It’s no secret that the keys to your fleet’s vehicles are important. Without them your staff won’t be going anywhere and replacing them will be a costly exercise. But did you know that there’s more to our KeyMaster cabinets than just key storage? Keep reading to learn how you can take your KeyMaster to the next level.
Keeping tabs on how your fleet is performing ensures that you can be proactive when issues arise. One easy way to do this is to question staff about how the vehicle performed and if there were any issues that you should know about. But you can’t expect your staff to survey everyone when they arrive at the office. It defeats the purpose of automated key management. Thankfully there’s a solution.
KeyMaster cabinets work hand-in-hand with the PoolCar booking platform. As part of the booking process, you can opt to ask the driver questions when returning the keys to the cabinet. Staff can enter their responses via the accompanying touch screen, ensuring you’re capturing the relevant information while it’s fresh in the driver’s mind.
What’s more, questions are completely customisable. So you can ask the exact questions your organisation needs to keep your fleet running optimally.
Here are some example questions our customers ask their drivers when returning from a trip:
Fleet sizes aren’t static— they change over time as organisations learn to right-size their fleet. Consequently, an organisation’s key storage and management requirements will change too. The last thing you want to discover is that the key management solution you’ve invested in can’t grow to meet future demands.
Thankfully, that’s not the case with a KeyMaster cabinet. When you invest in a KeyMaster, you’re laying the foundation for future key management expansion. The main KeyMaster has the ability control any secondary cabinets, so that when you need to expand, they all work together in unison.
KeyMaster’s modular cabinet design supports cost-effective scalability, controlling from 12-100 keys via a single head unit.
One of the main reasons organisations look to automate their pool booking and key management is to introduce a comprehensive audit trail should something go wrong. If a staff member makes a booking, it’s reasonable to assume that they’re going to collect the keys and drive the vehicle. If the vehicle is in an accident, a traffic infringement occurs during the booking, or the keys go missing, it’s easy to trace who is responsible.
However, automation can’t always account for the unexpected. There’s technically nothing to stop staff from handing their staff ID or booking number to someone else. This might be against company policy, but could be necessary in certain situations This poses a problem: should the keys go missing or the vehicle is in an accident, who took the keys?
KeyMaster has a simple and elegant solution. A discrete camera is built into the KeyMaster unit. When someone enters a booking, an image is captured and stored on the PoolCar server. This ensures that if someone does take a set of keys out of key storage that they shouldn’t have, you have photographic evidence that can help track them down again.
Some people, if left to their own devices, will monopolise communal assets, and keep keys for their own convenience.
KeyMaster can eliminate this problem. Keys are permanently stored inside the cabinet, can only be removed with a valid booking via PoolCar, and must be returned at the end of the booking to close it off. What’s more, if keys aren’t returned the system will generate an automated alert so that Fleet Managers can promptly track down the missing keys.
We understand that nobody’s perfect and we’ve all got multiple deadlines and competing work priorities. When staff return to the office ready to tackle the next item on their task list, it’s understandable that returning a set of car keys might not be a high priority.
But that moment of forgetfulness can cause delays for the next person waiting to use the vehicle. Just like a doctor’s surgery, a few delays at the start of the day can add up to hours of delays by the end of the day. Rather than making the next person run around tapping people on the shoulder in an effort to locate the keys, KeyMaster can easily solve this problem
If staff don’t return keys at the end of their booking period, KeyMaster can send an automated alert to the Fleet Manager. This will inform them who has the keys, how far over the booking is, and give them the opportunity to check-in with the driver to make sure everything is alright. This ensures that any missing keys can easily be traced back to the source of the problem.
As you can see, while key management is the primary focus of the KeyMaster key cabinet, there are lots of additional benefits that come with the implementation of an automated key management solution. Get in touch with us to organise a demonstration or to discuss how we can help improve the management of your fleet.
