Modernizing Your Visitor Management Systems

August 6th, 2024

Any company or other organization, such as a hospital or school in , has a common issue; visitor management. Many organizations have a policy to allow visitors, but the ways that visitors come in, interact and leave needs to be controlled, both for operational and safety concerns. Unauthorized personnel stealing medicine from a hospital, for example, is one of the reasons why a visitor management system needs to be implemented.

These days, visitor management systems are implemented throughout , , but some are older, less efficient, and less satisfactory in results than others. If you’re wondering whether your visitor management system needs an upgrade, here are the signs you should be looking for to make your decision.

Lack Of Data Management

“Bloat” is a term used when extraneous, unnecessary, or outdated information is present in a system and slows down ease of access. For example, if your database has a list of authorized users that are no longer valid—such as indicating deceased or ex-employees are still authorized visitors—this is a good example of bloat. Trying to determine who is active, authorized personnel when the data is filled with unnecessary information slows down work processes.

If your system has no active data management or is so cumbersome that staff does not even attempt data management, that’s a clear sign that things need to be overhauled.

Task Inefficiencies

How visitor management is managed can play a big role in whether or not effects like bloat occur. For example, if a visitor management system has two databases that need to be separately updated, this creates redundancies that don’t need to exist, and this, in turn, impacts efficiency.

Visitor management should be fast, accessible and streamlined. Having systems that waste time, or repeat tasks more than once to no effect are all warnings that your system needs improvement. If people are wrestling with your visitor management system, or it’s slowing them down, something is wrong.

Security Breaches

The biggest indicator that your visitor management systems need a serious reassessment is if it’s not providing you with the intended result of accurately managing visitors. If your property is regularly encountering visitors that are not listed on your visitor management system, this is effectively a security breach. And for the security breaches you do catalog, you are left wondering about the ones you didn’t catch at all.

If you have lost cards, lost keys, or other systems that are reported, but no changes are made to locks or changing access codes, these are all symptoms of a failing visitor management system. A lack of responsiveness to changes in the system indicate a problem with being able to efficiently update and make the necessary changes to maintain good levels of security.

Organizations in , should consider the use of “active directories” as one way to keep visitor management systems up to date. Active directories are more proactive types of visitor management software that track permissions, supervise permanent or temporary authorization, and other activities that take some of the burden of managing people and automate the process.