Selecting a Visitor Management Software Tool
Schools are inundated with technology options, which can make selecting solutions that have a positive impact a difficult process. The challenges often begin at the front door of a school building when trying to find tools that will improve security measures by efficiently and effectively screening visitors and volunteers. Schools can have a hard time understanding what will be the best fit. That’s why we’ve put together some considerations and ideal features that would help your school and office staff find the right visitor management software tool to assist with their daily responsibilities.
Data Management
A top concern to look into is how data gets managed and handled after visitor information is collected. If a service does not provide a disclaimer accrediting all ownership of the collected data to the school itself, it may be leaving a door open to potentially selling that data to third-party companies. This allows the visitor and volunteer company to benefit from the sale of personal data collected during the check-in process. While most services only collect data that would otherwise be publicly available, it is still a violation of trust to sell data that should only be available to the school and its associated district. Personal data can be a powerful asset and should be protected against these types of actions.
Using a Single Vendor
Schools also benefit from having a one-stop shop for all their visitor and volunteer needs. A company that offers a service for visitor and volunteer screening, as well as an application for emergency notification and management, would allow the two pieces of software to seamlessly communicate back and forth to offer a well-rounded visitor management software package to your school facility. An added benefit would be only needing to communicate with one vendor for two pieces of software.
False Positives
Another important aspect to consider is how the visitor management software helps to eliminate false positives. What are false positives? These can be potential matches to databases that each visitor is screened against. Nothing interrupts a school day quite like a panic situation that was triggered by a false match related to a visitor. A service should provide a way to reduce these false positives to help eliminate wasted time and unnecessary stress on office staff to make manual comparisons to potential threats.
Customer Service
Last but not least, look into customer service. If a service is not willing to support you, it may not be a healthy vendor relationship to continue. Visitor management software packages should help ease the daily responsibilities of schools, not add more stress or become a burden to use and/or implement. Contact the service provider to gain first-hand experience with how the software will be implemented and used at your school before making your final decision. How responsive is the service provider and how do they plan on supporting your school going forward? Are they willing to add additional features to help better support your school?
How Visitor Aware Can Help
Visitor Aware from Singlewire Software provides visitor and volunteer management services. Singlewire will never sell any personal data that is collected by your school facility to any third-party companies for any reason. All data that gets collected is owned by that associated school and/or school district. Visitor Aware also provides applications for visitor screening kiosks and an online administration dashboard. Visitor Aware also utilizes facial recognition comparisons between the visitors/volunteers and those individuals listed on the National Sex Offender Registry as well as national and international watch lists to eliminate false positives. Implementing these comparisons eliminates manual comparisons that would otherwise be the responsibility of office staff to determine.
Our Goals for Visitor Management Software
Visitor Aware provides a one-stop-shop for visitor and volunteer services for school facilities. The team behind Visitor Aware never shies away from providing additional features that will help to further support school facilities and office staff. The daily ebb and flow of the school office environment can be chaotic and their software will reduce some of that chaos through beneficial features both that are currently offered and those yet to be implemented through collaborative efforts with your school. Furthermore, Visitor Aware is compatible with Singlewire’s InformaCast software to offer schools emergency notification and incident management that expand their ability to communicate important information and enhance safety.
To learn more about Visitor Aware, don’t hesitate to reach out to our sales team with any questions or concerns on how they can help support your school’s visitor and volunteer management goals.