For all businesses in the transportation sector, managing the fleet of vehicles that quite literally keep things running is a top priority. These fleets themselves are often worth hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of pounds, and that’s without even considering the other operational costs incurred by vehicle downtime.
Key management sits at the heart of this process, but is often overlooked. Below, we explore how modern key management systems can be of critical importance in a number of areas.
Why it matters
Most vehicles, whether minicabs, buses, or forklift trucks, are ultimately secured and operated using keys. As a result, unaddressed issues in key management can result in all sorts of greater problems, from theft to operational delays.
Controlling who has access to these keys, and tracking how they are used and by whom is of central importance when it comes to keeping fleets safe.
As a result, businesses in these sectors have a responsibility to ensure that the system they implement is fully capable of meeting all of their specific key-related management requirements.
How key management systems help
There are a number of ways in which key management systems can be instrumentally important.
Access control
The main function of key management systems from providers like Traka is to provide strict yet functional access control. Each key is locked in its own section or hook, and staff have to authenticate before they can take that key out.
As a result, transportation organisations can control exactly who has access to each individual key, often changing that access as necessary from a remote portal.
Regulatory compliance
Many transportation businesses are required to adhere to a range of regulations. You’ll have to abide by strict record-keeping practices, being able to prove everything from vehicle roadworthiness to how many hours a given driver has worked.
Smart key management systems are designed to help with this, making it as easy as possible to collect a range of vehicle-related data while maintaining strict access controls over those vehicles.
Improving efficiency
Smart key management systems are also a much more efficient solution compared to the alternatives. These systems make it much easier for employees to access the keys they need at the beginning of a shift, while simultaneously making it easier for management to trace lost keys, by seeing who last took them out.
Fleet management integration
These systems can be efficiently integrated into broader management systems, providing additional data to HR databases, driver schedules and maintenance records. It helps to transition key management from a more purely security-related concern into a broader practice, with benefits that extend into the rest of the fleet and business management.
There are now more solutions available to this end than perhaps ever before, making it relatively simple for businesses to choose an option that is perfectly adapted to their unique requirements. By starting with an analysis of the scope of your key management needs, you should then be able to work towards identifying and implementing a solution that saves your business time and money over the coming years.
