Smartphones Incorporated

Thursday 22 December 2016 , , , , , , , 0 Comments



There has always been a line separating one’s professional and personal lives until smartphones come along and make it blurry. When Apple debuted iPhone with it vast possibilities in mobile applications, people and businesses around the world rushed to build applications for almost everything. There are tons of office productivity apps out there waiting to be adopted. And organizations are constantly finding ways to make work processes more effective through smartphone applications for the benefits of the management and the employees alike. Nowadays, emails are coming through smartphones (because admit it, it’s simply easier to check emails on the phone than from a laptop) and you can easily consolidate your work emails and personal ones in one mailbox, and prioritize the senders. Microsoft has gone mobile with its Office software, making opening and editing Microsoft files a breeze from your smartphones, an impossible task to master 10 years back even when you were using a laptop.

Further tapping on the smartphone technology, workforce management Apps like TimeTec TA (Time & Attendance) is making its way to modern organizations where employees can clock their work times using various methods like Beacon technology, GPS and NFC tag. And from the smartphone also, the staff can check his/her work schedule, leaves, off-duty days, work performance and more for better management and improved transparency. All these features are available at a minimal rate and a lot of convenient. Leave management on a smartphone for example, allows application and approval from an app, checking of leave allowances, accrual and more. Basically, tasks that were administered by admin personnel in the office only can now be made simpler and faster through the wonders of apps and smartphones.

However, the smarter the phone gets, the more power it requires, forcing many to start carrying external or extra batteries. High technology like smartphone aka the pocket computer has room for improvement in terms of power consumption, radiation, and heat emission. Since the world’s smartphone ownership rates are rising at an exceptional speed, perhaps the Green phone, hybrid or solar powered phones are some of the things the IT world needs to explore for our better future.

In a nutshell, smartphones have become integral at the workplace because companies have made it compulsory for employees to bring one to the office for various reasons. Smartphone can no longer be considered one’s personal property; its functions has evolved and become a work tool for today’s labor (whether you like it or not). 

There has always been a line separating one’s professional and personal lives until smartphones come along and make it blurry. When Ap...

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Attendance & Beyond with FingerTec

Tuesday 22 November 2016 , , , , , , , , , 0 Comments


FingerTec has been in the biometrics industry since the very beginning of the millennium and we had witnessed leaps of progress in verification technology over the years. In the early 2000s, people were talking about FAR (False Acceptance Rate) and FRR (False Rejection Rate) of fingerprint verification, and today the questions are shifted more towards the management software that comes along with the system. Biometrics technology definitely promotes honesty subtly, and it has been proven to be effective in eradicating ‘buddy-punching’ occurrences and dishonesty amongst employee because the machine only recognizes the owner of that particular biometrics. And the biometrics technology doesn’t stop at fingerprint; it also progresses to facial detection, iris recognition, palm and also voice recognition.

Apart from the effective method that biometrics features, most importantly, the use of this technology in the office automates the collection of important data required by today’s business. Biometrics system provides an attendance system that is complete with employees’ details and their daily activities, and by having this system, the Company can do more than just look at the attendance aspect of the operation.

In Ingress, TCMS V3 and TimeTec TA, a company can schedule staff’s timetables, manage roster distribution, simple leave management, shift assignments and etc. The data collected by biometrics technology offers companies a lot more to accomplish on the software side, enabling them to use the data to improve the efficiency of their workforce. TimeTec TA, the cloud solution for time attendance and workforce management, for example, is capable of tracing staff attendance even when they are mobile through TimeTec App.  The TimeTec TA gives more flexibility to the customers in terms of data collection and access to the data. On top of biometrics, mobile and web clocking, soon we are going to introduce Time Beacon clocking to collect attendance data. And in the near future, there are a couple more cloud solutions suitable for your organization added to TimeTec including TimeTec Leave and TimeTec Hire.


In conclusion, office automation is necessary for today’s business to go into the future because data is one’s biggest and most valuable asset these days. The cost to implement office automation might be a bit expensive but it’d be more costly if a company hesitates because the future demands for it.  FingerTec and TimeTec are tuning our solutions to prepare for the future and we hope that you do too.  

FingerTec has been in the biometrics industry since the very beginning of the millennium and we had witnessed leaps of progress in veri...

