The pen and paper visitor management system is a manual or traditional process of recording and tracking visitors with log book and a pen. This log book is the book a visitor fills out upon entering into an organization. It records the date, name, phone number, email, time of sign-in, time of sign-out, signature etc. depending on the information the company requires of their visitors.
The essence of having a visitor management system is to properly and effectively track visitors, restrict their access into the company as well as protect your business and employee from unwanted visitors.
Although the manual VMS is cheap, it does not get a resounding applause when mentioning effective and reliable visitor management systems.
11 Reasons You Should Stop Using Pen and Paper Visitor Management System
1. It is not confidential (No privacy)
A paper records system give easy access to other visitor’s details by fellow visitors. The way this works is that when a visitor is signing in, they are able to see details of previous visitors that have signed in before them and even when they come back to sign out they also have unrestricted access to view the data of other visitors that have come in after them.
This is very risky as organizations through their visitor books are indirectly giving away personal information of crucial visitors such as name, phone number, email, etc. of their visitors.
In this age of smartphone cameras, there has definitely been cases where people take pictures of the visitor log book either for the purpose of sales or other suspicious reasons.
2. It is not a secure storage for your visitors information
There is little or no security with using a pen and paper visitor management system. The paper (log book) can be stolen, burnt or destroyed. Besides, paper and ink fades over time and it’s also prone to deterioration over time. When any of this happens the data of your visitors is forever gone, especially since there is no backup.
3. No facial recognition
Since a manual visitor management system involves paper and a pen, it does not help to recognize the face of the visitor. It is easy for a visitor to deny his/her name when caught for an offense in your premises.
4. It is not reliable
For so many reasons, manual visitor management system is not reliable. One of the reasons been that, the illegibility of some visitor’s handwriting makes their data useless or barely useful for future use.
This inevitably defeats your purpose of requesting that information in the first place.
5. It does not help in your brand enhancement
No company wants to be viewed as old-fashioned. Every business wants to be seen as creative, innovative and modern. That’s why we invest a great deal in decorating our business environment. So imagine how out-of-place an old fashioned visitor log book can look on a sophisticated reception area.
There is nothing really creative about a pen and paper visitor log, it always deteriorates.
The fact remains that it is an old-school method of recording and managing visitor information.
6. No real time Access
Peradventure a situation comes up during work off days and a visitor data is needed, what will you do?
The truth is whatever you do next will cost you some extra stress and wasted time. This is one major disadvantage of using a pen and paper visitor management system, you can’t have real-time access to a paper-based visitor management system.
You would need to be in the physical office to get access to the book.
7. It is time-consuming
The entire process of getting to the reception desk, filling out the visitor logbook and waiting on a long queue is really exhausting for visitors and waste the time they would have spent on other things. Moreover, finding a particular visitor’s data can be quite stressful especially when you have to check past months or years record.
8. It is exhausting searching for visitors and giving visitors report manually:
Whenever there is an urgent need to get the details or visit history of a visitor or you need to make a report on how many visitors come by the company on a weekly, monthly even yearly basis, you may need to start searching and counting manually from paper to paper.
This is frustrating and time-wasting and yet you may not be able to provide an accurate report after all the effort.
9. It is grossly inefficient when there is a high visitor traffic
A paper-based visitor management system is not well equipped to handle the high volume of visitor traffic. This is because it cannot be programmed or appointments cannot have been scheduled for it to intuitively know what response to display to different visitors based on their purpose of visit and who they want to see.
This means that after filling the visitor logbook, your reception area is most likely to be crowded with visitors waiting to be assigned where to go within the company premises.
With a digital visitor management system, you can have already scheduled appointments with your visitors in advance so that the application directs them to where they are to go as soon as they fill their details into the application.
10. A paper-based visitor management system cannot recognize your high priority customers
When key visitors such as your best customers, partners, or high priority prospects enter your premises, there is no way your paper-based visitor management system can recognize them or automatically send them to the right persons.
With a digital visitor management system, all this can be properly and intuitively handled without any human touch.
11. A paper-based visitor log system is not security conscious
One of the major reasons for tracking visitors is to ensure that the right visitor is at the right place at the right time, a visitor log book usually goes with general visitor badges that have no photo of the visitor. This type of badge can be covertly transferred to another person undetected. This is a serious security loophole.
Visitors can even enter where they were not logged to enter unnoticed, and when they are caught, there is an instantaneous way to validate where they are supposed to be at that point in time except you check the logbook at the reception.
It’s obvious you should not continue using a visitor logbook, the truth is that your visitor management system is a key area in your business operation especially when a majority of your visitors are prospects, customers or partners. It is the first impression and interaction anyone visiting your business will get.
The kind of visitor management system you use in your organization really matters as it shows to your visitors your commitment to innovation and absolute security.
Provide your visitor with an uplifting memorable experience, make the switch to a reliable, effective and digital visitor management system today.