Case Study


In the digital age, surely time is up for the paper visitor log? By Phil Jones, Managing Director, Brother UK


When you think about it, your visitor management system (VMS) is a very important part of your operation. As well as being part of the first impression anybody visiting your business will get, it’s also your only way of controlling who is able to access your premises and knowing exactly who is on site at any given time. Despite this, by far the most popular type


of VMS remains the pen-and-paper sign-in book. Given its importance, and the proliferation


of technology being used by businesses to achieve quality and efficiency improvements, it is surprising that visitor management is something that is so often overlooked by organisations. A VMS serves several different key functions. Firstly, it should allow visitors to be identified as they arrive and then either sent to the right place or met by the right person at reception. As simple as this sounds, getting it wrong can have significant consequences. A famous example of this was Guy Goma,


an applicant for an IT position with the BBC who ended up being interviewed live on air in place of technology expert Guy Kewney on a subject he knew nothing about. Of course, it was unfortunate that two men with the same name arrived at the same time both expecting to be interviewed for different reasons, but this is the kind of error that a more sophisticated VMS could easily have avoided.


42 fmuk Secondly, they need to provide real-time


visibility of exactly who is on site at any given time. The often illegible, error prone and non-digitised records provided by paper log books makes this very difficult to achieve, especially for premises with large numbers of visitors or multiple access points. There is a significant risk not only to site security but also to visitors’ safety if emergency services are unaware of their presence in the case of an evacuation. An integrated solution that makes real-


time information available remotely makes effective evacuation and assembly procedures much easier to achieve. Finally, there is a need for any VMS to


handle the data it contains sensitively. Paper records can make access to information difficult to control, as visitors are often able to see the names and details of others who have visited previously. This issue will be well known to any salesperson who commonly checks into offices to present to potential business customers as a way of gathering intelligence on any competitors that might be pitching at the same time. But obviously, while this has potential benefits for salespeople, it also carries significant risks for your business, and your visitor book could well be giving away information you really wouldn’t want to give away. With a digital visitor management system, these unwanted information leaks are easily


avoided, as visitors will see only a sign-in screen, rather than a list of everyone that has visited that day.


Integrated solutions


An effective VMS is made up of a front-desk sign-in and a photo-capture system – which can often be delivered by an app running on a mounted tablet – and an automated badge or label-printing solution, integrated with a cloud-based platform. The software solution should be able to handle host notifications, compliant record-keeping and delivery of real-time personnel information. Today, many integrated, all-in-one solutions


are available, making installation quick and easy. At Brother, we provide our high- performance QL Label printers as part of solutions offered by all four of the leading visitor management system providers that contributed to this article. So, if you want to make a more professional


first impression on your visitors, while also improving safety and security, it’s well worth looking into which system would be best for your organisation.


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