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The Art of Selling Cloud

Wednesday 2 November 2016 , , 1 Comments


 Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman - not the attitude of the prospect, William Clement Stone. When we started selling biometrics solutions more than 10 years ago, we glorified Internet marketing to market our solutions globally without incurring exorbitant marketing costs for the activities. Marketing biometrics solution this way has been proven successful, putting us on the global map at par with other renowned brands of the industry. Now, selling cloud solutions poses us with another challenge of how to push these software products to the market effectively and sustain those customers for the longest time.

 Who would be (most likely to be) using our cloud solutions? Do we anticipate small medium enterprises to start deploying cloud or MNCs would be the better potentials to take the bait? Identification of the right customers is paramount to determine how we focus and channel our resources to the target group. From our limited experience in the cloud business, the consumption of cloud is focused on companies around 100-3000 employees having multiple branches that require automation in attendance and a system that can handle staff mobility effectively. Knowing exactly what the right customers want, the tailoring of the marketing activities can be focused and carried out suitably. 

 So what do they want, and how to identify the requirements? Selling cloud, unlike regular software, shouldn’t be tailored to each customer’s whims and fancies on customizations. However, it doesn’t mean that things get simpler, as the challenge would be to determine features that are beneficial to majority customers.  For TimeTec TA for example, the appeal is the accessibility, connectivity, scalability and ease of use, definitely. And with ample great features in the solution such as scheduling and roster management, the price USD2 per user per month justifies the investment. Selling cloud is consultative; where a salesperson should spend time with a customer to understand problems they are having and advising solutions from the software that can solve those problems effectively. While doing that, perhaps the salesperson can also identify some other problems that do not have the solutions yet in the product but could be developed in the next upgrade for the purpose of customer retention. In short, with cloud solutions, the progress never stops. 

Cost of customer acquisition is getting higher as we speak and it’s only wise to tap on the existing customers to cross sell and upsell our cloud solutions. TimeTec itself comprises of 8 cloud solutions covering 5 for the workforce management with TimeTec TA, TimeTec Hire, TimeTec Leave, TimeTec VMS, and TimeTec Mobile Workforce and 3 for security industry with i-Neighbour, EpiCamera and TimeTec Patrol. There is a high chance that if the customer is pleased with TimeTec TA, that they are going to move on to another solution that could ease the workload for example TimeTec Leave. Cross selling solutions to a client does not only cut the cost of customer acquisition but it also creates customer loyalty that goes a long way for a cloud brand. 

 TimeTec is at the beginning of this journey and we are taking careful steps when walking on cloud business. We believe strongly that our solutions could make the working world a better place, and the only direction we have to go is up with TimeTec. With the support of all our global customers and resellers that have been with us all these years, we are confident that we could. Perhaps, we have not mastered the art of selling Cloud yet but with enough knowledge and practice, we are confident we’ll get there.  

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman - not the attitude of the prospect, William Clement Stone. When we started sellin...

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5 Common Attendance Cheats You Might Overlook

Tuesday 20 September 2016 , , , , , , 0 Comments


Under the assumption that every company has dishonest employees, businesses have to be aware of the tricks and tactics employees deploy to cheat attendance. Time cheating is a crime by law particularly when it involves civil servants. There are cases where people jailed for attendance fraud; hence employees shouldn’t take attendance cheating lightly. To avoid all forms of attendance cheating from happening, one must know the ways these people cheat.  

1. I’ll Be There For You (kinda friend)
This is perhaps the most common attendance cheat where one person clocks for his friends, who promised that he’d return the favor next time around. Because this cheat is so easily done, buddy punching is rampant amongst employees who are using punch time clock and some card systems that do not require any other authentication of the owner. Punch clock or card system is not dynamic, it cannot tell the difference between cheaters and honest workers. 

2. Touch n Go Attendance
Now you see me, now you don’t. This is the kind of employee who lets you think that he is available when in fact he is not present at your company doing the job he’s supposed to do. This employee ‘clocks in’ and yet he’d go somewhere else to complete his errands and come back to clock out and get paid. This scenario commonly occurs in an environment where door access activities are not monitored and the workers can enter and exit as they please. 

