Do you know who's in your building right now besides your employees? How many visitors have you had over the past week or month? Who showed up at your office or facility on May 26, 2017?
If you can't easily answer these questions, you're not tracking your visitors properly. More likely than not, you're still using a paper and pen system to have visitors sign in and record who they're meeting with. While this was acceptable years ago, in today's technology environment, it leaves a lot of information on the table.
Let's consider other important questions you must ask yourself about your company's visitors.
- Can you read the names of those who signed in on your paper visitors' log?
- How many visitors forgot to sign out at the end of their visit?
- Were their sign-in and sign-out times correct?
- Do you know everyone they met with?
First, if security is paramount in your organization, the above questions should shine a light on areas where you need to beef up security. The best way to do that is through a technologically advanced, electronic visitor management system.
Why You Should Implement an Electronic Visitor Management System
Do you have a full-time receptionist who guards your front door and only lets those allowed to pass through your portal? A lot of companies today don't have an official receptionist, which means the responsibility falls on the shoulders of whoever is closest to the front door. Every time someone interrupts your employees to deal with visitors at the front door, they take 25 minutes on average to get back on task. You're potentially losing hours of productivity based on the number of visitors who show up each week.
Even if you have a receptionist, she can't be the security detail you need to pre-screen visitors. You need someone who can check them immediately against the "no fly" list in your company or organization. While a receptionist is a great guard against unauthorized access, she's a finite quantity that can only do so much. A visitor management system can do much more.
Here are several reasons to implement an electronic visitor management system.
1. Secure proprietary information
Perhaps the first thing many companies today think of, if you have proprietary information to protect, you can't have just anyone walking your office's halls. Even a manual visitor log-in systems can give your competitors a heads-up on who you're working with.
If you're Kentucky Fried Chicken, you wouldn't let anyone enter your facility where he or she might stumble upon your secret recipe, right? You'd guard that proprietary information closely. A visitor management system gives you the tools to do that electronically rather than leave it up to possible human error.
2. Secure your visitors' privacy
Say you're a software as a service company developing the latest, greatest platform that will change life as we all know it. You don't want someone visiting your organization and seeing a highly-sought-after developer's name on your guest register log.
You must respect and protect your visitors' privacy, especially those who have much to lose if it's found out they visited your building. Beyond that, you don't want to give clues to your competitors about what your company is working on. Keep everything under wraps by securing your visitors' log.
3. Know who's on-site in case of emergency
Natural disasters, workplace disturbances, and even violence happen. If you don't know everyone who's in your facilities, you can't help first responders effectively do their job of getting everyone out safely and securely. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration governs employee safety and workplace responsibility. However, you also must contend with insurance companies who require you to ensure the safety of everyone on your company's premises.
A visitor management system lets you know immediately who is on-site, who they're meeting with, and their general location.
On another note, certain regulatory bodies require you to comply with their rules and regulations covering who's on your company's property like foreign nationals banned from the US. Several regulatory agencies like the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism governs goods entering the US from foreign locations. Part of this regulation restricts who can visit a supplier's facilities.
Final thoughts
Another element you must consider is your brand's first impression. If someone walks through your front door, what will they remember? That you had an old-school paper login register for visitors, or you offer a streamlined visitor management system that pre-registered them and made sign-in easy and simple?
A robust visitor management system can easily detect an unwanted person on your premises. Especially for schools, this could be a life-saving step when you electronically monitor who can—and CAN'T—come on your premises.