Running a car dealership involves dealing with a wide variety of risks. The most valuable and vulnerable assets that will need to be protected in these kinds of businesses will be the cars, and key management is a core part of that protection process.
One increasingly popular approach is to use a self service management system, but do these solutions actually work in dealership contexts? Let’s take a closer look at some of their benefits, from improved accountability to their impact on reducing the overall administrative load.
High accountability
It’s easy to think that self service key management systems lack sufficient accountability. After all, seeing as there’s just a (albeit technologically advanced) cabinet involved, rather than an actual person, there’s no single individual to blame should something go wrong.
These systems are actually able to facilitate a higher level of accountability than human-dependent systems. Self service key management systems from providers like KEYper Systems log every single time a key is taken out or returned, meaning that if a key goes missing, it’s immediately possible to see exactly who was responsible for that loss.
Cloud integration
Unlike manually updated paper logbooks, self service key management systems can be seamlessly integrated into the cloud. As a result, you don’t have to go and take a look at a physical book when you want to find key access data – you can do so from practically anywhere with an internet connection.
This makes it a lot more convenient to trace keys, and to prove regulatory compliance in the case that you’re subject to an audit. Increases in convenience can be an important benefit to keep in mind, as they’ll often directly correlate to improved efficiency.
Reduced administrative load
If you don’t use a self-service key management system, you’ll always need to have a person on duty to find and sign keys in and out. In car dealerships, this can result in a substantial administrative burden, costing tens of thousands of pounds a year in salary alone.
Self-service systems eliminate or at least substantially reduce that burden, freeing up your employees to take care of more complicated, important tasks.
Reduce human error
Human beings are exceptionally good at complex problem solving and creative thinking, but often less good at repetitive tasks where exactly the same thing needs to be done over and over again.
Human error often starts to crop up in these kinds of contexts, and in key management, which can result in substantial losses. Self-service systems depend on each person returning their own key in the right way – if they fail to do so, then they can easily be held directly responsible.
There are a lot of different self-service key and asset management systems available nowadays, and different options will be more or less suited to various applications. It’s important that you look for a solution that’s specifically designed with dealership key management in mind, to make the most of a highly customised solution.
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