3. 1 Plus 1 Equals Two (...different individuals)
Biometrics system, even though unique and personalized, has its flaw too and once employee discovered the flaw, they tend to exploit. It’s usual for a company that’s using fingerprint system to recommend a user to register two fingerprints for one user ID; one to be used regularly and one as a backup in case of something happen to the first finger. To cheat the system, two good friends would share one User ID (with the permission from the admin, of course. When this happen, admin should be held responsible for fraud). For my user ID, one finger is mine, another is yours and for your user ID, we do the same. The system is not wrong, the people are. Biometrics system has improved leaps and bounds; so one fingerprint is enough for one user ID. Or, a company can impose a policy whereby any administrators caught jeopardizing the system could be heavily punished. 

4. Outstation Illusion
When employees are assigned to work outside of the office, how confident are you that they are on the job most of the time? Some would carry out the task for an hour and spend another 2 hours doing other things and claims for 3 hours. And there are some who didn’t even go but claim anyways because you simply have no proof of anything. To avoid this cheat, TimeTec Mobile has a solution for you. Explore now.   

5. Living on The Edge
These are the workers that clock in late but not THAT late and clock out early but not THAT early. They are living on the edge (so to speak) and in the end; it will cost you inflated cost because of the short additional minutes here and there, every day. Take charge by implementing a great attendance system that can manage those discrepancies and monitor your cost efficiently.

FingerTec provides biometrics attendance system for business and cloud attendance for effective management of your workforce. Inquire further at info@fingertec.com 

Under the assumption that every company has dishonest employees, businesses have to be aware of the tricks and tactics employees deploy...

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Yes, We Go Beyond Biometrics

Friday 2 September 2016 , , , , , , , , 0 Comments


We Go Wireless with NFC and Beacon Technologies!


When this company started at the start of the millennium, biometrics technology was a novelty. The oohs and aahs of discovering a new technology, and the market were instantly attracted to the level of security biometrics had to offer. Fast forward 16 years, the market is still very much excited about biometrics solutions because it provides exclusive authentication of every user with the use of fingerprint and facial recognition like no other security technology could. According to a recently released TechSci Research Report “Global Biometrics Market By Type, By End Use Sector, By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 – 2021”, the global biometrics market is projected to surpass $ 24.8 billion by 2021. The market for biometrics is still fairly large and continues growing. In tandem with biometrics popularity however, other technologies also are making their way into the market share, and gaining tractions from the developers, system integrators and users alike.

NFC and Beacon are the two technologies riding the wave of BYOD, bring your own device and the iOT, Internet of Things concept. Both are using the smartphones to read information transmitted by the devices installed all around. The utilization of these technologies is highly dependent on the developers’ objectives, and for FingerTec, we keep our focus intact in the workforce and security industry, adding options for our customers to choose.

The first product to be deployed at TimeTec with NFC technology is TimeTec Patrol mobile app solution at www.timetecpatrol.com. The Patrol app is designed to read the signal transmitted by the NFC tags via the smartphone and transmit the data back to the cloud server for information. The NFC tag is first loaded with information during registration that is useful for patrol solution and each tag is unique for reference.  

Patrol routes are determined for patrolling guards to know the direction of their duty and they are responsible to report incidents back to the post to ensure safety. By having these NFC tags installed along designated routes, patrolling guards are instructed to tap on each tag on that route in the given time provided and report incident encountered instantly via their smartphone and all information will be pushed to TimeTec cloud server for instant access of information.


In brief, the NFC technology enables real-time monitoring and the deployment of this technology is affordable by utilizing the readily available smartphones, the mobile app, the inexpensive NFC tags and the convenient cloud solution. TimeTec Patrol app will be available around the corner for security practitioners to benefit from.

FingerTec will then move on to NFC attendance for TimeTec TA and the initial research on Beacon technology has been carried out to assimilate this technology into our product portfolio. Technology evolves and we have to move with the trend and time in order to penetrate into new market and to provide various options to our customers. There are various elements to be considered in the development of a certain technology, and mobility, accessibility, convenience as well as affordability top the list of yays that we need to achieve with NFC and Beacon technologies.

As usage of smartphones and Internet gets worldwide, tapping on wireless technology is definitely inevitable. Follow our FB page FingerTec Worldwide and subscribe to  FingerTec Newsletter for NFC solution’s announcement soon.

We Go Wireless with NFC and Beacon Technologies! When this company started at the start of the millennium, biometrics technology ...

