It’s undeniable that the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world of work forever. While the crisis has now passed, the innovation that it inspired has left a lasting impact. Many workplace processes are now automated, office spaces are used more flexibly, and hybrid working has become the new normal.
As the technology that supports these innovations continues to evolve, businesses are continuing to figure out optimal ways to manage their workspaces in a post-pandemic world. When it comes to strengthening office security and safety processes, a robust and reliable visitor management system is at the top of the list for many large businesses.
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These changes affect many large businesses. The changing landscape has increased the need to update current systems to avoid lagging behind. On top of this, organizations are striving to meet employee expectations of what the future workplace should look like.
The key area many businesses want to address as offices reopen is ensuring office security and staff wellbeing. An ESG survey found that 64% of workers are “extremely concerned” about their personal safety due to COVID-19 and would prefer to remain working from home.
Most businesses are rising to the challenge of figuring out optimal ways to manage the workspaces of the future. Of these, many are looking toward implementing smart and strong visitor management systems to help strengthen their office security and safety processes.
What are cloud-based visitor management systems?
Cloud-based visitor management systems allow businesses to see who’s coming in and out of a business site. This covers employees but also guests, such as employee family members, job candidates, and business partners. Nowadays, visitor management systems can do more than simply sign visitors in and out. They come with an array of features to make various business processes simpler in an all-in-one secure solution.
A cloud-based visitor management system offers an essential upgrade to old-fashioned paper-based systems of the past. It is easy to use, intuitive, and delivers easy workplace management from one central location. It also incorporates a range of necessary health and safety, security, brand identity, and privacy features that keep your business secure.
You can find out more in our article what visitor management systems are and how they can help your business.
13 key benefits of having a visitor management system
There are some obvious and not so obvious benefits to using a more efficient and effective visitor management system. The overall benefit to organizations is that they can take the first steps to protect their people and premises. Being able to track, monitor, and even restrict access to offices and workspaces achieves an immediate level of security.
However, behind that overall goal are 14 important often overlooked key benefits. Even as different sites need varied requirements, there are across-the-board benefits to using the right visitor management systems. Let’s take a look at those key features and advantages.
1. Build confidence in employees
All management of the visitor process is carried out from one system. This isn’t just an efficiency gain. It’s a way of empowering your reception staff to welcome visitors warmly and quickly, raising the professional image of the environment of your lobby and your business. Additionally, it helps to keep your staff members and facilities safe.
This will help to instill confidence in your employees as they return to the office while also increasing overall efficiency in their work. At a time when employees are concerned about a return to the central workplace, visitor management systems are capable of boosting that much-needed confidence.
2. Replace inefficient manual processes
Cloudbooking’s visitor management system is easy to roll out and even easier to use, eliminating frustratingly slow and outdated manual processes. An immediate advantage is that employees can pre-register visitors through an online pre-registration system. This speeds up the traditional registering process.
Case study: Hitachi was looking for a solution to manage its room booking and visitor management requirements. Their reception team faced an increased workload with booking requests because of the lack of room booking flexibility with their current system. Thanks to Cloudbooking, colleagues can manage visitors more easily and efficiently by enabling pre-registration, which, in turn, eases the strain on the reception team. Now visitors and attendees can be added to meetings in advance. Reception can also check guests in quickly with the custom-built visitor management tool, CBReception.
3. Avoid overcrowding
Overcrowding in lobbies and reception areas can be frustrating for guests. It can also present a health and safety risk. Using a cloud-based visitor management system to pre-register visitors significantly reduces the possibility of this happening. Cloudbooking’s system sends visitor arrival notifications via email or SMS to employees’ mobile phones. This alerts them to a visitor’s arrival, making overcrowding in reception even less likely.
4. Secure your workspace
A visitor management system means increased safety. Any organization, company, or workplace needs to be aware of what and who goes in and out of the premises. Being able to identify visitors means staff can prepare for any unwanted circumstance.
Visitor management systems allow for quick access to a complete list of all staff, visitors, and contractors on-site for use in an emergency. Cloudbooking’s solution also offers a virtual visitor sign-in system with a self-service visitor sign-in app. This is easily configurable. Businesses can make visitors aware of updates to safety guidelines, fire response regulations, or confidentiality rules. This helps ensure the workplace is secure at all times.
