Insider's Guide to Visitor Management System

What is Visitor Management? 

Visitor Management is a process that helps any organization to keep a track of the people visiting their premises. In traditional era, organizations used to have a register on the security entrance to collect the visitor data.

But now a days, With the advanced technology Digital Visitor Management System has taken the place to manage and track the data of visitors securely with multiple advantages.

Types of Visitor Management System 

 Visitor Management system is not a desire but a need for any organization. From traditional time brands use to have manual registers to manage the data, Let’s check out the types of Visitor Management System.

1. Manual Visitor Management System - Used by traditional organizations to manage the arrivals in a register used by the security guard.
2. Cloud-Based Visitor Management System - Used by modern organizations with the Advanced Cloud technology-based solution which is available as SaaS - Software as a Service, where the organization pays a subscription amount to the owner company of that solution.
3. On-Premises Visitor Management System or One Time Visitor Management System - Used by modern organizations with the software deployed on their on-premises server and they can utilize the solution as per their needs.

Type of Visitors in Visitor Management System

Here mainly type of visitors can be divided into two parts,

1. Invited Visitors (i.e. A guest with a pre-scheduled meeting) and
2. Direct Visitors (A person who visits the organization for a direct inquiry or from a reference)

Role of Visitor Management System

The role of Visitor Management System is to help the organization create a policy for data management. As we see some organizations still use manual registers to maintain the data of visitors, which is for sure a tedious task.

The data in the manual registers is with vulnerable concerns like theft, data manipulation, or damage from fire, water, deterioration over time, etc. Also, there are other issues like searchability issues and sharing updates with the concerned person or team.

For example, If the organization wants to run a campaign for its new product or offer by targeting the recent visitors it’ll be a tedious task to get the data from register. Where a digital solution can provide the necessary details with just a few clicks.

Advanced Visitor Management System

We all know that nowadays we are getting advanced with technology. Many unexpected automation and process flows are taking place in the growth era.

A Digital Visitor Management System can be helpful for an organization to manage, track and analyse the overall visits to their premises. One can check the footfalls at their premises on their smartphone or laptop at their fingertips with advance visitor management system.

Comparison of Manual Registers AND Digital Visitor Management System

1. Data Entry 

Manual: One can enter the data in manual registers by creating some columns with the fields and can manage the data entry manually at the reception desk or entrance gate.

Advanced: One can enter the data on the fingertips with a digital visitor management system by using the mobile app or web interface. It can be done at any appropriate space with a device having normal internet connectivity.

2. Time Consumption

Manual: On the manual registers one needs to make sure that the concerned person is near the register with pen to enter the data for the records, sometimes it takes a lot of time to handle the queue and enter the data if there are multiple visitors on the entrance.

Advanced: At the other hand, In the digital visitor management system the data can be entered in the mobile, tablet or PC other than that Visitor Management Systems like VizMan provides QR Code Function from which the visitor can scan the QR and fill the required details.

3. Security Status of Data

Manual: In manual registers as we all know anyone who is nearby the register can access the data in the absence of the security guard or receptionist, so there are chances of data theft to the organization in manual register scenario.

Advanced: In digital visitor management Software the data can be only accessed with the credentials, i.e. User ID and Password. If the system is locked one can not access the visitor data without the permission of the concerned person. Other than that the data in Digital VMS is stored on a secured cloud server which insures the data security.

4. Data Manipulation

Manual: Data can be easily manipulated in manual registers as the data can be easily checked and edited without the knowledge of the security area. Example: If a visitor is visiting the office and getting the register access to enter the data, he/she can check the previous data and make changes in that.

Advanced: Data in Digital Visitor Management Software can not be manipulated as it gets stored to secured cloud instantly which can not be modified or edited later on for security concerns. Which fulfils the security needs of any organization.

5. Loss of Data 

Manual: There are many reasons for loss of data in manual registers like damage from fire and water, torn pages, fading ink, registers can be stolen, natural disasters etc.
Advanced: As the data gets stored in a digital cloud in the digital visitor management system one can always keep a copy of it in form of reports with excel, csv or pdf formats. Also, the service provider can have a copy of the data on the other cloud for safety concerns if any disaster happens.

6. Organized data 

Manual: Data can look good if written well in manual registers but there are high possibilities that in the long term the data will not look well organized as mentioned in the last point there can be loss of data. In addition to that there is nothing to filterize the data, data can not be accessible or it can not be shared with the concerned person.
Advanced: In digital visitor management system, data looks appropriate because of the systematic user interface, data can be filterized if required, it can be searched and can be downloaded to share with the marketing team to run campaigns to increase brand awareness.

7. Alerts & Notifications

Manual: For obvious there are no alerts and notifications in manual registers for the concerned person, one can use landline or by personally connecting with the one for approval or other updates. 

