Smoother, more secure business visits: ClearID

It’s five minutes to ten. A man rushes through the door of a busy corporate building. 

“Hello there, I’m Matt, here to see Jordan for our ten o’clock meeting.” 

“Hi, Matt, just bear with me for a moment, we’ve been swamped this morning,” the receptionist says, before pointing to the logbook on the front desk.

“Your personal information goes at the top and the reason for your visit down below. I’ll go get your visitor badge printed out in just a minute and then let Jordan know you’re here.” 

By the time Matt made it to Jordan’s office, it was already 15 minutes past. He apologized for being late, using the time he spent waiting at the front desk as his excuse.

“Yeah, I know,” Jordan says. “It’d be great if people could just check themselves in when visiting us. Scan their ID to create a badge and send us a reminder to pick them up.”

Beyond wishful thinking

Jordan’s wishful thinking is essentially the idea behind Genetec ClearID™ and its self-service kiosk. 

Of course, just like Matt and the receptionist, she is a made-up character but the issue in question — paper-based visitor registration — is very real.

“Real and likely to cause poor experiences for everyone” Jonathan Doyon, Genetec Product Group Director for Genetec ClearID™, says. 

“And it’s not just about long waiting times and overworked receptionists. Manually checking-in your visitors is a process prone to error and imposture, both of which don’t sit well with regulators going through your records. 

“A big part of what ClearID does is it streamlines this flow of people so that any organization, be it a corporate office or a highly regulated multinational, can maximize its efficiency, heighten security and make the most of their time,” Mr. Doyon explains. 

How does ID scanning fit into this picture? 

“The idea with ID scanning is that we’re taking away three major barriers standing in the way of efficient visitor management: manual check-in, identity verification and privacy concerns.” Mr. Doyon continues. 

The first is an obvious one. Having an ID scanner in place means visitors can seamlessly check themselves in without having to fill anything out by hand. They no longer have to line up and wait in the lobby or run late for their meetings.

Naturally, checking in this way improves the overall visitor experience, which 40% of people feel is a deciding factor in doing business with a company. (1)

Next comes making sure that the people coming through your door are actually who they claim to be.  

“When it comes to QR codes or email addresses,” Mr. Doyon explains, “there’s not much you can do if someone decides to impersonate the real visitor. Having to scan a government-issued ID, on the other hand, leaves very little room for deception.”

It also leaves less room for data entry errors, which are commonplace in handwritten logbooks. Which, to make matters worse, attract the prying eyes of 70% of Americans who have admitted to taking a look at other people’s personal information on them. (2)

By moving away from such registries then, companies can keep databases clean — and themselves in compliance.

Settling on BlinkID 

Mr. Doyon and his team had looked at a number of solutions but say BlinkID was the only one to check all of the boxes. Above all, it was its “privacy-first approach” that motivated them to reach out.

“It is unique in that it never sends any of the extracted information to a third party server,’’ he says. 

“Some solutions out there will take the actual image of a document and send it to a cloud for an analysis, which is not the case with BlinkID. The processing itself is done locally, on the device, which is part of the reason we chose it in the first place.” 

Regarding integration, Mr. Doyon singled out constant feedback and support from Microblink as the main reason for things going smoothly: “The integration went fast and it was amazing that it all happened without having to meet in person. 

“There was constant feedback and support from Microblink. And the ability to quickly issue licenses our iOS team could use to test the iPad app was also really helpful.”

What does the future hold?

Not so long ago, a self check-in tablet in the lobby was merely a nice-to-have and a visitor management system was by no stretch a necessity. 

Today, 93% of global organizations believe managing visitors this way creates a safer environment and is a crucial part of their compliance and security efforts. (3)

‘’As businesses start to reopen, self check-in tablets are likely to take on a whole new role in safety, especially when there’s a large volume of visitors coming in and out of the building,’’ Mr. Doyon comments. 

‘’They offer organizations a chance to keep up with heavy footfall all while better maintaining the safety of all people within an establishment. That’s why we believe they stand a chance of becoming the new norm in high-traffic workplaces. 

“In the meantime, we’re doing what we can to make ClearID even better. We’re currently upgrading to the newest version of BlinkID which uses AI to automatically recognize any ID document in the world.”

The only question then will be: what’s Matt going to do with those four extra minutes?