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How to make the right strategic choices
Companies continue to modernize their business models, services and products with great results. Digitalization has become a large part of most aspects of modern life. Many industries are well on their way in their digital development as they continue to see the benefits of technological transformations and implementations.
Real estate companies are accelerating their way into the digital world, and proptech such as smart locks have revolutionized the market. Smart locks and digital access systems lead to increased efficiency, increased safety, increased sustainability and decreased costs.
Changing lock systems and upgrading to smart locks is a big decision to make. It is also a long term investment, and predicting your needs ten or 15 years down the road can be a challenge – some might say this is an impossible task. It is like having to choose what phone brand you would want for the foreseeable future in 2006, not knowing the smartphone revolution to come. You would still be using a BlackBerry or Sony Ericsson.
For real estate companies, digitalization often starts with their portfolio of buildings. Your real estate portfolio has needs for different locks and keys for you to administrate, which presents another challenge. No one system can tick all your boxes, putting you in a position where you might feel you have to settle for something only satisfying a few portfolio needs. This is where Unloc comes in: We want to simplify everything with keys and open doors – for everyone, everywhere.
Smart Locks
For property owners and real estate companies, smart locks are a natural and essential part of digital development. The demand is inevitable. Just as we have gone from cash to mobile payments, we are now in a phase of getting our keys onto our phones. Research has shown it is one of the most requested digital solutions with tenants, and it's also one of the most tangible projects for a real estate company.
Tenant Demand
There are many reasons as to why switching to smart locks benefit property owners and real estate companies. An important reason being that consumers continue to desire and demand modern, digital systems for access. Sveriges Bostadsrättsrapport 2020 found smart locks to be the most popular proptech product amongst Swedish tenants.
Cost Savings
Money spent on potential new keys and locks will decrease significantly when all keys are stored digitally, meaning they are easily accessible, easily managed and easily shared. Smart locks improve the efficiency of operations as time spent on administering physical keys can be cut significantly. This contributes to lowering costs of operations.
Unloc has estimated that our partners can save up to one million NOK per thousand apartments solely due to time savings introduced by the use of mobile keys – there is no longer a need for physically distributing keys to tenants, realtors, maintenance workers or other third parties. Real estate companies can also avoid the high costs of lock and key related maintenance as fewer keys need to be cut and the makeup of locks can securely remain unchanged when tenants move in and out.
Security
Increased safety is another important benefit of the digitalization of access. Mobile keys cannot be lost as they are securely stored in a digital keychain in an app. Most of us are no stranger to the hassle of losing keys, so having the option of easily storing all keys in one platform will help to increase satisfied tenants. Accesses and shared keys are easily and securely administered in a web based control centre. Building managers are in full control of the keys in circulation with any third parties, and there is no longer a risk of these shared keys going missing once they are digital.
Environment
There is an important aspect of increased sustainability by digitalizing the sector and as a result increasing efficiency. The importance of sustainable development in real estate is reflected in the United Nations Sustainability Goals 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities. There has been increasing demand for both home-deliveries (particularly due to the pandemic), and for sustainable goods in the last few years. Offering a solution which improves efficiency and offers greater sustainability than other options, holds great value.
Real estate companies can eliminate up to thirty percent of the distance driven for operations and maintenance on buildings by using digital access solutions. Smart locks also allow for digital administration of keys and they can be shared as quickly and easily as sending a text message. This helps to drastically reduce time and distance of any transportation, and therefore cut the emissions. Logistics companies can make deliveries outside of peak times during rush hours in larger cities, and the risk of missed deliveries is minimized.
So, your company has decided to update. Where do you go from here?
The benefits of transitioning from traditional locks to smart locks are clear. Your costs will be reduced, security is improved and it has great benefits for the environment. End-users see the value of transitioning to smart locks, and are willing to pay for it. This means that you can offer a new service to tenants, a service of great value, which will increase tenant satisfaction.
As mentioned, Unloc wants to simplify everything related to keys and open doors – for everyone everywhere. We offer a solution for mobile keys and smart locks which makes it easy for you to make the transition from traditional- to digital access systems. Once you have identified your requirements for the smart locks across your portfolio we can help you find the best lock for each type of door. If you already have locks in place that are not Unloc enabled we can look at integrating them into the platform. You can then either choose to administer access in Unloc's own administration tool or we can help integrate the functionality into whatever tenant or property management tool you use already.
This offers an unlimited range of choices. You are no longer locked in to using one hardware supplier, but rather gain freedom of choice to use the solutions which best satisfy your needs for different buildings and doors. The result is that all administration and use of the chosen access systems is done using one simple solution: Unloc. All the keys will be gathered in an app which then becomes a digital keychain, and the data from tenants' usage is in the Unloc integrated control centre of your choice.
We do the hard part for you. Instead of spending valuable time and resources on solving the mission critical challenge of access, which distracts you from your core business, Unloc can provide it for you.
We offer a neutral platform for access management. This platform can be integrated into other existing management systems. All the different locks that are in use in a building are easily handled in the one app and one system where all stakeholders’ access can be managed. You are no longer locked into one hardware solution – and everything with keys is simplified for you and your tenants.
