The Contactless Age: How to Adapt

Technological Changes due to Covid

 It comes as no surprise that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot in the current economy and society. It was expected that the pandemic would have lasting impacts on the traditional businesses in the post-pandemic era, and nothing less is true.

 The pandemic caused a lot of changes for organizations, ushering the world towards a new chapter: ‘the contactless age’. Because of ‘social distancing’, everyone was forced to keep distance and avoid contact as much as possible. This has had a major impact on many industries, regarding the fact that a lot of industries are service orientated with a lot of contact.

 There is a belief that ‘pre-COVID-19 normal’ will never return because many organizations implemented contactless services during the pandemic. On top of that, research from Lee and Lee (2020) has shown that it has become the preferred service module by an increasing number of customers during the pandemic.

Avoiding Direct Contact

As previously stated, due to the pandemic, ‘social distancing’ became the new normal. This was necessary to prevent the virus from spreading. Changes had to be made to keep both customers and staff safe. Therefore, contactless services became the new norm. This is a method of service delivery that involves indirect interactions between people, instead of the traditional methods that involve direct person-to-person interactions (Lee and Lee, 2020).

In many service-related markets, where direct contact is most of the time an important aspect, this new trend wasn’t always realistic. Some markets need direct contact to provide the service. But, whenever it was possible, contactless services were introduced. Many organizations had to implement multiple innovations for contactless services (Lee and Lee, 2020).

Less contact means less staff on premise. Only the people who are required had to be on premise. This way identification became more important. But the process of making credentials is usually contact requiring. Think about gathering information, taking photos, picking up the physical cards. And besides that, a lot of companies have many employees to manage. But there is a way to manage the enrollment process with a minimum amount of contact. CardExchange® Cloud Suite helps managing credentials in a more efficient way, with less direct contact. The software allows the end-users (staff) to upload their personal information themselves, which means less direct contact.

Avoiding Big Groups

‘Social distancing’ also means that only a limited amount of or specific people are allowed in particular places, to make sure not too many people are in the same space (unnecessary). Therefore, identification is necessary. This can be done by both physical and digital IDs.

Now what about organizations that have a lot of employees? The pandemic made the importance of organizing these employees even more essential. However, direct contact was avoided as much as possible. So, creating these ID cards became more of a struggle.

To meet these needs, we as an organization developed the possibility for a hybrid solution. This solution offers both physical and digital IDs. With a possibility of a hybrid solution, an organization can meet their needs for contactless services.

This hybrid solution improves contactless services. With a digital ID, no contact is needed anymore: employees can just show their digital ID instead of giving others a physical ID. This hybrid solution is offered by CardExchange® Stand.

The Stand allows end-users to upload their personal information and photos. This means it is no longer necessary for them to be on premise. This way, unnecessary gatherings will be prevented and an organization achieves contactless services.

Registration Became More Important

Due to the pandemic, it has also become more important for visitors to have the ability to identify themselves. It is also important for visitors to check in and out to monitor the number of visitors because of the regulated maximum. In case of exposure, visitors could be contacted if they had been in contact with an infected person.

Large organizations usually deal with a higher number of visitors. This can make it harder to manage all the visitors and avoid direct contact as much as possible at the same time. However, there is a more efficient way to keep track of your visitors. CardExchange® Visitor Management makes it easy to authorize, manage, and track visitors. Visitors will be managed automatically, reducing in-person contact.

The KIOSK Application offers a method for simplifying the visitor check-in process. This touch screen allows the visitors to check themselves in, which makes it a contactless service. On top of that, the software has a functionality to print reports. These reports show all the visitors in a specific time block as well as its information. This way visitors can be notified quickly in case of an infection.

Offering A Solution

CardExchange® recognizes the struggles organizations have faced since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, CardExchange® is constantly improving its solutions to fit the need of our customers. Meet CardExchange® Cloud Suite: an ID Card and Credential Management Tool that helps simplify the enrollment process for complex databases. The software allows organizations to enroll, manage and issue their credentials in an efficient way, with most importantly: less direct contact.

CardExchange® Stand allows the staff to upload their own photo and add their personal information, which makes it no longer necessary for them to be on premise. The Stand is a self-service portal for the end-users to upload a photo, manage and report card status, and access their digital ID.

To have a digital ID is an added benefit. Now that contactless services are becoming the norm, digital IDs are becoming more a priority over physical IDs. You can use CardExchange® Stand on multiple devices such as your phone, tablet, or computer. This way, staying contactless is easier than ever.

 The CardExchange® Visitor Management software takes managing visitors to a whole new level. Automate the process of visitors and minimize contact simultaneously. Authorize, manage, and track visitors with ease.

Conclusion

The pandemic changed a lot in our current society and economy. It asked for a lot of flexibility from organizations: they needed to adapt to the new ‘contactless age’. With the virus, social distancing, and a minimum amount of contact, organizations had to come up with countermeasures.

Due the pandemic, multiple struggles came up for many organizations. First, direct contact had to be avoided as much as possible. This meant the less employees on premise the better. Only necessary employees were allowed. This made the importance of credential management clear. However, creating ID cards is mostly contact intensive, which made it more of struggle.

Besides monitoring employees, monitoring visitors became more important too. For managing these visitors, direct contact is mostly needed. But in times of the pandemic, this had to be avoided. Therefore, figuring out how to monitor all visitors while maintaining distancing regulations became another noticeable struggle.

But there is a solution to overcome these struggles: CardExchange® Visitor Management software. The software allows organizations to enroll, manage and issue their credentials in an efficient way, with less direct contact.

Now, at the end of the pandemic (hopefully), there is a belief that the ‘pre-COVID-19 normal’ will never return, because of the fact organizations already implemented new measures. Besides that, the ‘contactless services’ have become the new normal. It has become the new preferred service type by the customers.

CardExchange® recognizes these struggles and presents a complete cloud-based solution to help solve them: CardExchange® Cloud Suite. Hosted on the trusted Microsoft® Azure™ platform, this solution consists of six powerful service-based products that enables all institutions to manage and streamline the entire ID management process from start to finish.

Learn more here or contact us for more information!