As a dealership owner or manager, a substantial part of your job will consist of protecting a wide range of assets. From keys to cars, no matter the size of your dealership, it’s critical that you have a range of systems in place that make the management of these various assets easier to take care of.
One important collection of assets that can have a knock-on effect is your dealer plates. Below, we’ve compiled a brief guide detailing how you can choose the best plate management system for your dealer, from carrying out a thorough inventory to speaking with your employees.
Inventorise
In order to be able to manage any kind of asset – plates included – you need to know what it is that you’re actually working with. To do this, you’ll need to create a thorough inventory first. Make sure that you include any plates on vehicles, in storage, and in random places scattered across the dealership.
During this stage of the process, you’ll also want to try to look at where plates are likely to end up – tracing these kinds of things makes it easier to implement a management system that actually ends up being effective, rather than simply being worked around by your employees.
Assess the options
It’s important to note that nowadays, you don’t have to simply settle for a wooden board with some screws on it to hang the plates from. There are all sorts of technologically advanced options, such as plate management lockers from KEYper Systems.
Depending on your asset management needs, you’ll be able to facilitate access control, automate log creation, and even track the individual plates when they’re out and about. It’s crucial that you actively search for new technologies that might not have existed the last time you were on the market for a similar solution, so that you don’t end up missing anything.
Speak with your employees
Something that a lot of business owners unfortunately end up forgetting to do, is checking in with the people who will actually be using these kinds of systems. It’s critical that you speak with your employees about how they navigate plate management at the moment, including any sticking points that they’ve noticed, and inefficiencies they think could be avoided, and changes they might recommend.
Simply choosing a system without first consulting the people who will end up using it is a bad idea. At best, you’ll alienate your employees and make them wonder why you didn’t ask their opinion; at worst, you’ll end up designing a completely unworkable solution that fails in its real-world application, wasting a lot of time and resources as a result.
Choosing the best plate management system for your dealership needn’t be too difficult. So long as you start by taking a step back and examining what it is you’re actually working with, look at some solutions, and then engage your employees in the final decision, you should find an option that’s perfectly suited to meet your specific security requirements.