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8 Reasons to Make that Switch to TCMS V3

Monday 1 August 2016 , , , , , , 3 Comments



TCMS V3 has officially been released and we welcome and encourage all FingerTec customers to experience this software with all its useful features in a new database platform. TCMS V3 is designed on MS Access DB platform initially and the development will start for MySQL very soon.

For those who have been comfortable using TCMS V2, you need to start paying attention and switch to TCMS V3 now because TCMS V3 is tailored to fulfill your current requirements and your future as well. Let's find out why you need to make that switch.

Change for the Better
TCMS V2 has been a really good software for many of our customers but the database of V2 is stuck in the prehistoric age of the database world. Leaving FoxPro behind, TCMS V3 is designed initially on MS Access for easier installation and implementation based on our vast customer feedbacks and later on the development will be carried out on MySQL to cater to larger database requirements.

 It Comes Bundled
The bundling of Time Attendance products with TCMS V3 will officially start on 1st October 2016 and after the said date, all requests on TCMS V2 copies will be chargeable at USD15 per unit.

Have All The V2 Functions and Then Some
TCMS V3 comes with all the functions in the predecessor TCMS V2 and many more features such as batch user addition, scheduling wizard, various language selection and many more.

FCC Compatible
You can connect your attendance terminals to the cloud storage at FingerTec Cloud Center, FCC and export the data to TCMS V3 smoothly with a press of a button.

 User-Friendlier
With TCMS V3, user experience has also been improved with more descriptions and hints to provide customers with positive experience better than what we’ve presented in TCMS V2.

Compatible with Future Readers
Development for TCMS V2 will not be continued but TCMS V3’s has just started. TCMS V3 will be the complementary software for FingerTec time and attendance products for the future and eventually all have to switch to TCMS V3.

Customization is Possible
TCMS V3 is the product of FingerTec’s RnD Center located in Cyberjaya, the Multimedia Super Corridor of the nation and any customizations required by our customers will be assessed for market feasibility and developed accordingly.

More Useful Reports At Your Disposal
Based on more than 15 years of experience, TCMS V3 presents more useful Time & Attendance reports to cater to our esteemed clients.

Get your copy of TCMS V3 today and feedback to us for improvements. We thank you for you kind support.

TCMS V3 has officially been released and we welcome and encourage all FingerTec customers to experience this software with all its usef...

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Brexit or Bremain? Cloud & DevOps World or IFSEC?

Thursday 30 June 2016 , , , , , , , , 0 Comments


A meet up with UK partners


I witnessed the referendum of UK and it quickly became the historical moment and shocked the world when UK voted to exit the European Union. It happened a day after the Cloud & DevOps World 2016, London. This two-day forum was held at Olympia Exhibition Hall, on the 21st and 22nd of June. Simultaneously or so a three-day Security Exhibition, IFSEC International 2016 was on-going at a much larger exhibition hall in ExCel, London. I have managed to make a visit on its last day, which was on the 23rd, the same day when the Britons casted their votes to mandate on exiting or remaining in EU.

I don't think there’s a need for me to talk about the impacts of Brexit, because it was well taken care of by experts flooding their views in the papers and Internet. I’m just plainly discussing the difference between Cloud & DevOps and IFSEC. If I have to choose, should we remain and partake in Cloud & DevOps next year, or to exit and get back to IFSEC that we left a year ago?

IFSEC is no longer new to those who are actively involved in the security industry. Visiting IFSEC is like meeting some old friends, exchanging pleasantries and gossiping the same old stories. Yes, new products were being introduced every year, like products related to Internet of Things, smart home system, and even cloud technology and Apps, but the vast conventional security products still took up 90% of the exhibition hall. There were hardly any new show-stopping products that manage to create disruptive impacts during the exhibition. In other words there were no WOW moments! No doubt that the trade shows drew larger crowd compared to Cloud & DevOps. However, there were many dull faces that were booth hopping to occupy their time.


Cloud & DevOps World 2016 is a mosaic of Knowledge & Networking Division of Informa PLCC, which operates in the heart of Knowledge & Information Economy. No hush-hush that it is a leading business intelligence, academic publishing, knowledge and event-exploring medium. So forums and exhibitions becomes their main focus just like the auxiliary events.

