Keeping track of visitors is not a new concept, yet many organizations are still using outdated methods − often by using a simple sign-in sheet, and maybe a visitor badge or name tag. But in today’s world, businesses need modern-day tools to ensure the safety of their staff, visitors and data across multiple locations. Equally important is the ability to provide visitors a simple check-in process and all the tools needed to make the most of their time at your place of business.

Just think about it. What if you could seamlessly track how many visitors you have on any given day, or an exact time a particular visitor was on-site, as well as when they left, which employees they saw and which offices they were in? Perhaps you have a global footprint with office locations in several countries – wouldn’t it be helpful if each location’s visitor management tool could share guest information across the enterprise so visitor access can be granted or revoked more easily across each location?

Sounds great, right? But where do you begin?

Before selecting a new visitor access management system, it’s important to take stock of the unique needs of the business – number of facilities, policies and procedures, how your business is changing now and in the future, and more. It’s equally important to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed the workplace and how daily business interactions will be conducted moving forward.

To help, here are five key areas to consider before selecting the system that’s right for your business.

Simplicity

When looking for a visitor management system it’s important to make sure the system is user-friendly and doesn’t add more friction to the day. Find a solution that offers single sign-on integration so that employees do not have to remember yet another set of credentials. A more intuitive process means quicker employee adoption.

Equally important is choosing a cloud-based solution over an on-premise only solution to avoid increasing IT hard and soft-cost spend. With these solutions, there are no physical servers to install and maintain and, therefore, no additional burden to the enterprise IT team resources or budget.

Scalability

Identify providers that offer systems with the flexibility needed to scale up or down depending upon changing business needs or priorities. These solutions will offer rich features that you can access regardless of the size of your business so you can easily “turn on” more functionality as the business grows.

It’s also worth noting, many providers offer assistance with the initial onboarding and training. Don’t forget to inquire if they provide intuitive training materials to help employees quickly and willingly adopt and use the system. These tools will prove helpful when onboarding new employees in the future.

Configurable to evolving policies and procedures

COVID-19 has taught organizations many things over the past year. One of those lessons is that it’s important to evaluate and revise business policies and procedures to meet the evolving environment in which the business operates in. A best-in-class visitor management solution should be able to evolve with changing security policies easily and in real-time. For example, it should be able to provide updated visitor logs, “do not admit” lists, individual hours of entry and exit, and more.

Service support infrastructure

Often times, web-based platforms require an annual service agreement that covers the level of on-going support and service your enterprise will receive. However, there are providers that include on-going technical support within the software subscription − so when it comes time to ask for additional help, you won’t receive yet another support invoice.

Data protection

Carefully comb through the data privacy terms and conditions and ask the provider a lot of questions about how they approach data privacy. In this day and age, protecting data is table stakes in ensuring the protection of your employees, visitors and company data (not to mention reputation). We’d recommend looking for a system that does not store any personal identifiable information (PII) or personal health information (PHI). Go a step further and look for a solution that encrypts any that is in rest and in motion.

With Entrust Adaptive Issuance Visitor Management as a Service, your front desk is everywhere, connected to the cloud, enabling streamlined experiences for visitors and hosts, and security for your facilities and employees.

To learn more about the Entrust Adaptive Issuance Visitor Management as a Service solution, see the following resources: