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Why using electronic visitor management is crucial in a post-COVID world

by Paul Kazlauskas

COVID-19 has upended everything across the world. The transition to our new normal is in-process and is trending in the right direction — so much so that some schools and businesses have begun to welcome visitors back into their facilities. Hospitals are loosening previous restrictions on their one-visitor-per-day policy. For these facilities that are accepting visitors again, the safety of their patients, students, employees, facilities, and visitors rests atop a visitor management system.

There are many benefits of using a visitor management system in a post-COVID world:

Issue Visitor Badges
One of the best uses of a visitor management system is printing visitor badges. When you issue badges to all of your visitors, you make it easier to prevent unauthorized access to areas in your facility you’d prefer strangers not enter. Your staff can easily spot who should or shouldn’t be in an area by taking a look at the visitor badge.

For even better security, use expiring visitor badges that “change color overnight”. In other words, they are “valid today,” but they will be “void tomorrow.” The word “void,” literally, is what appears on our expiring badges over time to signal that they may no longer be used as legitimate forms of visitor identification.

Request free samples of expiring visitor badges

THRESHOLD’s eVisitor software prints professional-looking adhesive badges, customized with your logo. It lets you design I.D.’s for all kinds of visitors, including:

• Vendors
• Contractors
• Temporary Employees
• Volunteers
• Parents
• Substitute Teachers
• Or add your own!

Book a demo of eVisitor Software

Track Visitors That Come To Your Building
A critical component to a visitor management system is analyzing visitor data electronically. There is complete data on every visitor that has ever been to a facility and that data can be studied to identify trends. Most visitor management systems can generate custom reports and share them with security personnel easily. You can keep track of your visitors in real-time or run reports on any given visitor’s activity later in case there was an incident in your facility and you need to know who was in the building.

A visitor management system also helps with contact tracing. Being able to identify people who have been in recent contact with someone who tested positive for COVID is a very useful function to have for everyone’s safety.

Protect Your Visitor’s Confidential Information
One of the downsides of using an ordinary manual sign-in book is the lack of visitor privacy. Your visitor’s name, phone number, check-in and check-out times, and reason for visit are accessible for future visitors to view. This can make visitors hesitant about sharing their information with you.

Act as a Deterrent
When a visitor enters your facility, one of the first things they’ll see is your visitor management system. This system is friendly to visitors who are there for the right reasons and can serve as a deterrent to people who aren’t. For example, your visitor management system may require visitors to take a photo before entering the building. People with bad intentions might see your visitor management system and decide trying to access the facility is not worth the risk.

Make a great impression on your guests
A professional visitor management system shows that your facility is serious about security. A VMS can easily print a badge (sometimes in color like below, depending on the printer being used) that is clean, easily read, and projects professionalism. A speedy, streamlined visitor sign-in process also communicates to your visitors that their time is valuable and won’t be wasted. A visitor management system can also further enforce your company logo and brand. The tool can be customized to project your company’s image.



Electronic document signing
As visitors register, they can be prompted to sign any “hold-harmless”, non-disclosure agreements, or waivers directly on the screen. The visitor management system can capture their actual signature and not just a representation or initials. Visitors know what is expected of them while on the premises, and the facility has its guarded information properly protected before the visitor gets past the front lobby.

The world we used to know has changed, and facility security has to adjust to it. Knowing who is in your building is both a security and health issue these days. Using a visitor management system is a great way to maintain facility security and help keep everyone healthy and safe.

Book a demo of eVisitor Software

Posted on 5/25/2022