5 reasons why you should use a Visitor Management System

1. Looks professional & create the right impression

Fancy walking right into a building with whiffs of aroma in the air and piped music creating the perfect ambience. You walk right into the lobby and is greeted by the brightest smile you have ever seen from the receptionist. You feel all confident about closing the biggest deal of the year until the receptionist whips out a notebook, a paper one, with a pen clipped on it and politely requests that you fill in all the required fields which she has painstakingly drawn lines with. But hey! Is that a coffee blob we are looking at, at the corner of the page?! Oh well, I guess the receptionist needs the caffeine as she will be sitting there the whole day drawing lines for all the hordes of visitors streaming in till she knocks off. As you stare at the notebook, the aroma from the air seems to have faded and the music begins to sound like Rolling Stones as you struggle to decipher the fields, that have been painstakingly scratched onto the notebook with faint blue lines. You glance at your watch and your heart races a little as you are already going to be late for that important meeting. Oh well, you scribble as quickly as you could into that paper notebook and rub the ink smudges on your left hand against your right and secretly wish that it would not rub off on the other person’s hand during that firm handshake later on….

2. Save time, mother nature and getting your records right

Now, looking at the dramatic scenario above, the situation could have been improved if there was a digital Visitor Management System in place. Besides creating the right impressions, it will save the visitor a lot of time and anxiety. Imagine the number of trees saved from the number of log books churned over the years. That’s already doing a big part for Mother Earth. In addition, we struggle with the legibility of handwriting. In terms of emergency evacuations, how do we account for who is in the building? Also in situations whereby we have to extract the visitor log for the day in the scenario of an investigation, how many overtime hours does the receptionist have to put in to decipher the handwriting?

3. Prevents others from snooping into a manual log

So much talk is going on about data protection these days. Obviously personal data is priceless. I bet insurance agents and property agents would love all these manual log books in buildings. These are real contact numbers and details belonging to real people! What better way to generate leads than to call all these people? With modern technology, it takes less than a second to take a snapshot of the logbook whilst the receptionist leaves you with the precious notebook to fill in your details.

4. Records preserved despite natural calamities

Because everything is manually recorded and handwritten, it gives the building management more surety to collect all sorts of information like, mobile numbers, names, email addresses etc. Wait. Should we ask for their birthdate or their marital status to ensure that this person is truly who he is? In modern Visitor Management Systems, we may need to ask these questions once. But a repeat visitor would not need to re-declare all this information. And in fact, we can easily check-in a person via Facebook and all the details about the person is there. We can easily link Facebook accounts and Mobile numbers to a person on a digital Visitor Management System, which the manual notebook will never be able to match.

5. No need to collect all sorts of unnecessary information

Because everything is manually recorded and handwritten, it gives the building management more surety to collect all sorts of information like, mobile numbers, names, email addresses etc. Wait. Should we ask for their birthdate or their marital status to ensure that this person is truly who he is? In modern Visitor Management Systems, we may need to ask these questions once. But a repeat visitor would not need to re-declare all this information. And in fact, we can easily check-in a person via Facebook and all the details about the person is there. We can easily link Facebook accounts and Mobile numbers to a person on a digital Visitor Management System, which the manual notebook will never be able to match.