ID card module for creating or updating employee ID cards.

• Mandatory education module for managing the introductory briefing status for visitors. Every employee or visitor to a production site needs to go through a labor safety and security briefing. It is also possible to plan briefings and send the time & date of the introductory briefing to visitors.

• HR and safety office module for reports and dashboards on employee attendance, the number of people currently present at the site, access requests, approval SLAs, notifications about unauthorized physical access attempts, etc.

Business offices and production units of Eurasian Resources Group in the Republic of Kazakhstan: sites in 13 locations across the country, with a total of 60 thousand employees and 30 thousand unique visitors per year.