Al-Hamra Real Estate Company
Background
The site of Kuwait’s first cinema, for decades a well-known landmark in the City attracting citizens and visitors
to enjoy their spare time, the new Al-Hamra development builds on that legacy with the Nation’s tallest skyscraper
– another landmark of success offering mixed-use facilities to welcome investors, tenants and visitors alike.
Vision: To make Al Hamra Luxury Center & Business Tower a regional leading destination by 2018 for world-class
commercial, retail, culinary, and entertainment offerings that anticipate the needs of our guests. The vision
behind Al Hamra is based out of love of Kuwait and it is being built with Kuwait’s people in mind. Given the
namesake and prime location of one of the region’s premier movie houses, Al Hamra is constructed to exemplify
this passion for a country that has continuously embraced development and has recently ushered in an era of
economic development.
Mission: By leveraging Al Hamra’s iconic status, our mission is to make Al Hamra the preferred “Brand of Choice”
within the shopping, culinary, entertainment and office space destinations for our guests by delivering outstanding
value, continuous innovation and an exceptional guest experience through consistently fulfilling our “Experiences at
their finest at Al Hamra” brand promise.
Business Needs & Challenges
As the number of tenants of Al-Hamra Business Tower grows, the number of visitors follows suit and increases
rapidly. The company takes the security of the Business Tower, its tenants and visitors seriously and hence, it
built security gates whereby every person entering the tower is identified by a badge. This easily applies to
employees of the tenants, as everyone can be identified by the badge. This does not, however, apply to the
visitors, as they are unmanaged.
Visitors present their credentials at one of the gates in order to obtain a visitor badge. This badge is used
by the visitor to pass through the security gates. When a visitor completes the visit, s/he needs to visit the same
gate, return the visitor badge and collect her/his credentials. At this stage, no records are kept of any of
the visitors. This is due to several challenges:
-
The number of visitors during peak operation hours is very high, making it difficult for Customer Service
Representatives to collect visitor details, pass a visitor card and store the provided credentials securely
in the drawers.
-
Visitors usually present different forms of identification: Civil ID, Passport, Driver's License, etc. It is
not easy to capture a visitor's details from these different forms of identification.
-
Capturing visitor demographics is a time-consuming and error-prone process. Visitors expect a swift and
efficient process of getting their visitor badges and are not willing to wait until their details are
captured.
Due to the above challenges, Al-Hamra was not keeping any records of the visitors. This imposed a risk in case of
any security breach or other incidents, as it is impossible to identify the visitors.
Characteristics of a viable solution
A viable solution needs to provide the following capabilities:
-
Capture Visitor Demographics as accurately and efficiently as possible, without forcing Customer Service
Representatives to enter too much detail.
- Keep a copy of the presented credentials in records.
- Make no compromises in terms of visitor data quality.
Solution
Al-Hamra Real Estate Company teamed with Sharper Software to provide
SharperVisitorLogs for
every Customer Service Representative. Sharper Software delivered a set of readers and the accompanying software
and trained the end users on how to use the technology. All visitor-facing customer service representatives have
to do is a visitor's Smart Civil ID, passport or Kuwaiti Driver's License into the reader and press a button on
the application. The visitor's demographics, including name in both English and Arabic, Sex, Date of Birth,
Blood Group, Nationality, Address, etc. are all captured automatically off the presented credentials and displayed
on the application's screen. While the credentials are being scanned, the Representative specifies the visitor
badge number and the tenant sponsoring the visit. When the record is saved, SharperVisitorLogs automatically
timestamps the record and keeps a copy of the provided credentials. This saves the time required to have a
no-compromise visitor data accuracy. Since this information is maintained by the Public Authority for Civil
Information, all such data is according to the official records. This serves as a good measure against repudiation.
When a visitor wishes to leave, s/he presents the visitor badge back to the Customer Service Representative, who
in turn navigates quickly to the Check-out screen and finds the badge. By double-clicking the badge, the visitor
is marked as "Checked Out", saving the time and effort necessary to keep track of the visit.
At any point in time, an administrative person can query the system to find details about a visitor, providing
means to perform security audits when necessary. Management can also get statistical reports about peak operating
hours, tenants with the highest number of visitors, etc.
