Containerised personal storage has become increasingly popular over the past few years as people have more possessions. Some like Steeles, based in Barrow-in-Furness, operate a number of self-storage sites together with a successful removals business for both business and individuals. The site is run by a skeleton staff who are only there for emergencies, with access in and out of the facility controlled by entry panels or remote access. The ease with which people can access this additional space and increase or decrease the amount of space they have is central to the service they provide.

The Requirement

Steeles wanted to improve the service they offered without having to increase the staffing levels at any of their sites whilst being able to control and monitor who accessed their facility more effectively. To do this they identified a number of key criteria that any solution needed to provide including:

• Quickly activate fobs to containers/storage units
• Tier the access like a gym membership
• Deny access should someone not pay for their storage unit
• Trigger alerts for fobs that have been disabled
• Global management of all sites from anywhere on any internet connected device
• Remote door open function
• Provide a door unlock invitation via email in emergency
• Reporting on who and when accessed the site
• Reduce costs to manage the communal doors access

The Solution

CAME KMS SimpleKey Web was recommended by one of CAME KMS’ partners and delivered all of the criteria and with a track record in providing access control throughout in the UK Housing sector, CAME KMS were able to very quickly provide the solution and work with the installer to set the system up. Steeles now have an access control system for their sites that will not only provide an improved service to all their customers, but will also enable them to improve their efficiency and save time and money.

The Results

Steeles have been so impressed with the impact SimpleKey Web has had, more storage farms are already being planned for the roll out of the system.

Laura Dickinson from Steeles explains “we needed a door access control solution that allowed us to provide fobs to each customer that controlled which doors they could access and when, but we needed this to be easy to administer and at the same time provide us with real-time reports on who was accessing the site, KMS SimpleKey Web does this and more. The flexibility of the system is fantastic and the ease with which it was installed made the transition easy.”