If we split the cloud technology solutions into 3 main categories, there would be Platform as a service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). If I were to make my two-cents worth wrap up, the show was not equally spread out within the categories. The anticipation to hear from some of the cloud giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce were let down, as they did not participate. It was mostly cloud consultancies and service providers exhibiting their cloud management, storage, training, cloud virtualization, optimization assessment, cloud strategy and planning and cloud security. We were proud to take the slice of being the only SaaS provider for our 8 applications in the entire show.

Our partner, Bob Marshall, managing director of CSD Global Group, turned up with his three key personnel and took interest in our new cloud guard tour system, TimeTec Patrol. He also requested a demo account to try on and get familiar with before we could start marketing it. To my surprise, one of the visitors said that he had already created a trial account for TimeTec TA and wants to be our partner. One potential end user with more than a hundred chain stores inquired whether shift swaps are possible in TimeTec TA, which I have told him that it is currently under development. More excitingly we had a very keen company from Turkey who wanted to sign up as our premier partner for I-Neighbour, a residential visitor management system.

I don’t think the response for Cloud & DevOps was overwhelming this year, but we’re certainly happy about cultivating some quality leads. Cloud computing is still in its infancy stage, the exposure and preparation is much more important than making a grand leap in pursuing the sales activities.

I conclude that since we have stridden a giant step to transform ourselves from a biometric product supplier to a cloud solution provider, we now need to establish a cloud platform rather than pinning focus on the existing security market. This whopping huge migration from hardware selling to software subscription clearly firms the need for us to build a Cloud Ecosystem.

We were in London during the Brexit brouhaha

Therefore, between ‘Brexit’ and ‘Bremain’, I made up my mind: See you again in Cloud & DevOps World 2017 in a much larger Exhibition Hall, ExCel, London.

By Teh Hon Seng, Chief Executive Officer

A meet up with UK partners I witnessed the referendum of UK and it quickly became the historical moment and shocked the world when UK ...

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5 Workforce Management Issues Biometrics Solution Can Fix!

Thursday 2 June 2016 , , , , 0 Comments


Workforce management gets tougher when the staff count gets larger. Micro managing employee is definitely ineffective and placing total trust on employee also is counterproductive when it comes to dealing with juvenile and conniving staff.

What could be the quick and effective fixes to this remedy workforce management problems?
Here are 5 common problems every office is facing and let us explain how biometrics system can repair them.

Issue: Persistent exploitation of loopholes!
Can the user cheat the attendance system’s record? If a staff can clock in for someone else’s time, there’ll surely be cases where the attendance data is not entirely honest and accurate. Could someone else cover for a job without the superior knowing about it? If someone could bring a stranger into a workplace without being detected, someone would. When employees know the loopholes, someone would exploit it to his benefit, for sure.

Biometrics Fix: When you are whom your body parts say you are, only then your time attendance data will be recorded and door access will be granted. The biometrics system will not allow a fake to proceed, and a fake doesn’t deserve to be in a good company.

Issue: The belief that stealing time is not damaging!
Many employees have this notion that it’s okay to spend company’s time leisurely without even care about the consequence. In business, time equals money and stealing company time can be equated with causing company extra unnecessary operation costs.

Biometrics Fix: FingerTec system records each employee clock-in time, break times, clock out time and overtime accurately based on the employee’s own activities and the times will be matched with the company’s time policy. Hence, if company allows only 10 minutes grace period, and the staff enters the office 20 minutes late, the staff’s record will be reported as 10 minutes late complete with the total late time. If a company doesn’t allow employees to clock in early for overtime, early comers will not cause company extra money. Evidently, each person has a price tag and each minute equals to a sum of money.

Issue: Staying Old School is Always Cool!
When it comes to managing workforce such as maintaining manual attendance record, this old school attitude would spell disaster in many aspects including dealing with data inaccuracy, time-consuming data entry, no linkage to other solution such as payroll, difficulty to trace historical data and many more which in turn would cause a company more money to manage a manual system rather than investing in automated biometrics system.

Biometrics Fix: Biometrics system such as FingerTec is designed to automate time and attendance scheduling process and data collection, and the data is not only accurate but it also can provide reports to the management as and when required plus it’s easily integrated with a third party solution to achieve efficiency and better productivity.
 
Biometrics prevent someone from stealing your identity
Issue: Data is Isolated!
Companies assume that time and attendance data or door access data could be good for only payroll and not for other purposes. However, having a pool of useful and accurate data describing productivity of your workforce could help the company achieve better than before.

