Managing Visitors, Packages And Parking In A Multi-Tenant Residential Property By The Numbers:
Residential Units: 336
Visitors / Year: More than 20,000
Packages / Year: More than 5,000
Background And Initial Implementation
Plaza South Condominiums in Fort
Lauderdale, FL began searching in early
2004 for a ‘gatekeeper’ system to manage
security for their high-rise condominium
complex. According to Sue Blalock at Plaza
South, “We’re a large facility and we get
lots of visitors. The President of the
Association was seeking to upgrade the way
in which we handled visitors, and to
improve both our security and our image.”
“I was searching online for solutions and
discovered EasyLobby. We signed up for a
demo, ran the trial, and we liked what we
saw. Even though we are a residential
complex, we were particularly impressed
with the many large companies who use
EasyLobby.”
Managing Visitor Flow
Prior to the EasyLobby deployment, the
visitor log at Plaza South was kept in an
‘entirely hand-written’ fashion. Due to
increased visitor volume, as well as a
growing number of contractors and visitors
entering the facility for unit renovations,
there was a desire among both residents and
management to enhance the efficiency and
effectiveness of how visitors were managed,
and to do so in a way that maintains the
premium image of the complex.
While Plaza South only has 2 entrances,
those entrances are extremely busy – more
than 20,000 visitors entered the facility in
2008 alone. EasyLobby is deployed in 3
locations on site – at the front desk, the
receiving area, and in the main office for
administrative and reporting purposes.
Beyond Visitor Management
Plaza South makes extensive use of
EasyLobby and has discovered numerous
ways to leverage the capabilities of the
product – using EasyLobby for a number of
applications beyond managing visitors.
According to Blalock, Package Management
is a “major issue in such a large facility”,
and EasyLobby has already labeled over
5,000 packages in 2008 alone. When a
package arrives at the front desk, it is
recorded in EasyLobby – with signature
capture - and labeled for delivery to the
proper unit and recipient. By using
EasyLobby to track and label packages, the
loss of packages between the front desk of
the building and the final recipient has been
dramatically reduced
Another use for EasyLobby is to keep track
of visitor’s vehicles – for instance when
there is an issue such as an improperlyparked
car and the owner needs to be
quickly located. In such a large complex,
performing this task using the old ‘pencil
and paper’ method was always extremely
time-consuming, and frequently
unsuccessful. With EasyLobby, the owner
of any vehicle can almost always be found
and contacted both quickly and easily.
In addition, Plaza South utilizes
EasyLobby’s Asset Management
capabilities to manage security tags and
keys, which are frequently provided to
contractors and other frequent visitors for
the tower they are working in or visiting.
Keeping It Simple – Yet Powerful
One of the key reasons that EasyLobby has
been successful at Plaza South is that it
provides an ideal balance of power and
flexibility, yet at the same time is very easyto-
use.
“During the first few weeks of using
EasyLobby we continued to run our ‘by
hand’ guest books in parallel” said Blalock.
“Our reason for doing this was that our
security personnel were generally not adept
with technology and we wanted to avoid
errors. However, since it was so easy to
customize EasyLobby and tailor it
specifically for our needs, we found that we
could move to a fully-automated solution
very quickly.”
Leveraging The Investment
While Plaza South isn’t planning to
physically expand the facility, Blalock stated
that they are looking forward to finding new
ways to leverage their investment in
EasyLobby.
“Because EasyLobby has been so easy to
work with – and because the application
keeps improving and getting more powerful,
we are sure we’ll continue to find many
other ways to put it to use for our complex
and our tenants.”
For More Infomation Or To Request A Demo
EasyLobby, Inc.
35 Highland Circle
Needham, MA 02494
(781) 455-8558
E-Mail: Info@EasyLobby.com
www.easylobby.com