3 min read
Keys are everywhere. Every company can tell a story of how a misplaced key interrupted its operations. A lost or misplaced key can affect your employee’s time, your project timeline, and, most importantly, your bottom line. We often speak with companies where the financial impact of losing a key goes into the thousands of dollars, not including the labor time wasted.
The name of the game here is prevention. Once the key is lost and the building must be rekeyed, the expense has occurred. With electronic key management systems, the expenses and the headache of communicating with the insurance can be avoided.
There are 8 advantages for your business to use an electronic key cabinet to organize your keys.
1. Higher security level for your facility & assets thanks to an electronic key cabinet
Most facilities worldwide use physical keys to secure their doors. The disadvantage of physical keys is their analog nature, which makes them difficult to manage and secure properly. There always is a trade-off between security and efficiency. An electronic key cabinet avoids this trade-off, as you can store important keys for maintenance rooms, server rooms, or storage rooms in a secure, locked location. Electronic key cabinets have robust metal housings and sensors that improve the overall security of your perimeter. Without a reliable automated key management system, you do not really know who has access to rooms and assets.
2. No errors are possible with an electronic key control system
Organizing more than a dozen keys requires a lot of lists, documents, guidelines, and communication effort. With so many different elements, it is nearly impossible to keep them all up to date and ensure that each employee knows their permissions regarding keys. In consequence, involuntarily overstepping rights is unavoidable. To reduce this, employees become overcautious when seeking a key, increasing the administrative burden further.
All of this can be avoided with an electronic key control system that grants employees physical access only to the keys they are authorized to use. No ambiguity and no stress. The system can also be configured to specify how long a key can be removed for use and when it must be returned. Employees can add valuable information as a note in the system.
3. Detailed audit trails in the electronic key management system
In the hectic day-to-day operations of every business, it happens that employees either hurry to fill out paper forms or simply don’t, as they see it as a burden. By automating this process, security is no longer seen as a burden but is embraced. The documentation happens in the backend when keys are removed and returned. These interactions supply a wealth of useful business insight that can be visualized in reports. Most electronic key cabinet providers offer a cloud-based backup solution, ensuring that no data is lost.
4. Finding keys is easier and faster with an electronic key control system
Having access to detailed audit trails makes finding a key a piece of cake. With a few clicks in the key management software, you can see who last took the key and when. Our customers tell us that 95% of the keys are found within an hour. The other times serve to reveal inconsistent processes and undocumented communication to the administration.
5. Reduces the loss of keys
Administrators can set alerts on the return time of key removals. When exceeded, the supervisor or employee receives an email, text, or pop-up alert. This gives the opportunity to act immediately, which drastically increases the chances of recovery.
Reducing lost keys means reducing direct and indirect costs.
If a key is lost, the cost of quickly renewing it can add up quickly. Especially when losing a master or submaster key, rekeying every lock in the facility can become a major business expense. Not only the direct cost of exchanging locks needs to be considered, but also the time your employees spend on labor that could have been invested in more useful tasks.
6. Staying in compliance using an electronic key management system
Losing a master key can also entail further headaches down the line. In our 20 years of experience, customers have told us that insurance companies are very wary when such an event occurs, due to potential legal repercussions. In some industries and countries, such as car dealerships in the UK or home care services in Germany, insurance companies offer better rates to businesses that use an electronic key cabinet.
7. Digital upgrade of physical offline keys
Modern electronic key management systems provide customers with a smartphone app for managers to receive real-time information and act on it on the go. Releasing a key remotely in an emergency, to receiving push notifications when a key is returned late can all reduce administrative workload. Therefore, the administrator has a digital representation of its buildings, rooms, tools, and vehicles, and can interact with them quickly.
8. Enhance your internal support infrastructure with an electronic key cabinet
Video communication directly on the electronic key cabinet provides your business with all the tools to support your workers quickly and efficiently. In case a vehicle breaks down, the employee can immediately call for assistance from the key cabinet. If there is an issue in the server room that needs to be addressed quickly, rather than finding the right contact, you can just call the administrator group through the electronic key cabinet.