Biometrics Fix: At this day and age, connectivity is utmost important because it’s time consuming to do double job and data is supposed to better lives. By using biometrics solution like FingerTec, you can switch to deploy cloud-based attendance system like TimeTec TA that allows companies to access to data at anytime online and gauge the productivity accordingly plus data will be available on TimeTec Mobile to cater to staff’s mobility.

Issue: Daunted by Change because Change is Complicated!
Some businesses are intimidated by high technology and thinking that a biometrics system would be expensive, hard to maintain and complicated!

 Biometrics Fix: FingerTec is a biometrics system that has been made easy for all customers. The implementation of the hardware is straightforward with a lot of user guides and support available online on various channels. The complementary software, Ingress and TCMS V3 are offered in MS access and MySQL and for those who prefer his data to be online, TimeTec TA is available for time and attendance to be used with hardware that have PUSH technology. The automation of workforce management will better improve any company’s operation and it would save a lot of money in a long run.

Interested to deploy biometrics time and attendance system or door access system, contact us at info@fingertec.com (Ric/Faza)

Workforce management gets tougher when the staff count gets larger. Micro managing employee is definitely ineffective and placing total...

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Tips to Choosing Time & Attendance System

Tuesday 26 April 2016 , , , , , , , , , 1 Comments


Is Your System Sufficient?

 Keeping track of time in the workplace is not news; businesses have been adopting time and attendance system for quite sometime and many have been managing it well without requiring automated or complicated software. That is, if the business only requires you to keep time and attendance fairly simple by only collecting employee recorded time and pay them accordingly.

 However, businesses these days have progressed and are becoming more complex, hence requiring time and attendance system that caters to the requisites that goes beyond only tracking time for salary. Time and attendance system for today’s business operation should be able to automate time and expense approval, to provide management with real time workforce situation, to match demand with resources, to be able to do scheduling and many more.

 Check out the tips to choosing Time and Attendance System to better manage your businesses’ dynamic workforce for better ROI.

 Centralized Management – Choose a system that can consolidate all time clock data into one software, either on-premise or a cloud-based solution software such as www.timetecta.com for an automated system which is easily accessible by authorized HR personnel.

 Complete Workforce Data – A good system should contain all the important information about your workforce and more, making it a one-stop center for your employee’s information so you don’t have to maintain few separate records to sustain the complete one.

 Accurate Work Time – Time is subjective and linear but when choosing a time and attendance system for your business, the system must account for all the times that employees work and not the time they are scheduled to work, for your business to maintain cost effective operation

 Managing Compliance – Can the system comply with all the labor practices requirements is the question. You shouldn’t be worry whether your process is in compliant with the labor law requirements when the software takes care of it.

 Real-Time Data – Batch processing is not comforting anymore, and a time and attendance system must have the ability to provide users with real-time data and allow real-time editing to make sure that the data is always updated to reduce end-of-the-month workload.

 Employee Schedules – To match your business requirements with resources, a good time and attendance system has to be able to support employee’s complex time schedules and at the same time flexible enough to cater for changes.

 User Experience – Users usually don’t have much time to learn about software or simply do not prefer to spend much time to do it. Therefore, a good time and attendance system must be user-intuitive and provides positive user experience, where users can get familiarize with the system as quickly as possible.

 Integration – Last but not least, when choosing a time and attendance system, it needs to be able to integrate with payroll solutions to transfer clocking data and translate it into payroll calculations smoothly.

 Is your current time and attendance sufficient for your business operation or you actually require a better system to handle all the complexities of today’s business?

 FingerTec (www.fingertec.com) provides biometrics time and attendance hardware and software solutions for time and attendance system. All FingerTec products come with complementary Time and Attendance Software. For operations that require cloud-based time and attendance solution, TimeTecTA caters for all your time and attendance need plus management of mobile workers through the use of TimeTec Mobile in iOS and Android. Browse www.timetecta.com for more information.

Is Your System Sufficient? Keeping track of time in the workplace is not news; businesses have been adopting time and attendance syst...

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Work Hour and Overtime Compliance. Are You in the Know?

