Background
The Royal Household provides a full range of services to Her Majesty The Queen, enabling her to serve the nation and its people.
With approximately 1,200 staff covering a wide variety of professions over many locations, security is a constant and highly important consideration.
Like every other modern business, the Royal Household receives many thousands of visitors, contractors and suppliers.
The difference being that every one of them needs to pass through admission and security procedures before being allowed access to the Royal Palaces.
In 2009, the Royal Household made the decision to improve their visitor management process. First Option Solutions were delighted to win the tender to provide a completely new Visitor Management System for the Royal Household.
Challenge
As The Royal Household employs a wide array of professions, there was an immediately clear challenge to ensure that the solution provided was flexible and easy enough to use but be diverse enough to cover the many requirements.
With security always of paramount concern it would be vital that the system ensures that all visitors follow the correct security and entry process. A number of key goals were set including the reduction of paperwork, to automate and speed up the overall process and improve the staff and visitor's booking experience.
With so many stakeholders affected by the project, it would be critical to ensure the system was delivered successfully, first time, to ensure smooth adoption and rapid acceptance of the changes in procedure.
With a large proportion of visitors being to Buckingham Palace, another key requirement was to ensure the fast processing of visitors arriving at the Palace reception.
Within all of this it was necessary to ensure the visitor's experience of visiting a Royal Palace maintains a professional image.
Implementation
First Option Solutions provided the Royal Household with a new Visitor Management System tailored to their specific needs. The easy to use system allows Royal Household staff to easily book appointments and keep track of their meetings.
The Palaces' receptions run the software application that allows them to process visitors in a matter of seconds. A management application provides all the flexibility and MI needed to allow the Royal Household to have full control over their Visitor Management.
First Option Solutions proudly completed delivery of the project on budget and on schedule in 2010 with all key stakeholders reporting a highly successful implementation meeting all the project goals.