For many event organisers, having a good access control system mainly means being able to do three things:
1- manage effectively and efficiently who comes in and goes out of venues, rooms and sessions, avoiding queues and saving time and energy — including that of the staff — with the added benefit of data updated in real time;
2- keep in view at all times the data essential to managing spaces properly, avoiding both overcrowding and empty rooms;
3- monitor attendance and how long people stay in each space, in order to arrange, for example, sponsors’ appointment diaries in the exhibition area or to award credits and certificates for courses that require attendance.
But limiting access control to these functions means underestimating much of what it can actually do. A modern event access control system does not only guarantee speed, security, convenience and, in many cases, economy — it offers a set of advantages that can improve operational efficiency, optimise the attendee experience and increase the overall value for investors and sponsors.
How?
1. Smooth flow is not only an end, it is also a means
No queues, time saved, people able to act for themselves: these are not only things that make the machine driving an event more efficient, they bear directly on the attendee experience and make it more enjoyable. Building a more dynamic, more participatory, more proactive system on the back of them therefore means investing directly in a key element of any event’s success: attendee satisfaction. And the time each person is freed from queuing and waiting can be filled with activities of higher value, both to them personally and to the event as a whole, widening the benefits and the value of the results still further.
2. Security is not a badge
With privacy too, shifting the focus from the obligation to comply with rules to the potential it offers in terms of branding, trust and relationships essentially turns a constraint into an opportunity.
People are by now very attentive to the privacy of their data and their behaviour, especially when protecting it is the responsibility of a third party such as an event organiser. An event where respecting privacy is not merely a set of constraints turns compliance — an obligation in any case, not an option — into a way of building a positive climate across the whole event, where trust prevails: trust that leads to openness, encourages sharing and participation, promotes exchange and therefore, in return, enriches the experience for everyone living it. And we all know that has direct consequences for an event’s success, don’t we?
3. Longer, deeper relationships
The added value an access control system can produce for an event is not limited to the organisers: it extends to many others. Speakers, for instance, can calibrate what they do partly on the basis of attendance figures in the room. Sponsors get not only the convenience of appointments arranged in an orderly way and updated in real time, but the ability to build longer and deeper relationships. Just think of the chance for each of them to prepare for a meeting from the moment it is booked, by sending information in advance, or to follow it with a genuinely personalised and therefore more effective follow-up.
So by changing perspective on even just these three things, the potential contribution an access control system can make to an event’s performance widens considerably. From a tool serving the efficient management of one limited stage of the process — entries, exits, attendance, absence — it becomes a pillar supporting the basic and genuinely indispensable element of any event: the relationship between people.
Bear that in mind when you choose your next access control system, or put the one you already have to the test: it may give you results you had not yet thought of.