Tuesday 29 March 2016 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comments


The intricacy of the modern world poses a lot of challenges in managing today’s workforce. Handling workforce and work time are not as straightforward as taking note when somebody comes to work at 9 and leaves at 6pm, for example. Work hour is not only limited to what an employer needs from their employees, it also has to fulfill employee rights according to the law. An employee can’t simply request to work overtime at anytime they please just to finish the job and earn more money but it has to adhere to the company’s budget, the labor law and overall ROI. An employer cannot demand an employee to work more than a certain hour daily to increase productivity, and the employee can’t work less than the agreed work time in the employment contract without consequences.

Managing workforce requires an application that can cater to compliances while keeping your company costs at its optimum level. 

Labor law of one’s country governs the work hours and the overtime imposed and taken by employer and employee. Malaysia for example, by law each employee is required to work 8 hours per day and 48 hours per week. Maximum total overtime allowed is 12 hours per day and 104 hours per month. Working overtime on a weekday entitles an employee to a 1.5 times wages calculation and 2 times if overtime happens on weekend rest days or holidays. Each employee should be given 1 day a week rest, 30 hours a week rest for shift workers, 30 minutes minimum break after 5 hours work and 45 minutes minimum break in 8 hours of work. While the rules sound simple to follow but without a proper application to monitor, abiding by these rules could pose a challenge to many companies. 

 Mexico has different sets of labor law that limits only 3 hours per day overtime and a maximum of 9 hours overtime per week. The overtime is calculated twice the fixated wages in the first 9 hours and 3 times if it exceeds 9 hours. An employee should be given a one-day rest in a week and 30 minutes minimum break in 9 hours of work. Vietnam, on the other hand, allows a maximum overtime of 4 hours per day and 200 hours per year where the overtime will be paid 1.5% higher than the existing salary during weekdays and double during rest days.

Hence, when buying time attendance system, the software needs to have all these compliances settings in place. At FingerTec, our software TimeTec V3 and TimeTec TA provide users with the compliance settings for work hours, breaks and overtime to protect your company from getting fines and penalties for breaking the labor law, intentionally or ignorantly.

Ask yourself this, have your staffs been taking more overtime hours than permitted by law or you are not in the know?

Have they been taking breaks as required or they just stay in the office without recording proofs of breaks?

Has your Human Resource department been calculating their overtime right according to the labor rate or they forgot?

Bury the loopholes and start having a system that complies with the law and frees yourself from worries. And best of all, stick to a system that gives you automation and cost-effectiveness at the same time. Try FingerTec at info@fingertec.com

T he intricacy of the modern world poses a lot of challenges in managing today’s workforce. Handling workforce and work time are not as...

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Feeling Intimidated to Deploy Biometrics Door Access Controllers? 6 Interesting Facts about Ingressus Controller

Tuesday 16 February 2016 , , , , , , , 0 Comments


For FingerTec customers who are familiar with biometrics terminals like R2, Kadex and R3 deployment and the way they are configured, the introduction of door controllers in the mix might confuse them up. Many have chosen to stick to the way things are and not keen to learn about this new system. Let’s have an open mind and learn about the potential of controllers for you can serve a portion of your clients that are looking for this kind of setup.  Knowing the benefits of the controller can bring your door access business to another level.

First thing first, what is a controller?  The concept of master and slave remains true in the deployment of door controllers where the controller is the master, and the biometrics/card readers are the slaves working for the master. Basically, in a controller setup environment, you need to connect the slaves to the controller and let the controller controls everything. Get it? 

Let’s figure out 6 interesting facts about FingerTec's Ingressus controllers. 

Cost Effective – To install master readers like R2 or R3 at all doors in a multi-door environment could be expensive because practically you need one master and one slave at all doors that you want to secure. Door controllers like FingerTec’s Ingressus have a few types which you can choose either to have a one-door, two-door or four-door installation. In short, you only need one master (Ingressus) for a two-door or a four-door installation. This can cut your implementation cost by around 13-20%, providing a more economical and cost effective option for your clients who want to mix and match the devices but simultaneously get the most effective system for their door access control.

Device & Data Centralized – In any door access control system, apart from the facility to provide a controlled environment, it also has to provide the audit trails of access activities to define its effectiveness. A controller solution like FingerTec’s Ingressus has been designed to gather all the access data received from the slave devices, which then can be pulled into the bundled software for a complete overview of the access security situation.

Scalable – The cost of access controller implementation is 13-20% lower than of the regular master-slave whole reader, and in addition to that, a controller such as Ingressus has a few types in its series, Ingressus I for one door installation, Ingressus II for two doors installation and Ingressus IV designed for a four door environment. You can scale the deployment of the controller to your requirements to make the best out of your budget, and at any time you can expand the deployment to larger areas by adding a few more.

