Case study: StadtSpeicher Berlin — 440 units in six weeks
How a complete NFC migration succeeds without a single day of downtime
Starting situation
StadtSpeicher Berlin had been using a legacy access system for eight years. The system worked — but not with Kinnovis, the booking platform the operator had switched to two years earlier. The result: every booking was entered in Kinnovis, then manually transferred to the access system. Every cancellation had to be manually removed. Every exception — forgotten keys, locked out tenants, access extensions — required a phone call.
Operator Markus Behrens estimated the administrative effort at 8–10 hours per week. Plus approximately 15 support tickets per month related to access problems.
The challenge
The facility has 440 units spread across four floors and two buildings. All units are accessible via NFC readers. A complete migration meant: replace all readers, migrate all active access rights, train tenants.
The constraint: zero downtime. The facility operates 24/7, tenants come and go at all hours. A “we’ll shut down for the weekend and migrate” was not an option.
The approach
sedisto opted for a parallel installation strategy. Over the first two weeks, new sedisto NFC readers were installed alongside the existing hardware. The old system remained fully operational during this phase.
Once all readers were installed, the migration of access rights began — in batches of 20–30 units per day. Each batch went through a defined process:
- Import active access rights from the old system into sedisto
- Synchronise with Kinnovis (automatic, via webhook integration)
- Notify affected tenants (email with instructions for the new app)
- Activate sedisto reader, deactivate old reader
- 48-hour observation period per batch
For tenants who hadn’t set up the app yet, physical NFC cards were placed in their mailboxes as a transitional solution.
The result
The complete migration was completed in 41 days. Highlights:
- Zero downtime at any point
- 0 locked-out tenants during migration
- 3 support tickets (all in the first week, all resolved within the day)
- 440 units fully migrated to sedisto/Kinnovis
Three months after migration: support tickets for access-related issues dropped from 15 to 4 per month. The 4 remaining tickets are not access problems, but feature requests.
What Markus Behrens says
“It is the only facility I never have to think about. Access sorts itself — whoever books gets in, whoever cancels is out. I haven’t manually touched access rights in three months.”
The administrative effort for access management: from 8–10 hours per week to approximately 20 minutes — for the occasional special case.
Key lessons
Parallel installation eliminates the risk: Installing the new system before deactivating the old one means there’s always a fallback. No bet on a migration night.
Batched migration protects against surprises: Not all 440 units at once, but in batches. A problem in one batch doesn’t affect the whole facility.
Physical fallback for the transition: NFC cards as backup for tenants who haven’t yet set up the app. Simple, cheap, effective.
48-hour observation per batch: Enough time to identify problems before the next batch is activated.