5. Enhanced data security
When choosing a visitor management solution, data security is a hugely important aspect to consider. Cloudbooking’s solution ensures the data you collect from visitors, staff, and contractors is stored securely. This makes the data easy to manage, retrieve and safeguard. It also helps your business comply with local regulations and legislation (e.g., GDPR in the EU).
Desk staff and site visitors will be more confident about private data use and data compliance. This makes visitors less concerned about breaches, while team members can get straight to work without fearing GDPR fines or lost client data. When it comes to cybersecurity and compliance risk avoidance, Cloudbooking’s more advanced visitor management system is hard to beat.
6. Organising front desk support
One of the fears inherent with visitor management systems is that they replace front desk staff. In fact, they use the best of both, benefiting staff so the highest level of customer service can be achieved.
Visitor management systems make it easier to have front-facing teams on hand during peak visitor times, removes the need for them to manage visitor check-ins during slow periods, and keeps front desk employees from becoming bored and disengaged. This is all incredibly helpful when it comes to building an employee engagement strategy.
7. Customizing Workflows
No two businesses are the same, and all technology in today’s hyper-competitive market needs some element of customization. That’s where an integrated visitor management solution comes in. You can integrate your visitor booking system with meeting room booking software, wayfinding tools, and building access control, and also fine-tune what those visitors can see when they book their arrival and when they arrive in person.
Office maps, visitor surveys, and even branding can all be added to a robust visitor management solution. This is a quantum leap forward from tired pen and paper visitor management systems.
8. Building security
Of course, one of the reasons important to have a seamless system for managing site visitors is security. Visitor authentication is vital, which is why your visitor management system must come with the option to monitor any visitor blocklists, capture and print photos of visitors, and verify ID.
This provides users with instant insights into premises security at any time. Visitor passes can be updated to reflect changes (such as when a prospective hire becomes a full-time employee).
From catering suppliers who only need access to the office cafeteria to contractors who may only require access to select floors, building security couldn’t be easier when using visitor management systems designed for fully optimizing security.
9. Creating the “wow” factor
It’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason — first impressions matter. By re-engineering your reception space, visitors get immediate insights into what your business is about. It boosts the organization’s brand image through professionalism and adds robust levels of information, such as where the visitor needs to go next and who they’re meeting.
Pre-registration means visitors can enjoy faster check-in times, and communication about their visitor registration can begin long before they physically arrive on-site. If the reception team has little more than a sign-in book and a worn-out lanyard to hand over, visitors will not be wowed. With the right visitor management system, visitors will know that you take security and health seriously, and that’s good for business.
10. Reinforcing your branding
We’ve already mentioned branding, but it’s such a big subject that it deserves looking at in a bit more depth. Branding in the workplace is useful as it can inspire employees while assuring visitors, such as business partners and investors that you run a professional team. When hardware is emblazoned with your brand logo and colors, your branding impact will be reinforced.
11. Improving office efficiency
A good visitor management system will improve efficiency at check-in. Front-desk employees are immediately empowered because they can seamlessly sign guests in, create and print badges, have any compliance documents signed digitally, and then alert the people the visitor is due to meet. All without running around or making multiple phone calls.
With such dramatically reduced check-in times, it’s hard to see how such visitor management systems can do more, but they can. Pre-registration speeds up check-in even more, and any pre-registration needs can be automatically sent out well in advance. While this is useful on a day-to-day basis, it can be a complete game-changer when running large meetings, industry events, and conferences.
As reception teams often need to multitask by necessity, visitor management systems transform their efficiency. According to research conducted by University of California, Irvine, it takes around 23 minutes to recover from an interruption or distraction. Minimizing those interruptions to workflow is therefore imperative when it comes to maximizing efficiency.
12. Creating site transparency
Paper-based check-ins can be dangerous. It’s easy for visitors to use a basic, paper-based visitor sign-in system on arrival and then forget to sign out. That can lead to serious issues in the case of any kind of emergency, such as a fire. All businesses need to know (and be able to confirm) who has entered the building, who they met with, and when that visitor left. Being able to capture and track that information is critical.
