findBIOMETRICS - Interview with Jay Fry, President &CEO, identiMetrics Inc.

Feature Company

Interview with Jay Fry, President & CEO, identiMetrics Inc.
December 2005

Can you please provide our readers with a brief history of the company?

As a principal of a large school in the Chicago area, I had a significant problem identifying students in a variety of different areas - especially in the cafeteria. We used swipe cards to identify the students in order to debit their cafeteria accounts. Anywhere between 10-15% of the students daily would not have their cards. Since tattooing barcodes on their foreheads was not a popular solution, I thought perhaps a biometric fingerscan solution would be the best one. After all, students couldn't forget their fingers. As I searched, I found a company that did have a biometric solution, but I needed to purchase their entire cafeteria point- of-sale software and hardware package. I already had a cafeteria application that worked just fine and could not justify the cost of replacing it. I had the opportunity at that time to meet Anne Marie Dunphy. Anne Marie was an investment banker on Wall Street specializing in micro-cap companies. I described the problem and the solution to Anne Marie who thought it was an intriguing idea. She did extensive due diligence both in the biometric area and the education area and thought that there was a significant market opportunity. As a result, we started the company in September of 2002. We had a beta version of identiFi by June of 2003. We carefully chose our management team and moved into our offices in January of 2004. Sales started in August of 2004 and we're growing according to our plan.

You focussed primarily on the educational market. Can you describe your product line up for that vertical?

Sure! Our software is called identiFi. It is the middleware that integrates seamlessly with any application that takes bar code or personal identification number (PIN) input in order to identify the user. We have designed it to be, as I call it, "lunch lady friendly!" The integration is very simple. The interface is easy to use with all of the complexity behind the scenes. It really provides three solutions. It's a plug and play biometric ID solution for applications already in use. And because of its ease of integration, vertical application companies can offer their customers a biometric solution without the cost or the risk of developing it themselves. Finally, because of the unique design, identiFi works as a single ID platform that can identify users to all of the applications that the organization has in place, regardless of the manufacturer of the application.

So basically Jay, you came up with a solution that solved one of the key problems that you experienced early on when you were in Chicago, and that is - how difficult it was to integrate any of the existing biometric systems into an existing school system.

That's right, and it wasn't easy! What we find currently in the market is that a few applications have biometric identification capabilities. But the biometrics will work only with the specific vertical application. So if you want, for instance, to have a library management software with a biometric, you would have to enrol all the students in that program and then, if you want to have one for the cafeteria, you would have to enrol all the students in that program as well. Our solution allows you to have a single enrolment for identification to multiple applications within an organization. It is a simple plug-in solution that allows our customers to keep what they already have in place and at the same time communicate with other applications. It's a value added to what they already have.

Speaking of value added, what are the key benefits for the schools that do implement your products?

The most important benefit is that there is irrefutable proof that the student is identified correctly whether in the cafeteria, nurse's office, library, the classroom for attendance or the front door for security purposes. Schools must now keep accurate, auditable records and have recently had to give back significant money to state and federal agencies as a result of poor record keeping. There are also the savings in the administration and the reproduction of the cards themselves. One of our customers put a card POS system in the cafeteria. They issued 900 cards to the students at the beginning of the year and by the end of the year, they had issued another 900 cards! In our system, you enrol a student only once. There is no need to issue cards or PINs. Consequently, the costs and problems of administering the card or PIN system are eliminated. For example, let's say you are in a high school setting. After you enrol the students as freshmen, you don't need to re-enrol them as they advance to the next grade. In just the time, the labour and the cost of the cards themselves there is a savings.

When you get down to some of the more serious applications, such as keeping out unwanted guests, things like that, there is probably a key benefit there as well!

There is! We have some installations in Philadelphia high schools where they use the finger scanners and our software to identify students as they enter the building. It is twofold for them - they not only identify the students to be sure the students coming in should be in the school, they also take attendance at the same time. It is a faster solution for them because the students don't have to look for the cards and since 15%-20% of the students forget their cards on any given day, they don't have to go to another station to have a new card issued to them. And there seems to be another benefit. The Principal tells us that the attendance has actually gone up. She says it's because the students actually have to be there to scan in using their finger and they can no longer buddy scan another student using an ID card.

Is privacy ever raised as a concern?

It is definitely the only issue that is consistently raised. We frequently get the question when we talk about our software and we have gone to some lengths to prepare material to describe how the software works. We explain that it is all minutiae based - we don't keep the fingerprint images nor can we re-produce them from the software. Once people understand this, the issue generally goes away.

And is that message well understood, Jay?

It's simply a matter of consumer education. When we do an installation, we provide communication materials to our customers - sample letters and brochures, to be sure that they communicate with the teachers, the students, the parents, the school board members, the media and the community in order to explain what they are doing, how the software works, and that privacy is ensured.

I know that you have had a lot of experience with younger students in biometrics. Can you share some of your findings with us?

Sure! In our earlier installations, we had difficulty enrolling students that were third grade and younger. Most of the work in the biometrics area that we have seen has been done with adults or at least young adults. So we have worked closely with our algorithm provider, BIO-key, in order to develop and improve our software to the point that we are now taking attendance on a daily basis down to the kindergarten level. We are working with a k-8 school in Philadelphia that serves as a living lab for us to test our software and also test different types of scanners.

What other vertical markets are you interested in?

We are interested in exploring the point of sale (POS) market in the business world. We think that there is a need to identify people in the operations of restaurants, convenience stores and so forth. We are also looking at the hospital and hospitality markets as well as the university market. Our focus is on organizations that need to identify people to different applications using a single biometric ID platform.

Jay, just in summary, are there any other comments you would like to add at this point?

The interesting thing about our software, perhaps the "special sauce", is the identification platform it provides. In either a school or a business setting, our software can be seamlessly integrated into all of an organization's applications that require identification thus eliminating the problems associated with ID cards and PINs. The user can then be easily and positively identified throughout the setting. It's just that easy.

Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today.

It's been my pleasure.

back