What are the benefits of a visitor management system for colleges?
- Reduces security threats
- Keep track of students and staff
- Records all visitor’s information
- Provides real-time access to visitor activity
- Stops unwanted guests
- Makes reporting easy
School safety is at the forefront of every parent and teacher’s mind. It’s one of the most important goals of any school to create an effective, fool-proof security system to achieve that within their grounds.
And, anyone who’s been on a college campus can agree that the weakest part of this system is the number of visitors that come in and out of campus at all hours. For this reason, visitor management reasons are quickly becoming adopted by colleges everywhere.
But what are the benefits of a visitor management system for colleges, exactly? Here’s how this system helps reduce the number of safety concerns on campus:
Reduces security threats
Colleges need to make every effort to protect the privacy and security of their students. It’s important that everyone feels safe on campus.
Without a visitor management system, then you can’t control who comes in and out. Unwanted guests may just stroll onto campus with bad intentions and pose a potential threat to students and staff. Things like theft, harassment, assault, and other crimes can easily take place if you don’t take steps to control who enters campus.
If any incidents happen, then many people may no longer feel secure enough to continue going to your school. Parents may even withdraw their children from your institution. This can spell disaster for your college’s reputation and credibility.
Luckily, a visitor management system is a powerful, effective way to address the holes in your security system. It monitors every aspect of visitor activity— and deters would-be criminals from even stepping foot inside the campus.
Keep track of students and staff
A school needs to keep track of all of its students and staff to ensure their safety. A visitor management system issues badges, which allow people to access campus. And, each time they use their badge, this interaction is recorded within the system.
Each badge is also given a unique identification number, which helps the system keep track of each registered student and staff member. As a result, this system is more efficient at IDing students and staff when they step in and out of campus. You can track their time-in, which buildings they went to, and what time they went home — all this data is logged automatically with each swipe of a card.
Records all visitor’s information
The same information tracking can be applied to any visitor that comes onto the premises. This is because the visitor management system will require visitors to present their ID or some other document to authenticate their identity. Not only does this discourage people with bad intentions from attempting to enter the college, but it will also provide a full record of who visited the college in case any incident happens.
Each time a visitor is logged onto the system, their name, phone number, and any other details you want to ask from them can be added to your database. This can be easily accessed or collected if needed.
Provides real-time access to visitor activity
Likewise, the visitor management system will keep track of each visitor’s movements once they’re inside the campus. This gives you real-time data and analytics about who is entering and leaving which building. This information, in turn, provides metrics such as how long the visitors stayed within a certain area, which departments they visited, and so on.
This information can be used to retrace a visitor’s steps and paint a better picture as to what they were doing, or what was happening at school on any given day.
This system, through its tracking capabilities, offers many features that reveal visit patterns and trends. This is not only useful for security purposes — but it also helps your college be better prepared to accommodate future visits.
Stops unwanted guests
A visitor management system isn’t just a record-keeper — it also serves as a gatekeeper for your campus. If a person manages to sneak past the front gates or is not logged onto the visitor management system, then they cannot enter any building within your premises.
If they try to, then they are either physically prevented from doing so (through locked doors), or an alarm is raised — which alerts your security. Either way, this prevents unwanted guests from accessing your campus.
Makes reporting easy
Traditionally, visitor logs for colleges were often handwritten onto a designated book. However, this process is inefficient and insecure. Not only can these logs be unreadable, but they can also be easily tampered with or lost.
With a visitor management system, you gain a visitor record that is much more secure and convenient for everyone to use. The information is easily readable, can’t be altered, and will never be lost. And, this information is arranged according to the person’s name, time, date, etc.
So, when you need to find the number of parents who showed up for a parent-teacher conference day, or need a record of all the students who were on campus this week, you won’t have any trouble. Your visitor management system can provide you with all of that data. Better yet, it can generate a report in just a matter of minutes.
Key Takeaway
The benefits of a visitor management system for colleges show that it is the most powerful and efficient solution for any campus’ security.
Implementing ELID’s high-quality visitor management system provides all these benefits — and more! Message us today, and we can help you take full control of the safety and security of your school.