I was asked why a Visitor Management app from the app store should not be considered for an inquiry for 80 locations, the price seemed to good to be true…the customer making the inquiry actually said the cost makes the product seem to be amazing value! The product was being considered by the HSE team to implement Visitor Management across 80 locations varying in size from small to large, office to warehouse.
Best way I could answer the question was to buy the app, my results below as emailed to the customer of the 80 locations.
This week I purchased the app you mentioned (removed for this article)Â so I could best answer your questions. While setting the system up initially I had a couple of things raise a few questions for myself that made me dig deeper to the owners of the app, I wanted to understand the background of the developers. I continued on to find a company that said they had done business in Canada for 20 years. They say they built the app in 2011 on the website.
There was no way to make contact so through the URL I found the owner of the website contact details and sent an email, 5 days later I have not had a reply, this made me go back and log a support ticket, I have not had a reply from the support ticket at this stage also 5 days later.
I found the owners are from Canada and as I dug deeper I started to get a couple of immediate red flags, this is before I even got into the actual product and features which I will explain further.
Red Flag 1
I have not been able to contact anyone.
Red Flag 2
The app has not had an upgrade since March 11 2013.
Last week our latest updates included contractor insurance policy expiration triggering denial of access to your locations and automatic warnings to the HSE team. We also introduced automatic time calculations to the length of visit for reporting purposes which is a really nice feature for visitors and contractors when running reports.
We have an extensive list of ideas and suggestions generated from existing customers that make up part of the development path for the product, these ideas and suggestions come in weekly.
Red Flag 3
If anything happens to the iPad you have no access to your data until you get another iPad, our solution works across iPad, Tablet, PC, Laptop, smart phone
Product Issues discovered before I stopped testing the app I was asked about.
Product issue 1
– Product only works on iPad
Our solution works on iPad, Tablet, PC, Laptop, smart phone
Product issue 2
You can only set up an email for the host of the visitor
Our solution allows email and/or SMS
Product issue 3
Every employee or staff member needs to be entered manually.
with 80 locations and hundreds or thousands of employees you will benefit from a solution that will integrate with the companies staff list for automatic updates of new employees and initial upload of employee and staff data
Product Issue 4
No highlighting of visitors who may need assistance in the event of an evacuation.
Our solution not only asks the appropriate questions on entry by visitors within the software we also highlight visitors who may need assistance in the event of an emergency graphically.
Product Issue 5
Reception/Admin, Administrator access is only possible at the iPad.
After providing Visitor Management to companies ranging from small (less than 30 employees) to Large (many locations across multiple countries) it is clear many people need access to the system at different times.
Reception – needs access when a visitor needs assistance or does not want to sign in on a kiosk. Reception can book in a visitor, pre book in a visitor, pre book in groups of visitors for special events.
Another common way we see Reception or front of office staff including security guards in gatehouses use the solution is when a host does not come to collect the visitor, reception can hover the mouse over the visitor to get the hosts contact details without going into any other company directories to gather the contact details of the host to track them down and advise the arrival of the visitor.
We define employee roles within the business to have access only to the modules they require including reception, contractor management, reports, assets (keys, cards, cars), all of this is easily set up by the administrator.
At this point I stopped testing
At this point I just stopped testing, the app is a nice app, but is missing basic functionality turning it into a waste of money if you seriously need Visitor Management Knowing how Visitor Management is designed to work I would have to rate the app 2 out of 10 for a single site location and 1 out of 10 for a multiple site situation.
Thanks for pushing me down this path, it was an interesting exercise, not only have I written to you I have also created a blog post from the details.
Would you like to see a demonstration of Visitor Management, click here to select a day and time from our demonstration calender