At this time of tight budgets, the mantra of business is Return On Investment! With few exceptions, expenditures are measured against the bottom line. Outlays for capital expenses are strictly evaluated in terms of profitability and the total cost of ownership. The era of purchasing new gadgets due to their whiz-bang factor is long gone. How can biometrics provide the sought after R.O.I. in this environment?

A biometric hand reader prevents a felon from entering your office or warehouse. Can this preventive measure be assigned a dollar amount? A fingerprint scan stops an unauthorized person from gaining access to your computer system. Can a value be determined?

Confusion about the cost benefits of implementing biometric technology has several origins. For example, a business may have never conducted an audit of its critical data and physical assets. This lapse may cause them to have no idea of their value if those assets are lost or compromised. A company may also be unaware of its down-stream liability if their negligence results in damage to other firms or individuals. The costs of the resulting legal consequences and liability can often be overlooked.

In fairness to many businesses, it is difficult to assign a cost to these types of issues because they represent an uncertain, and hopefully unlikely, eventuality. However, as remote as that eventuality may seem, every day many firms face stunning financial losses due to theft, fraud and legal settlements.

Are there areas of the enterprise that can clearly show the profitability of adopting biometric solutions? Predictably, the greatest profits are realized in the applications that are considered the strongest for biometrics: system access.

High on the list of frustrations for many companies is the plague of password problems surrounding their information systems. Denial of access, expired and forgotten passwords, log-on failures and other fiascos affect productivity and consume help desk resources. Biometrics can offer a cost effective cure for this dilemma. A formula for evaluating the R.O.I. can be roughly determined using a simple legal pad. A survey is conducted to determine the amount of time the help desk spends on password and access problems during the course of their day. After collecting this data for 30 days, calculate the percentage of hours spent on access issues against the total hours of help desk operation. This will provide a general baseline for determining the cost of these issues. For some firms it will be miniscule, but for other companies it may loom large and need attention. Surprisingly, many surveys reveal that approximately 30% of help desk resources are devoted to access and authentication issues. Estimated costs can then be calculated by evaluating the help desks time spent addressing these problems. If it is 20% of daily activity, for example, calculate that percent as a dollar amount of the total help desk cost. Over the course of a year, it would not be uncommon to have an annual recurring charge of $200 to $300 per employee for access issues. This dollar drain does not even consider that the hours dedicated to these repetitive tasks could be better spent elsewhere by the I.T. staff. This diversion of time and talent results in a double impact on the bottom line.

The introduction of a biometric access solution can provide benefits on different levels often resulting in reduced expenses and stronger authentication. For example, fingerprint-scanning devices for access to data and computer systems are now being adopted in greater numbers. The costs of this hardware and its supporting software can vary from an inexpensive simple fingerprint pad reader or biometric mouse to more comprehensive enterprise solutions involving the use of resident servers or licensing arrangements. A key factor in the business decision to install these technologies is to consider carefully the one-time expense for these applications and hardware versus the ongoing costs of maintaining a current system of access support with its annual and repetitive expenses.

In summary, by utilizing biometric technology to effectively deal with the issue of control and access, the enterprise may create a system that provides safer and more secure authentication at a greater savings to the bottom line- a true case of a better R.O.I.