Vpod SolutionsTop 9 challenges of Visitor Management to overcome
Updated: Aug 17, 2021
In today's blog, we introduce 9 common challenges of visitor management in the corporate workspace, why it has become more important, and how you can overcome these challenges with digital visitor management.
What is visitor management?
Visitor management is an approach to tracking the usage of a public building or site, including the processing of managing visitors' arrival and ensuring they have a great experience in the building.
Why is visitor management more challenging in 2021?
With the foreseeable trend of returning to the office, we listed three mains things that will change in the workplace:
The new purpose of your workplace
Employees are the new visitors
Psychological safety for your workplace
Visitor management comes in the first place to think of to welcome your visitors back and bring the employees back to the office. Here are the drivers and problems you will face in your reception area:
Government guidelines on safe distancing for visitors must be complied with.
The staff behind reception need to be kept safe.
Employees want to see a visibly improved workplace or why should they return?
A varied traffic flow of people coming into reception.
Legal teams would like employees to declare or self certify that they have no illnesses.
HR would prefer that the reception area does not look like a hazard area with tape, screens and signs.
The Finance Director would like costs cut to a minimum.
Research has shown that organisations are adopting technologies to adapt to these changes more quickly. Therefore, your visitor management approach needs to be more productive and efficient, and safer! Here are 10 challenges most people are not aware of in terms of visitor management that is putting their organisations at potential risks.
1. Very few visitors are pre-registered
Microsoft Outlook 365 meeting invites and Room and Desk booking systems do not auto-populate visitor management systems.
What it means for visitor management
Visitors arrive at your building without maps, directions, and host details.
Self-health surveys, NDA's, and watching HSE videos are being processed at your reception after they arrived, the waiting time is longer
Visitors will have to sign in with visitor signing in book
Reception staff have to adopt a reactive process to inbound visitors on arrival.
Queues can form in reception in peak traffic periods.
An unnecessary contamination risk in reception areas can be created.
Watch video of the visitor pre-registration process
2. Reception Teams are reactive to inbound visitors
Without fully-integrated visitor management, any electronic log created by a room or desk booking system only partially populates the visitor log.
Moreover, manual "notify reception of all visitors" instructions are rarely followed
What it means for visitor management
Reception staff have to adopt a defensive, react to inbound visitors on arrival.
An unnecessary contamination risk in reception areas can be created.
Watch the video of us explaining the traffic paradigm
3. Facilities Managers have labour-intensive reception teams
They have partial notice of inbound visitors and manual processes and staff costs are high.
The systems they use, the phone, room system visitor logs, visitor management systems are not linked. Therefore the reception teams spend a lot of time keying information from one system to another.
What it means for visitor management
Reception teams can only process 1 visitor every 2 minutes (unlike digital visitor management where a visitor can be checked-in in only 3 seconds).
Staff levels have to be defensively high, catering for unexpected peaks of visitors
The solution: Combine people and technology
The elastic reception comes in place to help to remove the manual task while still delivering first-class customer service by people. We recommend not just taking the efficiencies as cost savings but redeploying staff and retraining them.
Upgrading your staff to provide a full meet and greet service, out from behind the desk. And complimenting them with elastic people resources available through Vgreet visitor management system and Moneypenny digital receptionists.
4. Siloed systems lead to more manual work
Outlook and Room Booking Systems contain the bulk of visitor and host details, but neither populates a visitor management system!
What it means for visitor management
Reception teams need to go back to re-key the visitor details into the visitor management system
Reception staff are not usually aware of up-to-date meeting changes and expecting visitor lists
The Solution: The Condeco exchange sync feed visitor log Api into visitor management systems
Few Room and Desk scheduling systems have API's* that provide visitor, host and Meeting Room details to visitor management systems.
*Electronic conversations between two systems exchanging vital data.
Condeco Software has the API although few of its customers realise it.
The API feed to visitor management systems is available.
If you have "User Pricing" from Condeco there is no API access charge to visitors from Condeco.
Condeco Software Sync's the visitor, host and room details with Condeco which in turn populates its Visitor API. The combination of Microsoft Outlook and Condeco meeting booking enables Condeco customers to pre-registers the bulk of all expected visitors.
Few visitor management companies have integrated Condeco.
Most Condeco clients do not realise the significance of the Condeco sync functionality and its impact on visitor management.
5. Facilities Managers do not realise the power of Condeco Software with its Microsoft Outlook sync and API feed and its impact on visitor management systems
You can pre-register visitors by sending them unique branded invites
These invites can carry maps, directions and host details to get you to the building and recognise the host.
The invites can be bespoke to include pre-registration requirements like self-health surveys, NDA's, HSE video's, Or QR codes to enable rapid, express check-in.
6. Very few Visitor Management solutions enable Touchless express check-in
Your visitor management approach should be able to improve your workplace productivity and efficiency, but does it provide a safe and touches check-in without actually touching the screen like an iPad?
The solutions: Add motion sensors, voice activation and QR code scanning
An integrated visitor management system with features such as QR code check-in, motion sensors, voice activation, and temperature screening kiosk can check your visitors in safely in 3 seconds.
And it has the capability to transact 2800 visitors a day - boosting capacity!
7. Very few Facilities Managers understand the powerful combination of Microsoft, Condeco and Vpod
The ability to reduce 80% of the manual front of house tasks
The ability to cut staff, repurpose staff, or upgrade their roles to meet and greet hosts.
That they can pre-register all of their visitors, meaning they can get 3-second touchless express check-in.
That they can activate the check-in QR code once pre-registration requirements are met - like self-health surveys.
Watch the video of 3-second touchless express check-n
8. Few Facilities Managers realise that with the right visitor management software you can have customised journeys for visitors, contractors and employees.
The fast check-in of 2800 people per Vgreet or Vdesk kiosk means you can extend check-in to every visitor type without causing queues.
You can enable the printed passes for employees to clear the access control barrier too.
9. Few HR managers and directors realise that they can use visitor management systems for track and trace.
Now Track and Trace and Office Safety are under the microscope, visitor management is
The digital visitor management system provides a digital record of visitors - you have a full audit trail.
You can also access a full fire or emergency digital role-call facility.
Summary
Here are the 9 challenges of visitor management
Very few visitors are pre-registered
Reception Teams are reactive to inbound visitors
Facilities Managers have labour-intensive reception teams
Siloed systems lead to more manual work
Facilities Managers do not realise the power of Condeco Software with its Microsoft Outlook synch and API feed and its impact on visitor management systems
Very few Visitor Management solutions enable Touchless express check-in
Very few Facilities Managers understand the powerful combination of Microsoft, Condeco and Vpod
Few Facilities Managers realise that with the right visitor management software you can have custom journeys for visitors, contractors and employees
Few HR managers and directors realise that they can use visitor management systems for track and trace.
More Resources
From traditional to digital: Revolutionise Visitor Management step by step
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