Can be integrated with other solutions – A complete security system usually makes up for a few separate systems including door access control, surveillance cameras, alarm system and many more. Using a controller like FingerTec’s Ingressus, you can consolidate all these systems in one Ingress system and control them all from one centralized location.

Easy Installation and Configuration - Like many other new gadgets and electronic appliances, the installation and configuration must be user-friendly. FingerTec’s Ingressus works that way as well where no guessing game is required because the device is equipped with readily available I/O ports for user’s convenience, and it comes complete with user guides and tips to assist you in system deployment.

Last but certainly not least, Ingressus has many Amazing Door Access Functions embedded in it including Surge Protection, Interlock Function, Antipassback and many more.  When all functions of a door access system are centralized in one device, the purchase of it is definitely worth the investment. All Ingressus purchase is bundled with the powerful door access software Ingress for a comprehensive management of access data on MySQL or MSAccess platform. 

Find out more about FingerTec’s Ingressus Controller  and email us at info@fingertec.com to purchase.

For FingerTec customers who are familiar with biometrics terminals like R2, Kadex and R3 deployment and the way they are configured, th...

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5 Reasons Why Time & Attendance Solution Could Be Your Savior

Monday 1 February 2016 , , , , , , , , 0 Comments


Time is what we need but most of the time; time is what we lack. The more we want to have more time, the faster it seems to disappear. Working in the corporate world, employees are always wrestling with time, and more often than not, many of us would have to sacrifice important events in life for our work’s sake. Missing important dinners with families, missing precious times with growing kids, missing social lives, missing a crucial date with the one and etc. One of the reasons employees need to take more time than required is because usually either there is no system in place or the system is not providing what it is supposed to be doing.

Time & attendance system is more than just meets the eye. It’s not merely about recording staff’s clock in and clock out; it should be about having an accurate automated system in place to monitor the clocking activities of every staff, assessing the cost it incurs to the business and link the data to the human capital cost to obtain the ROI.

Installation of biometrics time attendance system such as FingerTec time attendance system could be your time savior. Read on.

Precise Data – Let Your Time Tells Your Story
Time attendance data collection using biometrics system is not relying on users or other people’s whims and fancies. To get verification, users will need to place their own fingerprints on the machine to verify their presence. The recorded data is kept in the system without users having the rights to alter its originality. And all data will be centralized in one system for further processing. With a time & attendance system like FingerTec, if you are late, you are late. Let the time tells your story.

Centralized User Data – Key In Once And Once Only
The time and attendance software like FingerTec’s TCMS have the ability to keep all user data on a centralized server so administrators don’t have to key-in any data manually and repeatedly, saving a lot of time in the process. Retrieval of data also is made easy without having to sift through tons of written records and manual time cards.

Scheduling – Keep Calm and Set it Right the First Time
When your organization has groups of staff that work at different hours for different tasks, scheduling settings can be easily configured and determined earlier with a system like FingerTec and its software TCMS V2. Group A that has a constant schedule weekly is assigned with schedule A, Group B which has a cyclical schedule has to follow schedule B, Group C that works on certain days in a week must abide by schedule C, and etc. By having the right system configured beforehand and administrators do not have to get involve in the complex scheduling over and over again, it potentially could save a lot of time.

Reports Intact – Printable Reports At Your Command
Having data is almost meaningless without having its reports available. A time & attendance system like FingerTec is able to produce various printable reports automatically and you can also export the data in various formats to ease your work and also to save a lot of time in the process.

Link to Third Party – Dependable Data, Dependable Team
And when all data is digitized, it’s easier to link the data to the third party software such as payroll for further processing and further time savings. Overall it will provide not only improvement in the business process but also overall employee satisfaction for the job well done and within time.

If your organization is still struggling with time and the admin and HR departments’ personnel always sacrificing their time for work, Time and Attendance system could be your savior.

Inquire within at info@fingertec.com and all FingerTec biometrics systems come with complementary management software, TCMS. For cloud time and attendance solution, we recommend you to go for www.timetecta.com. Get 10 user licenses free for life when you sign up with us!

Time is what we need but most of the time; time is what we lack. The more we want to have more time, the faster it seems to disappear...

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