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How a smart staff locker system reduced management time by 94% for multinational online retailer
3000 Lockers
Staff lockers
ROI 12 months
Table of Contents
Company
The company is one of the world’s largest online retailers with 185 fulfilment centres located across the globe.
Problem
The main problem was that they did not have a smart staff locker system in place, their existing locker management system was inefficient and difficult to use.
The lockers on their various sites were accessed via padlocks or combination locks and they were assigned to employees using a spreadsheet.
The managers were required to physically check whether a locker was free before assigning it to an employee. This was a very inefficient approach to locker management that was causing a massive drain on time and resources.
In addition, managers had no way of knowing how many of their lockers were actually being used at one time and how they were being utilised. This meant they required more lockers than employees to account for staff turnover and the time taken to assign lockers to new starters.
Solution
The solution to this problem was eLocker’s smart staff locker system. We installed 1,000 lockers across three of the company’s sites in Europe, with a total of 3,000 staff lockers installed.
These intelligent lockers provided managers with detailed analytics reports that allowed them to monitor who was using what locker and when. They were also able to update the user from an online dashboard and then update the lock remotely without having to check the locker in person.
The smart lockers can be opened via contactless entry using employee ID cards, so they don’t have to worry about staff forgetting a PIN code or key.
We were also able to retrofit our smart locks into their existing staff lockers. We simply removed the old key system from their lockers and then placed our retrofit eLock into the space where the old lock was. Retrofitting is much more cost-effective than investing in an entirely new locker fleet.
Outcome
The customer carried out a study to test the effectiveness of our new locker system versus their old system. The results showed that our smart system reduced the admin time associated with locker management by an impressive 94%.
After running a three-month pilot, we were also able to show the customer that they were only utilising around 40% of their existing lockers. This meant they could reduce their locker facilities by around 60%, gaining a huge amount of additional floor space. This will generate significant long-term cost savings for the company going forward.
The company is currently discussing plans to roll eLocker’s smart locker system out to additional sites following the success of the pilot study.
Frequently Asked Question
What is the ROI for this smart staff locker system?
The customer should generally see a ROI in less than 12 months, if not sooner. This is based on the reduction in admin time along with the cost of replacing lost keys, etc.
As mentioned above, this customer also reclaimed a huge amount of floor space which means the system essentially started paying for itself straight away.
How long does it take to implement the pilot from start to finish?
The timescale for a pilot depends on the customer and their business needs. With this particular customer, it took approximately 18 months for them to get everything up and running on their side.
We were dealing with a large, multi-national company so they had a lot of processes to sign off on before we could start implementing the project. Once we were given the go-ahead, it took us roughly 12 weeks to install the lockers across their sites. The pilot was then measured for three months.
Was there anything else that the customer tracked during the pilot?
The customer also tracked eLocker’s level of service as part of the pilot report and compared this to standard locker suppliers.
Over the course of the pilot, the customer made 41 requests to change things like the software or the format of the locks. We managed to resolve 39 of these requests during the pilot so they could test the new features during the trial. The other two requests were hardware changes which we are currently implementing for the customer.
What is the life expectancy of these products?
In terms of the life span, the batteries and locks should last up to 8 years, if not longer. The system will continue to work indefinitely. We also offer a three-year warranty on all of our products.
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