Just about every visitor management software solution today has an iPad app, you can go to the App Store and find dozens of products, I remember touching on this several years ago and here we are two years later and not much has changed. Read my article for several years ago
iPad apps for visitor management allow you to get started quickly, you can set up your system normally within minutes, most systems allow import of excel spreadsheets to load employee data, only a few have active directory or similar integration. Problem with iPad apps is very quickly when you ask enough questions you discover they fall short of full functionality required to manage every person in your building for evacuation purposes.
Active directory integration is widely used in systems where hundreds and thousands of employees are involved on a single or across multiple locations, I remember late last year one customer loaded 42,000 employees into a single location that actually had around 100 employees because the companies main database did not have location based categories set up. I have only seen this once but I know when talking to many IT staff that some databases need to be cleaned up before they can export out to another system.
Once you have loaded your employees into the database they can be selected by a visitor as a host when the visitor signs in.
Many of the iPad apps available for visitor management allow the visitor to sign in, maybe take a photo and maybe offer a non disclosure agreement, only 1 or 2 offer a detailed visitor induction for compliance. One of the questions that should be asked when purchasing an iPad visitor management system is how compliant do we need to be?
Wifi or not to Wifi
The biggest issue we hear about from companies that have purchased iPad only Visitor Management systems is Wifi. If you have any Wifi Issues at all the Visitor Management software can seem not to be working well. You can type an email while on an iPad and the Wifi could drop out three times while you are typing and you would not even know, when signing in a visitor live you cannot have any Wifi issues at all. Recently a customer came to me after purchasing an iPad only solution and they had Wifi issues in the office, he even tried buying an adapter to connect the iPad to the network but he told me this failed as well, then he purchase our software as it runs on any device, he purchased a 10inch windows tablet and problem solved.
VISITOR COMPLIANCE
Most companies today want better compliance. No company wants to be sued because a visitor injures themselves while on site. Every company must do as much as possible to advise visitors of any site issues when signing in. MOST iPad visitor management systems don’t provide a way for your company to be compliant.
Read more about visitor compliance
EVACUATION
Nearly all visitor management systems for iPads today do not have an evacuation module, most of them will produce a list of the visitors that you can print or see online electronically, only a couple have an evacuation module giving fire wardens mobile functionality. Only a couple will capture employee presence on site and very few will include this employee data in the evacuation module.
CONTRACTOR MANAGEMENT
Nearly all of the iPad apps for visitor management ignore contractors because they have been built to handle visitors only. More than 7 years ago we included a contractor module at the request of customers. In 2010 Unilever Canada took the contractor module to the next level with the module now including many features to assist in the management of contractors, features that nearly all iPad apps for visitor management do not have because they do not have a contractor module.
If you need to manage evacuations, contractors, inductions or anything else more than just visitors then you may find an iPad app visitor management solution falls short of your companies expectations.
If you need to track visitors only you will find many apps online or at the App Store, if you need to manage anything else you should book in a demonstration to explore additional functionality
Read how Darwin international Airport are using WhosOnLocation Visitor Management Software