CASE STUDY

Meet The Client

Our client offers year-round vehicle storage for their clients. Their customers have access to their vehicles through a fob system. They are located in a smaller, remote town prone to power outages, especially during the stormy winter. 

Power outages were causing disruptions to their fob reader system. Whenever the system went down, our client had to reset the entire system manually. This led to customers consistently calling the office complaining to staff about not having the access they were paying for and lots of additional time spent resetting what should have been a simple fob access system. 

Customers having inconsistent access to the facility was causing far too many headaches for staff and for our client’s customers. While their security system was technically the correct one (having a fob access security system was the best setup for their needs), they didn’t have a version of that system that worked best for their remote location. 

The original type of controller required an uplink between two different components that were on different power systems. When either one of those went down, the readers would need to be manually reset for them to work again. 

No one’s fobs would work until the power returned and the system was manually cycled.

How We Approached The Project

When our client reached out to Otm, we decided that the best first step would be to see if we could get their existing system working better for them. Dan called the manufacturer to see what could be done about the need for manual resets and if there was a way to simplify this. 

We found out that that was just how the system worked. Because the system worked off of two separate components having to communicate with each other, and the power outages caused disruption to both systems, nothing could be done except to continue doing manual resets. 

We knew that while this would be fine in locations where power outages are infrequent, it did not work as an option for this location and for this client.

They had the correct solution but not the correct version. As business owners, they couldn’t anticipate the two power systems needing to talk to each other to be this big of an issue for them. 

In the end, the solution was straightforward. We replaced the system with a similar one that didn’t have two separate components, an all-in-one solution instead of two systems trying to communicate. 

This meant that our client no longer had to do manual resets after every power outage and that their customers didn’t have to learn or adapt to an entirely new system. They simply updated their fobs and could continue accessing the site normally. 

Otm Systems helped them find a solution that addressed their specific needs and would work for their remote location.

Our client ended up with a version of their existing system that was better suited to their unique needs.

Their customers were happier, and their staff spent far less time doing manual resets and stressing over upset customers.