Envoy : Solving visitor management problems

First impression is the last impression, an old saying which still holds true most of the times. If you are reading this, there is a high chance that you visited at least a couple of companies in last week for an in person meeting. How did it go ? I am not asking you about the meeting but the process to reach the person with whom you had your meeting.

Let me break it for you:

1. You enter a busy premise and stand in the queue to make an entry in a register that no one ever reads, or if the company has embraced digital world — you will find the guard typing in your details with one finger, struggling to find the other letter on the keyboard. Then you stare into a 2MP Logitech Camera which needs to be adjusted multiple times to get you in the frame. Depending on the network congestion and your luck on that particular day, you may or may not get the OTP. You have easily lost 5 to 10 minutes of your time by now
2. You walk a few steps and enter the reception. In all probability you will have write down all those details once more because there is a strong chance that your name and the company that you represent would’ve changed in those 10 minutes
3. Once you have re entered your details, you get an amazing ‘visitor’ badge that should be displayed all the time, make sure you also enter the # written on the visitor badge in the register.
4. ‘’Do you have any laptops or pen drives’’ — I dread this question the most because this would mean I will have to take open a few zips to take out my laptop, turn it upside down and read out those alphanumeric figures. I use a hack to write any random number and it works 90% of the time (that’s way more than passing marks)
5. Someone at the reception will call your host, this person may or may not be present at his seat (mobility after all)
6. If you are meeting this person for the first time and if it’s a busy reception, your host will have to call out your name to make sure he/she is meeting the right person.
7. Finally you enter the meeting and you are discussing about how to make this planet a better place but you have to constantly remind yourself to get your visitor pass signed off by this person because they would want to verify if you actually had a meeting with you host or you just dropped by to have a cup of coffee.
8. You better not forget to enter the ‘’Out time’’ because all this data is being analysed by operations team to understand meeting metrics of an organization

We have all accepted this process to be normal but surprisingly it would be much better if this could be reengineered, it would save everyone’s time and ultimately can also result into reduction of manual work and personnel.

There is one amazing SaaS company that actually feels our pain and is trying to make a difference to the above process. I have personally experienced this software when I recently visited a company, I was more than delighted by the ease of usage of this software.

The new process is something like this

1. You approach the reception, you see nothing but a sleek iPAD at the desk which is a customized screen that has a logo of the company that you are visiting and a self explanatory screen to fill in your details. The app also prompts you to click your picture through the front camera, also known as ‘selfie’ by some cool people. It generally takes less than 30 seconds unless you exit the app and start playing some game
2. You sign an undertaking on the iPAD which means that you abide by the security norms of the organization, you also get this on your email for future reference
3. It also prints an adhesive badge that you can peel it off easily when you are done with the meeting. No more investing in physical visitor cards which can also be taken away by visitors by mistake and can be misused by someone else later on.
4. Your host has received the message on his mobile and is aware about your presence irrespective of the fact whether he/she is at his/her desk or not. Your host also gets the picture that you clicked, hence they know exactly how you look if you are meeting them for the first time.

I am sure a lot of people would’ve thought about solving this trivial issue but wouldn’t have seen the market size for this, it’s just amazing that a simple product like this can be so effective and effortless at the same time.

Just watch this video to know more about what Envoy does.