Advanced: There are multiple alerts in the digital visitor management system, Reminders before meeting, alert at the time or arrival, alert if any new visitor is checked in to meet, etc.

8. Analytics and Statistics

Manual: Stats can be updated manually by the frontdesk on daily, weekly and monthly basis to get the overall footfall on that particular time frame. There is no analytics of data in manual registers, one can only guess for the analytics with the view available.

Advanced: For different users and for Admin there are dashboards available with the data analytics and statistics with different time frame options. One can easily check and make decisions as per the analytics provided by the digital visitor management system.

9. Unwanted Visitors Access

Manual: All organization have some unwanted visitors, i.e. not allowed to visit. But all of them can not be remembered by the security guard. In manual registers there is no such mechanism which alerts when any unwanted arrives at the gate. Host or a known person can only verify that for security concerns.

Advanced: Now a days, In the digital visitor management system, there is a function of blacklisting an unwanted visitor. Whenever a blacklisted visitor arrives at the maindesk the system will alert the security guard with a pop-up.

10. Meeting Management 

Manual: There is no concept in manual registers to manage meetings or to keep meeting remarks with updates. One can definitely innovate some concept and can manage all the stuff but for obvious it’ll become a tedious task after a while.

Advanced: In advanced digital visitor management Software there is a whole separate module of meeting management to keep track of all the updates, maintain meetings remarks and generate different reports.

11. Approval Systems 

Manual: Meeting host can not share any approval to the security or receptionist for any new arrival in manual system, The approval system can be managed with landline or calling where the host can’t verify the visitor at all.

Advanced: In digital visitor management Software the meeting host gets an alert in the system to approve the visitor after verifying all the details. Other than approving the visitor the meeting host can reject, reschedule, divert or forward the visitor.

12. Visitor form Customization 

Manual: In manual registers there are certain limits of customizing the visitor form. I.e. You can not add more than a number of fields, You can not click photos with your visitor details, creation of dropdown is not possible in manual registers, etc.

Advanced: Digital Visitor Management Software allows you to create multiple fields with different options like capturing photo, capturing ID proof, creating multiple dropdowns, checkboxes, additional column creation, etc. In short, an advanced visitor management system provides you a dynamic visitor form.

13. Data Reports & Utilization

Manual: As per the above points, manual registers can’t provide any type of reports for specific visitor or timeframes, for a instance one can take a xerox of the register pages and can use it as a report but that is certainly not possible when the data is larger and the demand is specific.

Advanced: In the digital era, Many organizations run different campaigns like SMS Campaigns, E-mail Campaigns, WhatsApp campaigns or calling campaigns. Digital visitor management system provides reports with multiple sorts and filterizations. Also reports can play a crucial part to take administrative decisions with the statistics available.

14. Attendance Management

Manual: There is no such way you can manage your attendance in a organizaed way with manual registers for your organization. It’ll be like a school attendance register which can easily manipulated by the class monitor. In this scenario you are paying bucks to your employees which has to be verified in a structured way.

Advanced: Some of the digital visitor management systems also provides the attendance management system in built in their solution. With the analytics part you can easily generate the attendance reports as well. Attendance Management System with Visitor Management Solution can be a great option to manage a single platform for the needs.

Benefits of Digital Visitor Management System

• Touchless Check-in/out
• Time-Saving
• Instant Updates
• Security Enhancement 
• Approved Visits with Record
• Visitor Tracking 
• Meeting Management

Looking for a Best Visitor Management System? 

VizMan - Digital Assistant of Digital Era

Features of VizMan: 

• Self Check-in [QR Based]
• Photo/ID Proof Capture
• Meeting Scheduling
• E-mail Notification
• SMS Notification & Approver Settings
• MoM - Meeting Notes
• Bulk Invite
• VIP Visitors
• Blacklist Visitors
• Multi Badge Templates [Visitor Pass Templates]
• Visitor Pass [Print / ePass]
• Courier Management.
• Parking Management
• Attendance Management
• On Demand Report Generation
• Advanced Analytics
• Divert & Forward Meetings
• Daily Visits / Validity Management
• Time Zone Set-up
• Multi Org.
• Multiple Access
• Multiple Users
• Android App
• iOS App
• Invite with WhatsApp
• In App Notifications [Web + Mobile].
  
  Conclusion:
  In the digital era, For an organization security is a necessary need. To match the growth with the top competitors one has to automate things like visitor management and meeting management by using a structured solution to save time and focus on the development side.
  
  

“What I have fun with is trying to transform creativity into business reality all over the world. To do this, you have to be connected to innovators and designers, but also make their ideas liveable and concrete.”   Bernard Arnault -  Louis Vuitton

Nilesh Shewani