Access: Mixing digital technologies with on-prem physical keys

This blog post is based on our recent webinar ‘Access: Mixing Digital Technologies with On-Prem Physical Keys’, featuring Sine’s General Manager, James Taylor, and Lucas Edmonds from our integration partner Torus.

Be sure to check out the on-demand webinar.

There is no surprise that Covid-19 has influenced organizations to accelerate their adaption of new technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation of previously manual tasks. Interestingly, a global study conducted by McKinsey of 800 executives discovered that 67% of companies have accelerated the adaption of automation and artificial intelligence.

The same study also discovered that around 80% of companies accelerated the adoption of digital employee interactions and collaboration since the Covid-19 pandemic. Such adaptions were made to attempt to continue business as usual and adjust to unprecedented changes such as lockdowns, social distancing requirements, venue capacities, vaccination, and testing requirements.

These changes has also shifted regularities in everyday work, with some workplaces moving to hybrid or even remote work. Therefore, technologies such as video and audio conferencing tools, have been adapted to facilitate these changes to cause minimal disruption to businesses.

With a new age of work and technology, it is more important than ever for businesses to keep their site safe and secure, even if they may be working from home or impacted by Covid-19. One challenge that relevant business stakeholders may face is providing seamless and secure access to staff, visitors, and contractors, even if they are not on site. Part of providing this seamless access is distributing keys to authorized persons to allow them access to relevant areas on site.

Manual key management: Current challenges

Manual key management may seem like a minor task out of your workday. However, when you consider all those times you had to chase up lost keys, ensure keys are being distributed to the right people and cover costs associated with key replacements, it really can be a burden on your business and employee productivity.

Current challenges of manual key management can cause significant disruptions to businesses and staff, namely:

• Compliance: Ensuring that everyone who uses the keys are authorized to do so and that they comply with your office policies. For example, all keys must be returned to reception staff at 5pm everyday.
• Efficiency and productivity: It can be difficult to find a productive balance between taking care of visitors and ensuring a genuine customer service experience, while also preventing too many distractions for staff who may have to facilitate every visitor's arrival. Getting up from their desk, or stopping what they are doing to ensure your visitor has a key for relevant access points may hinder productivity and ability to focus throughout the day.
• Security, risks, and costs: It can be hard to prevent the risks associated with theft, loss of stock, and re-keying. Even when keys aren’t in use, it can be difficult to store them in a secure location that is still conveniently and easily accessed by authorized personnel.
• Visibility: Manual key management may mean lacking knowledge or transparency of who is using what key at any given time. With the new age of hybrid work, this can be even more challenging to effectively manage keys from a remote location.

Sine + Torus: Automated key management made easy

The Sine + Torus integration* can help create a frictionless and smooth check-in and out experience. Torus is a secure and automated key management system that can help your workplace enhance efficiency, safety, and compliance in your workplace. Torus integrates seamlessly with Sine to provide an easy way to manage your keys, no matter where your facilities are. Adding on, it can give you real-time visibility of all your key transactions and their status.

*Please note, that there are requirements to set up this integration. Find out more.

Digital key management: Enabling a more efficient, compliant workplace

Productivity: An effective digital key management system can help staff focus on what's important to them, without having to waste time manually distributing keys and chasing up non-compliant key users and visitors.

Efficiency: Enable your visitors, contractors, and staff access your site and areas without any administration fuss, such as your reception staff having to find the specific key.

Streamlining manual processes: Streamline the check-in process and create a smoother visitor flow.

Compliance: Helps to ensure key compliance and prevent theft and losses. If visitors forget to return keys during checkout, they will receive a 'key overdue' alert via SMS. This can help prevent visitors from stealing keys and giving unauthorized individuals access to your site after hours.

Visibility: Enhancing the visibility of all key transactions and their status. Useful for businesses with multiple locations and enables remote management of each cabinet.

Flexibility: The Sine + Torus integration can be configured to suit the needs of your site

Download our guide to front desk digitization

A guide to improving workplace safety and efficiency

Download guide