Time to Ditch the Paper Sign-In Sheet
Despite this being a time when we consume most of our entertainment online with music and television streaming services, and we do most of our paying of bills and communicating with others online, there are still some very important day to day things that we rely on paper-based system for.
Think of what the lobby of your office looks like, or most any office or place of business that you’ve been in looks like. There are probably a few chairs and magazines, maybe some paintings or a list of services on the wall; and then there is a paper guestbook on a desk. You scribble your name unintelligibly and write down a date and time that might be close to the actual date and time and then go about your business.
With everything being digital nowadays, is managing who is coming in and out of your place of business with a paper notebook really the best and most efficient way of doing this? The short answer is not even close. In the best of scenarios, nothing bad ever happens and you don’t ever have to retrieve this hard to locate, unformed information of who came and who went. Worst case scenario something happens to your paper book and then you need the information!
Case in point. In August of 2017 hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast. The flooding was massive, and many people lost their homes and many businesses were severely damaged. Part of this damage was paper records. In one instance that I’m personally familiar with, a paper log book was destroyed/lost in the flood and having access to that information could have assisted law enforcement with solving a criminal case. But it was lost forever, and the information couldn’t be retrieved.
This is just one example where moving a seemingly simple, but important, paper-based system into the cloud would have had a huge impact.
But let’s take a moment and look at some other scenarios that could happen in your business.
What if a service technician comes in to service some audio-visual equipment and decides to just walk out with a television? There’s plenty of times when you see a technician remove something and take it with them for repair. Maybe they wrote down legit information in the sign in book and maybe (probably) they didn’t. But if you require them to snap a picture of their drivers license then this situation is less likely to happen. In a lot of cases we are simply relying on people generally being good and doing what’s right rather than putting in a few simple steps to make sure we have the right information at our fingertips when they aren’t good.
Another, less nefarious example would be if you are the owner of an independent nail salon or beauty shop. In most cases there is just a paper sheet to mark what time someone arrives and to see who is next in line. But wouldn’t it be great to be able to add some notes to your customers? For example, you could quickly add what services they usually get performed so a new employee already has insight into what they want done the moment they sign in. Or you can see who your more frequent customers are and be able to market to ones that haven’t been there in a while.
There are many other great reasons to move your paper sign in book to the cloud. It’s not just about security, which is important, but also about gaining insight into your clients and leveraging that data.
Check out Visit-Trac to learn more about how you can ditch that paper sign in sheet for good!