During 2020, studies have concluded that home-office workers were not producing less, as it was previously thought. On the contrary, working from home has made productivity increase and workers tend to be more satisfied by not having to commute and work at offices.
It seems that after the pandemic, business facilities will be used differently. Alternating between home office and working locally allows for businesses to depend less on the actual working environments, which reduces costs in the long run. This hybrid approach also applies to security workers, which are already using surveillance applications from their homes in order to give access and manage the office environments.
Raised expectations and new incentives
The more convenient a system is, the more it tends to be adopted. Systems must be smart, safe, and also contribute to the overall hygiene of the environment (sensors that do not require touching for instance) are preferred given the pandemic conditions.
To be able to manage visitors efficiently has become one of the main requirements from our clients.
The security industry is coming up with intelligent solutions to aid business managers to control who can access their dependencies with efficiency from within the same system, independently of the visitor category, like staff, mobile teams, contractors and guests.
In the past it might have seem like a daunting task, but nowadays it’s simple. Visitor management solutions can be integrated quickly to access control software and third party solutions.
The fact that these systems can now communicate directly with the most known and used business applications like Active Directory and database management systems results in managers having the ability to thoroughly integrate other systems like HVAC, video surveillance and fire detection.
Efficiency benefits that run deep
Scheduling and booking dependencies such as meeting rooms, parking spots is now a breeze and can be done from within common day-to-day software like Microsoft Outlook. The convenience of knowing your parking spot will be available when you arrive is unprecedented. Also, inviting someone and offering way finding to easily locate themselves within previously unknown dependencies, while alerting the hosts when people have arrived at the exact location is something that would seem like a tale from the future a couple of years ago.
Another very interesting aspect is that it is now possible to question visitors regarding their health symptoms in order to ascertain if they have been potentially contaminated with undesired virus and other health related issues before giving them access.
Not only that, but booking premises allows for the cleaning staff to prepare the environment, and rooms are always available when they’re needed.
The benefits are extended through visitors and workers being positively impacted by saving time, and having a streamlined itinerary, which saves everyone a lot of time and gives a higher sense of security.
Workers, guests, managers and everyone else is concerned with hygiene, and these kinds of systems allow for touch less clearance using biometric readers or QR code cards. This not only avoids contamination but also makes people feel safer within the business environments.
Long lines at the reception are now a thing of the past, and access is easy, fast, secure and downright impressive.
Increasingly popular
Education, transportation, health, travel, logistics and many others are implementing these solutions according to their needs.
Vehicle parking requires space. And space is becoming a rarity in modern urban environments, to the point that authorities are encouraging more and more the use of alternative transportation.
Vehicles can be granted parking spots through registering the scheduled visitor beforehand. On the other hand, if a vehicle needs to be denied at any given time to make space for another more important guest, this process can be fully automated with access to the company’s schedule, for instance.
Nowadays it is possible to integrate this with visitor, video and intercom management. To verify the identification of the visitor, security workers can use QR codes and/or facial recognition, to confirm that the car is in fact matching the registered driver
Logistics pressures
Visitor management can benefit immensely from the growth in logistics regarding management. Depot space, truck location and staff availability management allow for increased margins in a segment in which every little improvement matters a lot. Not only that, but pressure comes from all sides, such as the increase in fuel prices, the pressure to make operations cleaner and environmentally friendly also plays a big role.
Being able to streamline the activities comes at a great advantage, giving the managers the ability to control working hours, absences and other factors with precision.
Controlling delivery times, clearing drivers and vehicles in real time while simultaneously directing them to the correct locations to perform their tasks increases the efficiency and takes unwanted factors such as illegal parking or blocking other vehicles out of the equation, which in turn reduces costs and optimizes the usage of the available resources.
Mixed use buildings and corporate enterprises
Allowing the flow of people in mixed-use buildings used to be a difficult and time consuming task, but nowadays the technology is able to offer an easy process, even in cases where the visitor needs elevated security clearance. It is not a coincidence that the most recent developments have taken place in response to the pandemic.
Adding new features to already existing systems not only makes security workers and managers life more easy, but it also adds more value to the overall infrastructure.
With the increasing needs for delivered items within the premises, it is absolutely necessary to control every aspect of the arrivals, clearance, parking and traffic directions of delivery personnel within the dependencies to avoid security and health issues.
Residential buildings can also configure their needs for deliveries using digital scheduling or allowing residents to schedule their delivery times through an internal network.
Having these systems in place gives managers the opportunity to extract and analyze data in order to pinpoint flaws or even catch ill-intended visitors before their next attempt. This reduces significantly the cases of burglary and theft, given that these individuals will know they are being thoroughly monitored. Also, being able to know who had contact with who in pandemic times can be crucial to avoid contamination spreads.
Financial, legal and medical sectors also need to be highly secured and monitored to avoid issues, and having the data secured and ready for consultation and analysis makes for an elevated degree of compliance when dealing with confidential information.
Lastly, having the ability to extract and analyze all the data gathered by these systems allows the decision makers to be much more informed about the need to improve or change certain aspects of the premises, especially in calamity or health related events, such as weather threats or pandemics like the one we’ve experienced recently.
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