The digital revolution has changed our societies in massive ways. All of us navigate these changes to varying degrees of comfort, concern, excitement, dread, foreboding, and optimism. Whether we embrace it or not, our lives are structured and enabled by the shifting landscape of modern technology and the innovation therein.
A defining feature of tech culture and innovation is the speed at which these shifts and changes occur within the industry. Often, consumers are left to wonder: does security improve or suffer with added convenience? Is this new feature safe for me, my family, and my community?
These questions are important to ask and investigate. While technology undoubtedly makes the nuts and bolts of our lives easier, it is equally important to maintain integrity around safety and security. Today we’re looking at the ways in which smart lockers are incredibly convenient and secure – the best of both worlds – making these smart lockers an exciting innovation for companies, community centers, and multi-family living situations in regard to safety, security, convenience, and efficiency.
Smart Locker Convenience
Smart lockers are becoming a common sight around the world. This is true of grocery stores in North America and pharmacies in South Africa. The more people utilize the lockers, the more interesting ideas crop up in conjunction with what smart lockers make possible.
Smart lockers provide convenience to businesses and consumers from a few vantage points. Features such as easy accessibility, immediate message alerts, temperature, and weather-controlled inner-locker environments, customizable color and size, and minimizing labor cost and task duration are some of the biggies regarding smart locker convenience.
Ultimately, with a simple swipe on a smartphone, residents, colleagues, managers, and customers can retrieve their deliverable items in a matter of seconds. That type of convenience is hard to beat. But here’s the important follow-up question: are smart lockers secure?
Smart Locker Security
To put it simply: yes. Smart lockers are secure. It’s an easy answer to an important question. If only other quandaries were so easily satisfied! Here are some of the specifics behind the what and the how of smart locker security.
Locked Compartments
First and foremost, smart lockers are locked. They are virtually impossible to break into without a code. These containers keep deliverable items secure until individuals arrive to pick up their packages. Items are not waiting on the front stoop of an apartment complex. They are not smashed into a pile of other parcels in a mailroom. With smart lockers, the crisis of porch theft is essentially eliminated. Delivered items await, efficiently well-organized until people come to collect them. This may seem simplistically obvious, but it’s amazing what can happen in the “last mile” – a conundrum that has stumped supply chains for time immemorial. The importance and real-life effectiveness of this most important element of a locker can not be overlooked.
Minimal Person-To-Person Interactions
Person-to-person interactions are the bread-and-butter of some business enterprises. These sorts of interactions also take time and energy. In this particular global moment, when our supply chains are strained beyond the brink and extended person-to-person exchanges come at the heightened risk of spreading a very contagious and deadly virus, minimizing the time we are face-to-face becomes an accurate acute crisis response. It is the responsible, ethical business choice for employees and customers.
And looking to the future: We all hope that our communities will soon emerge from this COVID era. The projections for this being the case aren’t exactly heartening, but either way, in using technology like smart lockers, we have minimized risk between people while also adding greater efficiency to the systems we all depend on. It’s a win-win.
Immediate Communication And One-time Codes
When deliverable items arrive, individuals are immediately notified with this information – empowering them to plan their day accordingly. This communication is clear and accessible with a simple notification on a smart tablet. This immediacy adds an element of security to a variety of scenarios: fresh food has arrived and should be eaten and/or processed in a timely manner. A desperately-needed medical prescription is available for immediate pick-up. With a one-time code, colleagues can transfer important equipment between one another for time-sensitive projects. This immediacy is an added security blanket in many situations.
Smart, Safe, Secure
From these examples, we can see that not only are smart lockers secure, but they are also in fact a vast improvement on existing delivery and office space systems of transferable items.
Our world changes quickly – and that means our systems have to improve along with the changing times. Smart lockers are efficient, adaptable, and perfectly suited to the challenges and opportunities we face in the community and as part of an improving societal structure. Convenience is king, but security sustains.
