Efficiency. Utilization. Safety. These are some of the challenges that concern a fleet manager. On any given day, you manage logistics, compliance regulations, and the safety of your vehicles and drivers while being in constant communication with your team. If you’re using fleet management software, you also need to stay on top of system alerts which can make for a busy and often overwhelming workday.
Keyless technology, which assigns vehicle key permissions virtually, can help. Unlike a physical key, digital keys allow you to easily track and enforce digital permissions, helping you make critical decisions in real time. Transitioning from physical to digital keys delivers more than convenient access – it can boost efficiency, uptime, compliance, and safety while supporting your organization’s future goals.
Control, Protection and Utilization
Using keyless technology holds many benefits to both you as a fleet manager as well as vehicle operators:
- Remotely control who can start a vehicle and the areas they access
- Grant specific access based on roles
- Set doors to lock automatically as the driver walks away from the vehicle, increasing security of the vehicle and its contents
- Unlock doors as the driver approaches to increase efficiency
- Immobilize vehicles in the event of a potential theft, allowing you to alert law enforcement of a stolen vehicle and increasing vehicle recovery time
With new vehicles in short supply until 2023, it is more important than ever to maintain your existing fleet with regular maintenance. Keyless technology helps you to start a vehicle remotely to review potential alerts and schedule maintenance immediately if an alert is triggered. This helps to save time, assigning the driver from a vehicle needing repair to a roadworthy vehicle using digital permissions. By staying on top of maintenance, uptime is improved, vehicle lifetimes are extended, and drivers stay safe.
Improve Compliance
Commercial fleets are all about moving products efficiently and quickly while adhering to state and federal compliance guidelines and balancing commitments to your customers. To meet deadlines, drivers are often tempted to keep driving with known safety issues or past road hours which makes this issue challenging to manage using physical keys. With the help of keyless technology, you can easily revoke access to an unsafe or non-compliant vehicle making compliance a bit easier to navigate.
Digital keys can also reduce the cost of compliance violations and improve safety for the driver, vehicle, and cargo. The information that keyless technology provides lets you make logistics updates quickly to stay on schedule and keep your customers happy.
A Path to Transformation
Keyless technology can be the first step to integrating requirements systems and fleet-related data within your organization. Combining keyless technology with a comprehensive fleet automation solution like Ridecell can automate maintenance scheduling, routine inspections, vehicle recovery and other crucial fleet-related tasks. The goal of fleet automation solutions is to increase productivity, freeing up time from manual tasks as well as improve efficiency and vehicle utilization. Whether you are just beginning your fleet’s digital transformation journey or far down the path, keyless technology is a vital step in your fleet’s enhanced operations.
Author: Stacey Papp, Director, Content Marketing, Ridecell