How to maximize the ROI of visitor management systems
What is the ROI of a Visitor Management System?
In a world increasingly driven by efficiency and data-driven decision-making, businesses often ask, ‘What’s the return on investment (ROI) of this solution?’
It’s a valid question, and one that allows businesses to optimize efficiency for maximum value. After all, why invest in a system if it’s not going to add any value?
However, in order to fully appreciate the value of any solution, you need to look beyond just cost savings. In fact, the best solutions can differentiate themselves from the others because of non-financial advantages.
This is often the case with a Visitor Management System (VMS). Business efficiencies, branding, compliance and risk reduction are all significant factors that should be considered when fully understanding what a VMS offers a business.
And there are plenty more aspects to consider.
Understanding the full value
Modern VMS solutions influence multiple aspects of an organization. While direct cost savings are an important factor, they are only part of the equation.
The complete ROI of a VMS includes:
- Tangible benefits: Reducing administrative workloads, streamlining processes and saving on physical resources like paper and printing.
- Intangible benefits: Enhancing workplace reputation, improving security perceptions and networking opportunities, and creating a seamless visitor experience.
For example, visitors to a business with a modern, contactless sign in and out system will have a noticeably different experience than one that employs a manual sign in book. Not only will they find it much more efficient, but their perception of the business will likely be influenced too.
When assessing ROI, it’s important to account for these broader impacts, as they contribute to reputation, brand loyalty and employee satisfaction over time.
Case Study: Venton Conference Center
Venton Conference Centre often hosts large groups of people that previously needed to sign in manually via log books. Now, with a digital VMS, guests can pre-register, saving time on entering the premises and ensuring sign in processes are compliant and consistent.
Financial impact
Plainly, the majority of organizations are attracted by any opportunity to cut costs or drive efficiencies that create financial benefits. A digital VMS can do this in a variety of ways.
- Direct cost savings
A modern visitor management system eliminates the costs of extra staffing requirements for reception areas and purchasing physical sign-in books. - Resource reallocation
Automating visitor management frees up staff time, allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks. For example, reception staff can shift from administrative duties to customer-facing roles to not only enhance the visitor experience, but enable you to save on the cost of hiring extra talent for those roles. - Technology consolidation
Many VMS platforms integrate with existing systems like access control, meeting room booking and compliance management. Consolidating these solutions helps to streamline processes, simplifying maintenance and reducing operational costs. - Long-term financial considerations
Adopting a future-ready VMS ensures scalability as your business grows, avoiding the need for frequent upgrades or replacements. Over time, this leads to predictable budgeting and reduced technology churn, and it can even unlock greater efficiencies if the VMS has additional functionality better suited to larger organizations.
Cargill has more than 100 sites globally, and would previously report on contractor hours by adding up the hours entered on manual log books. Staff at each site routinely went through sign in information, taking a long time and creating space for human error.
With a digital VMS, sign in information is automated and documented for easier reporting, saving many administrative hours and freeing staff up for higher value tasks.
Operational Benefits
A VMS creates opportunities to streamline business operations, making processes faster, more reliable and better suited to the specific requirements of an organization.
It includes:
- Daily efficiency gains
A VMS automates time-intensive processes such as visitor pre-registration and badge printing. Employees can also get real-time notifications when guests arrive on site, allowing them to greet them quickly and reduce wait times, and eliminating the need for reception staff to contact hosts to let them know visitors have arrived. - Productivity boosts
With automated reporting and real-time data availability, staff can spend less time managing visitors, resolving sign-in issues, looking for hosts or coordinating meetings. Streamlined processes directly improve productivity across teams. - Resource optimization
By analyzing visitor data, organizations can allocate space, resources and staff more effectively. For example, by identifying peak visitor times, businesses can optimize lobby staffing or meeting room usage. - Multi-site coordination
For businesses operating across multiple locations, the benefits of a centralized VMS are exponential. It simplifies visitor data management and ensures consistent processes across every single site.
Case Study: Bunge North America
Bunge is a global agribusiness leader with six different sites in northern USA. It cleaned up data tracking from paper sign-in sheets that needed to be stored for record-keeping by using a tech-enabled VMS that retained information digitally.
Digital data can be exported to spreadsheets or other systems without fuss, saving time and making it much easier to keep records across all of its locations.
Risk and compliance value
Risk and compliance are non-negotiables for any business. The ability to minimize risks and make compliance easier to achieve is arguably the most considerable advantage of a digital VMS.
- Compliance automation
Unlike paper sign in methods where visitor data is on display, a modern VMS comes with built-in compliance with local data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Features such as data anonymization, automated deletion and secure cloud storage reduce the risk of non-compliance fines. - Risk reduction
Enhanced visitor tracking improves workplace security by ensuring only authorized individuals access sensitive areas. Real-time reporting strengthens emergency preparedness and response time by enabling organizations to account for all individuals on site during an evacuation. - Audit preparation
Audits and inspections can involve high stress and many hours of manual data collection, analysis and reporting. Digital visitor records are much easier to retrieve and organize, ensuring smooth internal and external audits. This reduces administrative stress and makes audits much more efficient. - Policy management
Built-in policy acknowledgment and e-signature features streamline the way visitors are informed of safety guidelines or non-disclosure agreements; making it easy for organizations to collect and store signed policies.
Somerset Care operates a range of rest homes across southern England. It is required to maintain records of visitors and staff on site at any given time. The organization upgraded from its pen and paper sign-in process in order to make record-keeping more reliable and secure, and in the process made it seamless for everyone signing in and out.
Measuring success
To trulyunderstand the ROI of a VMS, it’s important to monitor and track performance over time. While in many cases a VMS can very quickly improve efficiencies of existing processes, some of it’s true value may take some time to monitor, such as when it enables new processes.
- Establish baseline metrics
Before implementing the new system, assess the current state of your organization’s existing visitor management propcess. Track metrics like time spent on manual processes, visitor wait times and compliance audit readiness. These are all important metrics to compare once your new VMS is up and running. - Create meaningful KPIs
Take the time to develop goals that are relevant to your organization. In particular, consider pain points and where friction exists in your current systems and processes.
Examples can include:
• Reduction in manual data entry time
• High effort admin tasks that could be automated
• Improvement in visitor satisfaction scores
• Increase in successful compliance audits - Building improvement frameworks
Set regular intervals for evaluating the performance of your new VMS. This creates the opportunity to gather feedback and helps to identify areas for further optimization, including how the VMS can adapt to evolving business needs.
It also ensures assessment takes place, as without scheduled dates, this can easily be forgotten about. - Scaling measurement systems
As your organization grows, ensure your measurement systems adapt to account for new locations, larger visitor volumes or staff numbers, or changes in compliance regulations.
Exeter College in the UK has around 10,000 students. As well as benefiting from the standard features of VMS Sign In App, Digital Innovations and Engagement Manager Anthony Martin says he has discussed feedback and ideas with Sign In App customer service staff, leading to additional VMS features. By understanding goals and searching for additional value, organizations can maximize the ROI of their products.
Conclusion
The ROI of a visitor management system extends far beyond its upfront costs. It can streamline operations, enhance compliance and deliver a superior visitor experience in a range of ways.
To truly capture its value, workplaces must adopt a holistic approach, considering both direct and indirect benefits. With the right metrics and frameworks in place, a digital VMS can deliver considerable long term benefits to today’s workplaces.
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