Manage vehicle keys securely
in every department in the dealership

Customer

Mercedes Panavto Moskau

Market

Automotive

Company size

Medium-sized company

Country

Russia

The key to the car of your dreams.
Electronic key cabinets for efficient organisation in every department.

The car dealer Mercedes-Benz Panavto has been successfully selling and servicing Mercedes-Benz vehicles for 29 years. In the meantime, Panavto can be found at 3 locations in the greater Moscow area and sells over 15,000 vehicles annually. Every tenth new Mercedes- Benz in Russia is sold at the Panavto dealership. This is also due to the fact that it has won an award for Dealer of the Year almost every year since 2013.

11 Electronic key management systems from ecos help the dealership organise its vehicle keys more efficiently throughout the process. Various key cabinets are in use in three important departments to increase the efficiency of sales activities and make internal processes more traceable

Products used:

Key cabinets

ecos webman

The challenge:
Manage hundreds of vehicle keys

Within one month, the 2 equipped locations of the car dealership sell around 400 vehicles. Without proper organisation, it is hardly possible to maintain an overview and live efficient processes.

Before the introduction of key management, vehicle keys had to be searched for a long time and were sometimes completely misplaced. An aggravating factor here was that in a car dealership that only sells one brand and specialises in new cars, it is very difficult to distinguish keys from each other based on mere appearance.

Furthermore, a new vehicle passes through several departments at the dealership: First, the new vehicles are received and entered into the system, then some of them are shown in the showroom, and finally they pass through the workshop area before being delivered to the customer. The challenge here is to ensure a complete overview of the keys across all departments and to efficiently manage their handover or issue.

The challenge is to ensure a complete overview of the keys across departments and to efficiently manage their handover or issuance. In order to be able to easily track which person has taken which key and when, an electronic key management system should be used.

Our solution:
electronic key cabinets

In 2018, Mercedes-Benz Panavto integrated the new key management system into its processes. A total of 11 key cabinets of various designs are in use. These are divided among the three main departments as follows:

1) New vehicles

Five ecos key 180 key boxes with roller blinds are used to register the incoming new vehicles and to read the keys into the ecos webman software. Mercedes-Benz Panavto has chosen the roller blind version so that the employees in the narrow corridor are not disturbed at work. In addition, it can be set so that the „door“ remains open continuously at peak times to enable faster work.

2) Showroom

In the showroom, too, the keys are managed with electronic key cabinets. This is a very big support for the sales team, because on the one hand the customer does not have to wait long to test drive his vehicle. On the other hand, the salesperson does not have to worry about whether he will find the key quickly this time or not. This makes the entire sales talk more relaxed and has a direct impact on the success of the entire dealership.

ecos key cabinets in Mercedees-Benz workshops

3) Workshop

The third area where electronic key management is used is the workshop area. The car keys are hung in the key cabinet for the time of maintenance or repair. With the help of the function „object group and dynamic slots“, the keys can be inserted from one key cabinet into the other and recognised there in turn.

The result:
Traceable output
for all vehicle keys

Since its introduction, the processes in the dealership have been further digitalised and optimised accordingly: Customers can drive their test cars faster and when a new car delivery arrives, the vehicle keys can be stored more quickly.

The employees‘ sense of responsibility has also improved. Since it is very easy to track who had which key last and to hold the respective person responsible using our software, everyone pays more attention. Today, up to 80% fewer keys are lost than before the introduction of the ecos systems key cabinets. If a key does have to be found, the time required has been reduced from several hours to a few minutes.

Another advantage is that the key cabinet in the showroom can be used to measure sales activities. Both the time at which the most vehicles are borrowed and the salespeople with the most borrowings. In this way, a ranking of the most popular vehicles can be regularly compiled.

Outlook

The use of the key management systems so far has been an outstanding success for the dealership. In line with this, Mercedes-Benz Panavto has also opted for 4 electronic key cabinets at its new base.

Key numbers

70%

less lost keys

Over 5 Hours

weekly saved on search

800 Vehicles

go through ecos systems monthly