But site transparency goes further than that. Using the data it collects, a visitor management system can highlight who is a new visitor and a frequent visitor, further streamlining check-in times. That leads to more informed insights into visitor traffic, providing actionable visibility into how your space is being used, by whom, and when. Visitor activity trends come with detailed reports to help guide business decisions.
These reports and insights will make it easier to spot and fix congestion issues, which could mean something as simple as implementing a staggered approach to visitor arrival times. It could even highlight when your business has outgrown its current location.
13. Scaling a business
Talking of outgrowing your current business premises, a word on managing multiple sites. Using cloud-based visitor management systems means you can manage more than one location from a single visitor management platform. That means delivery of a more consistent company-wide experience.
Centralization is a critical component of modern visitor management. Information can be shared across multiple locations at once, and any updated visitor policies can be implemented immediately across every location. This achieves a more streamlined approach to both collaboration and transparency.
Of course, when your business grows, customization becomes even more important. For example, if you’re running five work sites, visitor requirements may match in some cases but not others. A research lab, for instance, may need to prevent visitor access at specific times of the week. Those restrictions may not be necessary for other locations or even for different departments in the same building.
Scaling a business provides fresh challenges, but meeting with visitors shouldn’t be an issue. Using a cloud-based visitor management system means you can update it as needed, accommodating new offices, team members, entry points, and even a completely new location.
How to establish a cloud-based visitor management system
The first question you need to ask before implementing a visitor management system is, what function should it carry out?
Is it simply that you need to know who is coming into the building by putting a visitor sign-in system in place? Or must you also ensure they sign confidentiality agreements and fill in questionnaires regarding their health while also providing essential information about the site?
Once you have pinpointed your business demands, the next step is to pick up the phone and contact our experts at Cloudbooking. We’ll normally be able to set you up with a trial, as we did for Hitachi Rail Europe:
“It’s such a straightforward and simple solution to use. The best thing anyone can do is just trial it like we did. From that, they’ll understand and appreciate just how great it is.”
– RUSSELL STEPHENS, IT Infrastructure Manager, Hitachi Rail Europe
The Cloudbooking team will ensure the full deployment and seamless integration of your visitor management system. This means minimal disruption and fast application to ensure your business can carry on as usual.
Once your visitor management system has been set up, employees using the new processes will be trained. The benefits of new technology are instant.
Why choose Cloudbooking’s visitor management system?
Get powerful visitor metrics and data at your fingertips
With Cloudbooking’s advanced solution, you can access live and accurate visitor management data. This showcases in-depth audit trails of all visitor events. You can also monitor receptionist actions, visitor pre-registration requests, visitor escorts, and host and visitor actions while on-site.
Make a great first impression
Visitor management software can have a big impact when it comes to creating a great first impression with visitors. Cloudbooking’s self-service check-in app dramatically reduces check-in times and turbocharges your visitors’ experience. Visitors can check in or out using QR codes or printed passes. They will also be able to answer health and safety questions at either a tablet or kiosk in seconds.
Have the best solution for advanced security, safety, and risk management
For secure sites and high-security locations, a sophisticated visitor management system is critically important. Cloudbooking’s approval-based visitor management solution is the most advanced in its field, ensuring visitors cannot access restricted areas without prior authorization.
Get a user-friendly visitor management software built for your needs
Cloudbooking’s purpose-built visitor management software offers an enhanced user experience. It is a visitor management solution built with the needs of both businesses and visitors at the forefront of its design.
Case study: The Very Group started using Cloudbooking in July 2017. With an enhanced user interface, Cloudbooking’s easy-to-use platform offered The Very Group a better user experience than its previous supplier could provide. This meant that almost no training was necessary for the technology-literate employees. Our app and all developments were deployed with ease, and they haven’t looked back since.
Transform your workspace with a professional cloud-based visitor management system
Now we’re on the other side of the pandemic, does your organization need to be more efficient, make savings, or improve the first impressions of your brand? Trust us: your business needs a cloud-based visitor management system. Contact us now to arrange a free demo of Cloudbooking’s solution.
