The Ochsner Sports Performance Center is a multi-use facility that is home to the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, various community events, and sports training programs. These different use cases created unique access control challenges that the existing system was falling short on – so they turned to their partners at Verizon to help find a solution, who introduced them to Wicket.
The Saints organization isn’t new to using facial biometric technology – in fact they’ve used it for building access since 2012. What was new to them was a sensational user experience, which their previous system didn’t deliver on. In early 2024 they began to explore alternatives, which led them to Wicket’s versatile platform.
The existing biometric system did not work well in variable lighting conditions, and users often faced issues using it.
Wicket prioritizes the user experience, and has flexible form factors that are proven and trusted at facilities across the globe.
After listening to the pain points the Saints were experiencing, multiple solutions were brought in to enhance the user experience, including IP camera sensors and mounted tablets running the Wicket Edge application. This allowed for every interior and exterior entry point to run through a centralized system with simple onboarding of users.
Wicket has spent years deploying, learning, and improving the user experience at thousands of access points – which all have unique challenges and constraints.
The Wicket customer support team assisted with getting the system up and running, and guided the Saints on how to onboard users through a configurable enrollment workflow. In the first month of operation, hundreds of users were able to enroll and use their face for access across nearly 30 managed access points.
Although select access points have staff to assist visitors, most doors allow self-entry using Wicket facial authentication.
Within the first few weeks of use there were over 4,000 entries through the system. As confidence and usage grew, the facility began to average around 40,000 entries per month and has now seen over 350,000 total entries in average time of 203 milliseconds.
We are thrilled with the user experience that Wicket has enabled for visitors to Ochsner Sports Performance Center. It’s top notch.
Jody Barbier
Executive Director of IT Operations
