How Jennie-O standardized visitor management across 272 farm locations with Envoy

Jennie-O is a producer of turkey and deli meat products with operations spanning hundreds of farm locations. Managing visitors across these distributed sites requires consistent processes that support operational visibility, security, and biosecurity requirements across rural and production environments.

With 272 farm locations requiring visitor tracking, Jennie-O needed a scalable approach to capture accurate visitor information and maintain visibility across rugged, outdoor locations where traditional check-in processes were difficult to standardize.

Challenge: Managing visitor tracking across hundreds of farm locations

Before implementing Envoy visitor management at its farm locations, Jennie-O relied on paper visitor logs.

Each farm location maintained its own records, with no standardized process or centralized system for managing visitor information.

“Prior to using Envoy, we were basically entirely pen and paper,” said Lucas Hackenmiller, Senior Infrastructure Technician at Jennie-O. “Each location would keep their own log. There was no standard format for how they would check in.”

Because every location managed visitor information differently, records were often incomplete and difficult to retrieve when needed.

“Sometimes our records could be incomplete, and if we needed to look back, it would be difficult to find the exact data we’re looking for on a particular day or for a particular visitor.”

For an organization managing hundreds of farm locations, this created challenges around visibility, consistency, and quickly accessing critical visitor information.

Jennie-O also needed a way to ensure every visitor completed the same check-in process regardless of which farm they visited.

With paper logs, visitors could leave fields incomplete, and each location had flexibility in how information was collected.

“Oftentimes there would be no pen or the data would be incomplete, and we would not get the same information recorded for every visitor.

This made it difficult to collect the information needed for accurate reporting and historical tracking.

The team’s goal was to create a standardized visitor experience across all locations while making records easier to search, export, and manage.

“Our main goal for improvement when implementing Envoy was just to standardize the check-in form across all locations and make it far easier to grab data on a particular visitor or on a particular day.”

Solution: Static QR code check-in built for rural farm sites

Jennie-O expanded its Envoy deployment to include farm locations using static QR code for visitor check-in. Visitors scan a printed code with their own phone and complete the same form used at every other site, so there is no iPad to install, mount, or maintain at 272 rural locations.

The idea came from the ground up. A farm supervisor who identified the need for a simpler visitor check-in process in rural and outdoor environments. Around the same time, Jennie-O learned about Envoy’s static QR code capabilities, creating an opportunity to extend visitor management beyond traditional iPad-based check-in.

“We decided to use Envoy because we’ve already used it in the traditional form. We have a solid working relationship with Envoy for several years before implementing this.”

Rural sites came with real constraints, and the team worked through them one at a time. Cell service was the biggest open question, since check-in depends on a visitor's personal phone. In practice it has been a non-issue.

"Only one or two times have I heard that we've had to manually enter a user, but we do have that possibility on the very rare chance. We can still make use of Envoy and keep the data recorded by just entering their information manually for them via the portal."

The signage for the QR codes needed the same practical thinking.

"We've needed to work around a couple of constraints, such as adding some lighting around our static QR code signs for visitors that come on site at nighttime. We've also had to make sure to use material that's not affected by the elements, such as snow sticking to it.”

Unlike traditional visitor kiosks, static QR code check-in with Envoy brought standardized visitor management to all of Jennie-O’s rural and outdoor environments where installing and maintaining iPads would be challenging. 

"Envoy gave us a solution that was ideal for rugged locations and outdoor locations. We were able to implement a static QR code system that just had never been possible, and it did fill a need that we had no previous solutions for."

Visitors: Standardizing visitor check-in across 272 farm locations

With Envoy Visitors, Jennie-O created one consistent visitor management process across all 272 farm locations.

Instead of each farm maintaining separate paper logs, every location now uses the same digital check-in template and required fields.

“They’re all using the same input questions for every visitor,” Hackenmiller explained.

This standardization improved the quality of visitor data collected while making information easier for teams to access when needed.

Jennie-O also created location-based access groups, allowing supervisors to view visitor information for the farms they oversee. The same structure scales in either direction, whether a supervisor oversees one farm or twenty.

"We were able to group locations based off of region, and this has allowed everyone to have access to their visitor data within a couple minutes of needing it. We can manage it down to one single location or divide it into a group for supervisors that might just manage one site or manage 20 sites."

Enabling contact tracing during biosecurity incidents

For Jennie-O, accurate visitor tracking plays an important role in supporting biosecurity processes.

Knowing who visited each farm and when they were onsite can be critical when investigating potential incidents. Envoy helps Jennie-O maintain visibility into visitor activity and supports contact tracing and contamination reporting efforts.

“Bird flu raised the stakes on knowing exactly who had been at each farm. Biosecurity depends on being able to trace everybody and where they've been, and we really can't do contact tracing without Envoy. It's changed our processes from 'we think we have that data somewhere' to 'here it is.' We can produce visitor logs for any of our 272 farms in a matter of minutes.”

Previously, paper records made it difficult to accurately understand visitor history across multiple farm locations.

“With the paper logs, we just didn’t have all that data stored accurately regarding where users had been in the past. Envoy helps us with the speed of getting the data into the right hands when an incident does come up, and we can guarantee that it’s accurate data.”

Now the team can trace a visitor across sites, not just at one, and see whether an incident at one farm points to exposure at others.

Supporting distributed visitor management with static QR code check-in

The biggest expansion of Jennie-O’s Envoy deployment came from using static QR codes to support visitor check-in at farm locations.

Unlike traditional visitor kiosks, static QR code check-in allowed Jennie-O to bring standardized visitor management to rural and outdoor environments where installing and maintaining iPads would be challenging.

The solution helped Jennie-O create a scalable process that could work across hundreds of locations with different operational conditions.

“We were able to implement a static QR code solution that just had never been possible, and it did help us to fill a need that we had no previous solutions for.”

Results: Faster access to accurate visitor data across 272 locations

Expanding Envoy visitor management to its farm locations gave Jennie-O one centralized system in place of 272 separate manual processes.

Log retrieval shows the difference most clearly. Before Envoy, pulling a visitor history meant searching paper logs farm by farm, and the record stopped after 30 days.

"The log retrieval was very difficult and timely when we had to sort through paper after paper from different farms, and it capped out at 30 days typically in our old method."

Now the record is immediate, and adoption was fast because the teams on the ground already knew the old process wasn't holding up.

"The reaction from the teams was excitement. They were able to see for themselves that the old solution was not working well. With Envoy, we have the confidence that our visitor and contractor data for all of our farms is in place, it's safe and secure, and it's easy to access within just a couple of minutes"

Farm teams got portal access of their own, so each group can trace visitors for its own sites without waiting on a central request. Self check-in removed another layer of manual work.

"We've also eliminated the need to have staff check people in, so that's allowed people to redirect their focus elsewhere."

Leadership gained visibility it never had, and the records also hold up outside the company, which matters when insurance and risk partners ask for proof that visitor access is controlled.

"This does give leadership real visibility into the visitors, and it does support us from auditing and contact tracing situations. It gives insurance or risk partners documented proof that we do have controlled processes in place for all visitors."

And the team trusts what it's looking at.

"Envoy gives us peace of mind and confidence in our data. Easy visibility and a data trail that goes far beyond our previous 30 day threshold."

Across hundreds of farm locations, Envoy now supports the efficiency, biosecurity, and visibility Jennie-O needs to operate with confidence.

"Working with the team at Envoy has been a great experience for us. They've always been willing to help us think outside the box in any way possible. Without Envoy, we have the risk of just having too much unorganized data. They helped us implement a fairly simple solution that solved a problem we had been dealing with for years."