Okay. Welcome back to another conversation here on AMAG Asks. Today, I am joined with a good friend, product manager of our hosted solutions, mister Matt Nakatosh. Matt, thank you for joining. Thanks for having me, Kyle. So this conversation's fun because I've I've been selling access control for as long as I've been in the industry, and I've been walking into really secure facilities on a regular basis to go help folks design robust security platforms. And as I've done that, for the majority of my career, I've signed in on a paper log with an administrator or a, you know, a front desk attendant or an operator. And it shame on me. But really until, having the opportunity to to work at an organization that actually manufacturers, you know, and develops not only access control, but visitor management, software, as well as a host of others, services and and solutions. Did I really come to recognize how much of a, of a concern that is. Right? Like, just in general, visitor management has not has not received the, frankly, the love, that it that it deserves. And I think only now the conversation only recently is really starting to to take off. So I guess just, I know that that's a weird lead in, but we're still kind of very much in the paper log infancy of visitor management, although there are so many better ways for us to to to handle, a very critical element of security. Yeah. Absolutely, Kyle. So I've been in AMEG now for about eight years. And when I first got hired, we were just getting ready to release our visitor management product guest, and talking about the move from paper logs there and now seven plus years later, we're still talking about that. We're still not fully there. There has been a lot more adoption. It is constantly growing and growing, but we're still there's a lot of people using a paper log book, and it's a scary concept because visitors, they're the really unknown coming into an organization. You know your employees. You've done background checks on them already. You vetted them. Visitors, we don't know. And when you have just a paper log book, you don't necessarily know who's coming. It could be a big deal. It could be just somebody off the street. You know, they're not it's all untreated as unsolicited visits because we just don't have that heads up of, hey. This person's coming to town today. So it really is a is a hindrance, and it's something we definitely need to, improve on. This is, just just a question for you. I'd love your opinion on just sometimes take some time for things to to to start to gain traction, but why has it taken so long? We we've been so as an industry, we've been so, you know, prone to digitization and other elements whether it's whether it's, you know, mobile app or whether it's your your your video moving from analog to digital. But but yet we still this critical part of our, of our security environment remains manual and, and and inherently risky. Why do you think it's taken so long for for that to be adopted? I think it boils down to really two things. I mean, one, we have to keep in mind the pandemic. That did slow things down for period of time and build this word being heavily used. And now in some some senses, it's helping us escalate that because now in many ways, when you talk about a hybrid work environment, employees are are now kind of visitors as well because they're not in the office every single day. But in general, it is also about prioritization. You know, there there has been a lot of moves, a lot of, technology grows and it grows the systems. Visitor management has been one that's just kind of lacked and kind of fallen by the waistline, I think, a little bit, we're just hasn't gotten the priority from organizations over other things like raters with OSTP and such. Right. And now is it the pendulum swings back a little bit and you have these hybrid work environments and and you maybe don't have the same level of staffing, all of a sudden the need for, you know, a digital and automated visitor management process seems to be be something that's a conversation that we're having quite a bit lately. So let's let's move from sort of where we were with visitor management, very much still are in many cases, to sort of where we're at now and where it's going. Right? So so let's say in an ideal world, you're off a paper log. Right? Current state is what? What's sort of the next level of progression there? So yeah. So we've gone we you know, we've gone digital. Now we're even go making sure we're going digital and even talking about moving to the cloud, getting something off premise and and being able to be universal. Let's take that responsibility off the organization. Now it's a matter of how more can we customize it. So now we're looking for, you know, uniquely being able to customize systems for not only the organization, but maybe that building. You know, each state might have some different, regulation or different ways you need to handle stuff. Each building might have different purposes. One might be a headquarters where you have visitor all the time. One might be a small satellite office where for the most part, no one's ever gonna come to to visit that building. It's just the workers coming in to do their daily jobs. So how do we critique the system or customize systems to make it fit those individual needs? Then it's also now about moving it towards how do we integrate this with our other systems? How do we get analytics from it? How do we integrate it with our access control system so that we can get away from just handing a visitor a preconfigured badge with certain amounts of access onto it and get that person the access that they need. Again, the con bringing in these cons with the least privileges, only give a person what they actually need to get the job there done and over the risk to the organization as a whole. That seems like such a natural fit between access control and visitor management because you could probably say that visitor management falls within a broader umbrella of access control. It's a part of access control. And just from an overall theme perspective, now it's just how do you marry the system's skill. Yeah. Absolutely. So then okay. So that's that's where we are and that's what a lot of people are currently, working through. As you sort of look out because you're living it. Right? Product manager hosted solutions. Guest is one of our hosted solutions, but this doesn't just apply to guest. This applies to many other visitor management, platforms. What do you see sort of the future of visitor management looking like? So, I mean, future, I think we're gonna go more and more automated. Everybody's under cost pressures, you know, do more with less. And the only way you can do more with less is automate. Simply that we we can meet up at the end. So, Richard, you're talking about bringing in, again, kiosk and stuff, maybe help either, supplement the receptionist so you don't have to have as many at the lobby or replace them altogether. And with that idea, you're still gonna need to be able to provision credentials and stuff like that. So we're seeing, you know, the move to mobile, whether Bluetooth or wild credentials, especially coming through where a person can now just get the, credential sent to their phone, and they're good to go. They're able to access. You don't have to hand the physical credentials. You don't have to worry about getting one back. You don't have to worry about that being handed off to somebody else. Much more secure, direct, and convenient side. So you're gonna marry that concept of, you know, customer service and customer convenience, user experience with, you know, higher security as well, really getting the best of everything. Last last question for you as we sort of wrap up and be interested in your your thoughts here. If I'm a security director at an institution and I wanna take the the first step in understanding how to sort of move off a manual process? You know, what what what are some things for me to be considering as I take that first step? You have to really understand what your what your needs are, what types of visitors you're gonna see, if there is you know, if you're just seeing general vendors or or you have, coming for interviews. What are the different scenarios? What are the different workflows they might need to, go through? Kind of break down your processes and see the unique characteristics of all these different scenarios, and then we can look into systems that can meet all those. Well, Matt, I appreciate the time today. I think this is fascinating, and, shame on me for taking me, all the way to be on the manufacturer side of the equation to actually, have these conversations on a regular basis. So I appreciate you, I appreciate you you educating me today, and, thanks for joining. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
