Visitor Management Surges As Companies Look To Safely Reopen Post-COVID

Anyone who thinks they’ve seen it all in the pandemic-driven digital economy can add one more new category. Add “lobby and visitor management” to the list of tech industries that have seen a spike in demand as companies contend with an ever-changing list of COVID-19-era requirements needed to safely and swiftly move people and packages in and out of their businesses.

According to the CEO of Toronto-based software firm iLobby, what started out as efforts to simply stay open have recently turned into planning to reopen.

“Before [COVID], the iLobby solution was good-to-have. Today it’s a must-have, because everybody needs to have a way to track people who are coming in and out and to keep their employees safe,” iLobby CEO Ariel Mashiyev said in a recent chat with PYMNTS. “So we’re seeing a major uptick in business now.”

Although remote work is not possible for things like industrial or manufacturing businesses, the whole work from home (WFH) phenomenon is still very much in place at countless offices that were once bustling with activity and now sit largely empty.

“I would say [COVID] is actually helping our business because many of these companies that are now doing the work-from-home hybrid model are all looking to figure out how to get back to the office,” Mashiyev said. “They’re looking to figure out when, and how they can safely do so.”

Moving Target

Clearly, things have changed a lot in terms of workplace rules and best practices since the early lockdown days last March, and the task of keeping up with it all — especially for large companies with multiple dispersed locations to manage — can be quite formidable.

“So what our customers are asking from us today as we reopen is, ‘Hold on a second. Are we being compliant with government regulations? Are we making sure our employees are safe?’ ” he said.

To address this moving compliance target, or evolving set of standards, Mashiyev said iLobby has rolled out four new features in the past seven months, including FeverCheck, Touchless Sign-in, FaceMatch and adding things like COVID questionnaires to the workforce management sign-in process.

“All of that was done to help our customers stay open and to be able to pay their employees, and also to serve their own customers,” he said.

Goodbye Caveman

Think about major multinational companies, government organizations, airports and banks and the way employees, guests, mail, FedEx, UPS or anyone is allowed to come on the premises, Mashiyev said, and it’s evident that a lot of businesses are still signing people in by paper and pen and using what he calls “the caveman solution.”

“What we’re doing is automating that entire process. We’re allowing them to ask questions, like COVID questionnaires today, ‘Do you have any symptoms?’ We’re allowing them to ask specific questions for their compliance audit needs,” he said, noting iLobby has relationships with one-fifth of the Fortune 500.

Add in additional features such as backdated and searchable stored image data, or keeping non-disclosure agreements or other types of site-specific waivers up to date, and it’s easy to see why the visitor management software industry is estimated to be worth nearly $9 billion a year.

Beyond The Front Door

“If you go back three years when we’re selling this product, customers were asking us, ‘Wait, what’s wrong with paper and pen?’ Why do I need to have an automated system?’” Mashiyev recalled.  “That’s not the question anymore. The question they’re asking us today is, ‘What else can you automate for us?’”

He uses the example of a fire drill or other on-site emergency that might require 1,500-plus employees to leave the building and then need to be processed to go back inside, a procedure he likens to military-grade ‘advanced mustering’ tactics. Mashiyev said iLobby has been able to automate that process, taking it down from two hours to 30 minutes.

“When you think about iLobby, the visitor management solution got us in the front door, but we’re going way beyond that as a company now.”

That opportunity also explains why Insight Partners just put over $100 million into iLobby, and the 6 million entry points that it currently manages in the U.S. alone.

“I think [Insight’s investment] speaks about their confidence in us, and our ability to be a big factor when we speak about [returning to] the new normal,” Mashiyev said. “We plan on accelerating our position even quicker and making sure that we’re bringing our customers the most innovative solutions as they think about how they’re going to operate within this new normal.”