Digital locker systems are gaining popularity among a huge number of businesses and for valid reasons.
Businesses and other facilities that earlier used conventional storage locker types are quickly upgrading their stock with highly durable digital locker systems.
Digital locker systems offer reliability and convenience on such a wide level that clearly cannot be matched by any traditional locker storage system.
If you are looking to purchase a digital locker system for your business, this article will provide you with everything that you should essentially know.
Advantages of electronic locker systems
Electronic or digital locker systems offer a set of unique advantages that weren’t available in any of the previous storage locker solutions.
BOPIL
BOPIL stands for ‘Buy Online, Pickup in Locker’. BOPIL is an upgraded version of BOPIS (Buy Online, Pickup in Store).
Many physical stores that also offer an online shopping front, find it difficult to provide express shipping options to customers. Therefore, rather than delivering goods themselves, they offer an in-store pickup option. This allows online customers to collect the goods once the ordered items have been compiled for collection. This is known as BOPIS.
Practical application of BOPIS shows that it is primarily inclined more towards manual functioning, thereby still requiring store assistance till the order is successfully delivered to the right customer. Because of this lacking, physical store locations are adopting the BOPIL method, which is an upgraded version of BOPIS.
With BOPIL, buyers buy goods online, store staff prepare the order, and then place it in a digital locker system. Once the goods are received in an electronic locker system, the relevant customer is automatically notified through an app notification, text message, email, or a call.
Moreover, using BOPIL, stores can also allow pickup convenience to customers even after their work hours. This is because goods kept in a digital locker system can easily and securely be retrieved at any time through digital access methods.
Theft prevention
Digital or electronic locker systems also offer theft prevention through their various features. While the basic security feature of these lockers is to have a keyless entry through a user-assigned pin, over time this security feature has been upgraded and added with further levels to prevent any breach.
Some examples of theft prevention techniques that come built-in to electronic locker systems include:
- Dual controls or two-way signup uses two-pin codes, to access the locker each time. While one code is pre-set by the user, the other code may be a random one-time pin, automatically generated by the digital locker system and notified to you on your smartphone. So, even if someone has your primary code, they couldn’t access the locker unless they have the secondary one-time pin code.
- Digital lockers can also be set to open after a certain time delay, even when correct access details have been entered. This helps avoid theft attempts by making an intruder believe that he may not have passed the security check. Moreover, electronic locker systems can also automatically relock if unattended after remaining opened for some time.
- Electronic locker systems also allow being set up for access during any specific period of the day. This means that you can be sure that even any correct attempts of theft will go useless during the unauthorized hours.
- Digital locker systems can also get automatically disabled for access if an intruder’s number of wrong attempts surpasses a given limit.
- To help prevent a theft attempt even when you are present and being forced to unlock your valuables, there are a few methods that can be used to silently turn on security alarms and call in security for help.
Hygiene
Digital locker systems offer a touchless mode of access as well. Although this wasn’t something that concerned most users until recently, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has set this feature to be of utmost importance and non-negotiable priority.
Almost all facilities that use digital storage lockers have a preference and strong check on how hygienically safe and disinfectant their digital locker systems are against any sort of contamination.
Save staff time
Traditionally used storage locker systems required management’s manual assistance at multiple stages. For example, requesting access to the locker area, getting permissions, giving details of use, maintaining usage logs, requiring a person to physically assist in operating a locker in cases where the dual-key lock method was used, etc.
With digital locker systems in action, none of the above-mentioned cases exist anymore. Electronic locker systems completely operate on their own and only require management staff’s supervision in rare instances.
Flexibility to collect parcels whenever convenient
Another main feature of the digital locker system is the flexibility of its use whenever convenient. Since digital locker systems do not need any human assistance in normal circumstances, they can be freely accessed by authorized users at any time of the day.
No security breaches until you receive your parcel
Since only the authorized persons have access to their locker, all parcels and goods remain safe, secure, and intact till delivered.
Besides this, digital locker systems for example in grocery stores, also have a built-in temperature control feature. This further ensures that the customers using BOPIL always get fresh items whenever they collect.