Dubai has been witnessing a steady drop in crime rates, making it one of the safest cities in the world. The occurrences are low enough to give a feeling of security. Thefts, burglary, break-ins are not a daily affair in Dubai. The Emirate’s strict laws of the land, well trained and well equipped police force, threat of deportation act as excellent deterrent for crimes. Perhaps, that has led to gated communities in Dubai to rely on traditional methods. They are still maintaining visitor ledgers or Excel sheets, instead of switching over to a transparent, modern, accessible digitized visitor management system. However, the traditional method has glaring security faults. Danger being unpredictable, it is always wise to be safe than sorry.
Manual record keeping has several downsides. It may seem like a good idea during the initial days when an apartment community is just starting to settle down. Setting up a wholly manual record keeping system barely costs anything. Thus, it is the preferred choice among community managers and owners association to keep a track of who or what or when someone has access to the apartment complexes. Nevertheless, as apartments start filling up and townships start witnessing more flow of people through the gates, it requires more than a long ledger and Excel sheets to manage gates smoothly.
The Problem Of Too Many
There is more to visitors’ registers than buying and filling them up. Ledgers have to be maintained and stored. They are after all security documents and might be necessary at any time. So the obvious question arises. Where are these ledgers going to be kept, after they are filled up? In cabinets and cupboards, of course. However, ledgers fill up fast. The bigger the apartment complex, the quicker it fills. Naturally, more and more registers are needed. Soon, storing them becomes an issue. Ledgers need a lot of space and space is never easily available. After a point of time, keeping ledgers become impractical majorly due to storage issue.
One can argue, registers are being replaced with Excel sheets thereby digitalizing and cutting down the problem of storing them and misusing space. While Excel sheets are a step forward, it also fails to solve a number of issues. The most important being inability to be quick. Manually entering names and purpose of visit in the Excel sheets is not as easy as it sounds. It often creates queues and hectic visitor management system. It fails to resolve the problem of listing daily visitors, avoiding a repeated entry everyday. The format of the Excel sheet, in the long run, gets unwieldy to tackle, defeating the entire purpose of doing away with ledgers.
Apps like the ADDA Gatekeeper makes gate security paperless. Just a smartphone or a tablet or a PC is enough to ensure meticulous tracking of all visitors, staff and delivery personnel, while not producing clutter.
Visitor Registers Need A Fort
Both ledgers and Excel sheets have another basic drawback. This snag has potential to turn into a disaster. Records kept in ledgers and Excel sheets can be easily damaged, misplaced or compromised. At first glance, this does not appear to be a big deal. However, this is a major security breach. Encouraging or ignoring this possibility puts the apartment community members at risk. One never knows when these records might be needed in the event of a mishap. While discussing this point, may we mention, it is laborious to organise and categorise ledgers and sheets properly. As a result, it gets difficult to retrieve them when needed.
Ledgers and Excel sheets are not immutable. They can easily be changed on purpose or accidentally. Security apps to manage gates, visitor management are more compact and safe for a city like Dubai. Designed by teams of dedicated engineers, security apps like ADDA Gatekeeper, are designed to provide safety with practically zero hassle. Information is stored such that their integrity is protected. They are not shared with anybody and everybody. During times of necessity, information can be easily procured from the database without annoyance and irritation. Since the app has been designed by experts in their field, data entry, data collection are not time consuming. They are concise and quick.
Visitor Management System
Managing visitors is crucial. Now that we are busy and our schedules have a degree of unpredictability, it helps to inform about expected visitors. A verbal intimation to the guards at the gates is not enough. It is presumptuous to expect they will remember amidst so many duties. The ADDA Gatekeeper app helps to notify the guards of any visitor the residents are expecting. They can always call to confirm visitors’ entry based on phone numbers set by residents on the app. They can also keep a tab on regular visitors like household and complex staff, nannies, delivery persons who might be visiting the apartment daily.
We are a generation who shops online and depend online for a lot of our needs and desires. Therefore, we receive parcels often. Sometimes, these parcels are scheduled to be delivered during hours when no one is available to receive them in person. ADDA Gatekeeper helps to inform the gate personnel of any parcel that is expected and they can simply keep it with themselves till one can collect it at their convenience.
The Ghost of Multiplying Expenditure
Ledgers and Excel sheets might seem low cost initially. However, their cumulative expense in the long run is high, considering they are majorly flawed. Ledgers and Excel sheets do not help to monitor visitors in real time. Gatekeeper does. It can track if delivery persons, cab drivers, staff members are overstaying or not. It also helps to check pilferaging and might even help to stop petty thefts by issuing gift passes to individuals who walk out with possessions from the apartment. With manual methods, the efficiency depends a lot on the human factor. It is not easy-breezy to trick an app. It takes care of loopholes, can be modified to requirements and helps deliver the kind of security a gated community with state of the art features deserve.
Security is an immense duty. It cannot be left entirely to the judgement of humans prone to fallacies. It demands the extra edge of precision which nothing other than technology can provide. Gatekeeper was not built with the objective to replace humans; it was envisioned with the motivation to empower the security personnel who have taken upon their shoulders to protect the common people on a daily basis.
Also, read Gated Communities – The Future of Affordable Housing.
