When they founded Steelhead Composites in 2014, the company’s leaders made it a point to incorporate technology into every part of the business.
The company is nearly paperless. Employees work on tablets. Data collected throughout daily operations drives business decisions.
Steelhead Composites is an advanced manufacturing and engineering firm in Golden, Colo., producing high-pressure composite storage cylinders for things like hydrogen and oxygen gases.
Technology helped to build the company at every turn; except for one area: the front desk.
“Everywhere else in our organization, we use technology to the best of our advantage,” said Curt Honcharik, Quality Manager. “We’re technology advanced as a company, and other companies were coming in to see our work, and we were making them sign a piece of paper to check in.”
The need for better record-keeping
According to Honcharik, Steelhead’s previous visitor check-in experience began with a clipboard with printed pieces of paper on it. A guest would sign in with their name, the date, who they were there to see, and their country of origin. Once a sheet got filled, the receptionist would file it away in a drawer somewhere.
However, as Steelhead’s business grew, so did the need for better record-keeping surrounding the visitor check-in process.
“We are able to access all of our data digitally in seconds, and we couldn’t do that with people coming into our facility,” he said. “We couldn’t look up who visited 6 months ago, and the more work we got into with the government, it became apparent that we need to pull records digitally rather than opening up a desk drawer and flipping through sheets of paper to see who was in our building at a certain time.”
So the Steelhead team decided to modernize the company’s visitor management process.
“We wanted to find what other companies in our space were using,” he said. “We eliminated a lot right away because the functionality was too simple, and we eliminated others right away because the cost didn’t align between what it cost and what you were getting.
“With The Receptionist, we got the best features at the best price point. No one else was comparable. We came across one company that would have cost us more than our inventory management system for just a few more nice-to-have features. With The Receptionist, we got the most features at a reasonable price.”
An easier, more reliable, and paperless solution
Now, when guests enter Steelhead Composites’ facility, they sign in using The Receptionist for iPad software. During sign-in, the app presents safety features for review, such as the need to wear glasses and the locations of fire escapes.
Once check-in is complete, the complete visitor data is immediately saved in the cloud-based Visit Log, the appropriate employee is notified of their guest’s arrival, and a badge is printed off for the visitor to wear during their time in the facility.
Employees also check in each day using the employee check-in button, and in case of an emergency, Honcharik says it’s nice knowing he can access the emergency evacuation list within 10 seconds.
“The transition from paper to The Receptionist was a no brainer,” Honcharik said. “The Receptionist made the initial setup so easy — it probably took a couple hours to customize it, but we were up and running that same day.
The bottom line is you are probably not going to find a better value out there … we would recommend The Receptionist hands down over any other software we reviewed.”
Do you want to see how The Receptionist can help your organization? Sign up for a Sneak Peek webinar, or, start your free 14-day trial today.
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