Wimbledon. Grass. Henman Hill. Strawberries and cream. They are all synonymous with British tennis, right? The UK hosts the only Grand Slam tournament in the world that takes place on grass so you can bet their reputation in lawn tennis is a point of pride.
As part of an initiative to promote the game throughout the UK and unearth the next Andy Murray or Heather Watson, the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) installed ACT365, Vanderbilt’s cloud-based access control and video surveillance solution, at tennis courts and clubs throughout the island.
What has ACT365 got to do with keeping British tennis in a healthy position you ask? Well, the LTA want to maximize the use of their facilities by getting as many people on their courts throughout each day as possible. The LTA needed a solution that would enable players using municipal facilities to easily arrange practice and coaching by giving them adequate information about court availability.
The recipe to this much sought after solution involved ACT365 coordinating with a platform that allows courts to be booked and used through a simple process exploiting smartphone technology – ClubSpark, a venue management tool from Sportlabs – LTA’s technology partner.
So, here’s how it works. ACT365 gives users control of multiple access points from a single unified interface, and its software allows operators to analyze door status remotely. So, tennis players make and pay for bookings using ClubSpark from their mobiles and receive a text message with a pin code that is also communicated to ACT365. When players arrive at the court, they enter the code into a reader that opens the court gate. Voila! No more waiting around swatting your racket at fresh air in frustration as you wait for a court to free up.
While it is the tennis player that deals with ClubSpark app for booking and court usage, it is the security installer that manages the ACT365 interface which can be viewed from any internet-ready-device. Engineers are given valuable details about the tennis court gates including controller status, system health, possible tampering incidents, gate forced, gate ajar, etc. Problems can be solved remotely, which avoids the need for expensive site call-outs.
A traditional access control system would be ineffective in this situation since you would need a computer at every site, once again highlighting the beauty and power of ACT365 to handle the growing demands of 21st century everyday life.
For more information on ACT365 in action, check out our case study: https://vanderbiltindustries.com/resources/case-studies/how-act365-reduced-the-cost-of-ownership-by-minimizing-call-outs
