Why should I have a Smart Locker in my business?

The Coronavirus Pandemic is the biggest disruption to our lives for many generations. It has shone the spotlight on how different world leaders react in times of unprecedented crisis, it has raised questions about the way we have been living our lives and how we have been conducting business.

For years business supply chains had been growing ever more specific and responsive - focusing on the hyper-rapid ‘just-in-time’ model, and finding efficiencies by running systems wherever possible at 99% capacity. 

The pandemic has taught us a lesson in the value of resilience, the importance of spare capacity, that there can be a valuable robustness in decentralised simplicity, and the importance of retaining some redundancy in case of emergency. The crisis has also rapidly accelerated the trend of remote and home working that was beginning to pick up speed. Now it is no longer just the ‘Digital nomads’ making zoom calls on their laptops - it’s all of us!  

This evolution to mass remote working has also forced remote IT support service to evolve alongside. While it is possible to fix a lot of problems with remote access, the remote service desk cannot fix a broken laptop, a lost smartphone, or replace a charger cable online. These items need to be requisitioned, supplied and delivered, and the average current fulfilment time for this task is an unacceptable average of 2.9 days.

What is more, this 2.9 days figure is derived from pre-pandemic experiences, so if anything, with the addition of Covid-secure contactless procedure, the process is likely to now be even slower.

This huge change is an opportunity for the IT support service to improve and strengthens the case for the inclusion of Smart Lockers to become part of the critical replacement IT hardware process.

Velocity Smart Lockers now support ‘Smart Collect Covid-19 Secure Safety Features’, that deliver safety, peace-of-mind, and accountability to both businesses and employees.

• The ‘Device Disinfected Check’ ensures that all items stocked into Smart Lockers have been disinfected according to your lock-down policy - with a configurable feature requiring team members who are restocking to confirm that the items have been cleaned.
• The ‘Device Quarantine’ feature allows for all locker items (either stock placed in the locker by IT teams or equipment being returned by end-users) can now have a configurable ‘Quarantine period’ (set to a default of 72 hours) before the item can be collected from the Smart locker, ensuring that where possible any Covid-19 virus on the device is likely to be killed.
• Integration with ‘ServiceNow Covid-19 Management’, means that these new features can be further integrated with ServiceNow Covid-19 management applications to enable full IT Support fulfilment transparency.

It’s well documented that the Pandemic has changed the way we do business. A lot has been learned in a short time, meaning we’re unlikely to return to business as it was before.  

With its all-new Covid-19 Secure safety features, the Velocity Smart Lockers are becoming a vital tool to solve the challenge of how to provide effective IT Support to businesses, while still obeying social distancing policies and maintaining the paramount safety of both end-users and IT staff. Make your company a Smart Locker Business now!