How to Design a Smart Locker Solution

HOW TO DESIGN
A SMART LOCKER
SOLUTION
A step-by-step guide to designing a Smart Locker
solution that maximises the benefit to your business

CONTENTS
Introduction
What are you planning to use your Smart Locker for?
What type of Smart Locker should you choose?
Where should you install your Smart Locker?
How to integrate your Smart Locker
How to mitigate problems when integrating Smart Lockers
Beyond Integration - Built On Now Application
Decision Time
4
7
9
13
15
19
22
24
A guide to designing a strategy that ensures
the successful implementation
of Smart Lockers into a business.
This eBook shares the experience we
have developed over years of successfully
delivering Smart Lockers for customers
in almost every industry.
This is a must read for anyone wanting
to make sure they get the best return on
investment for their commitment and their
Smart Locker solution delivers results.
3

INTRODUCTION
For the investment of time and money you are going to get your business to make in implementing
a Smart Locker solution, it’s important to make sure it’s going to deliver the results you commit to.
Designing Smart Lockers for your business seems like a simple task, but to create a solution which
maximises its Return on Investment (which we covered in our first ebook in this series ‘How to Build
a Business Case for Smart Lockers’) and is adopted and used by both your support teams and employees
can be complex to get right.
The successful delivery of Smart Lockers into your business will bring significant benefits, but at Velocity
we also use the “R = Q x A” model to make sure these benefits are realised. Even if you have the best
solution in the world, if no-one uses it, you won’t deliver the results you wanted.
In talking to countless customers, we’ve found that the way you design and implement Smart Lockers
really can be the difference between a solution which will make a Return on Investment of a few months
or a solution that fails to get used and never makes the return that was promised at the outset.
To make sure you achieve the former not the latter, we have compiled a guide of the top most do’s
and don’ts in how to design a winning Smart Locker solution. We’ve learnt what works and what
to avoid through years of successfully delivering Smart Lockers for customers in almost every industry.
This guide covers four main questions which you need to think through when designing
a Smart Locker solution:
What are you planning to use your Smart Locker for?
R = Q X A DESIGN MODEL EXPLAINED
For example
Bad Adoption
1
Results
= 10 x 1 10
= Quality x
Bad Solution
= 2 x 5 100
Adoption
Great Solution and Adoption
= 10 x 10
What type of Smart device should you choose?
Where to install your Smart Locker?
How to integrate your Smart Locker?
Each of these areas contain further elements worth considering, with their own specific pitfalls.
So let’s explore each one in turn.
5

What are you planning to use your
Smart Locker for?
First things first: you need to have worked out what items you want to use your Smart Locker for and what
are the “use cases” or ways in which you plan to use the locker? Some examples for these are listed below.
SMART LOCKER ITEMS
IT equipment examples
Keyboard
Mouse
Laptop
Tablet / Mobile
HDMI cable
LED projector
Non IT equipment examples
COVID
testing kit
Face mask
Room keys
Handheld RFID
scanner
High visibility
jacket
Medicine
7

What type of Smart Locker should
you choose?
SMART LOCKER USE CASES
24/7
availability
Break/Fix
Borrow/loan
equipment
Employee
purchase
Equipment
rollouts
First things first: you need to have worked out what items you want to use your Smart Locker for and what
are the “use cases” or ways in which you plan to use the locker? Some examples for these are listed in
the table on the next page.
Parcel
delivery
Self service
collect/return
New starters Leavers Equipment
return
VENDING MACHINE VS SMART LOCKER
The types of items and the use cases you select will influence what type of device you choose,
where you put them and how they will need to be used.
Choosing the correct type of device at the outset is a fundamental decision that must be correct.
The difference between the two is the degree of configurability each provides.
9

Feature Smart Locker Vending Machine
Description
A Smart Locker with variable
number of doors which open
upon verification method
A Vending Machine with Spiral
Vending motors
Verification method Barcode RFID reader or barcode
Configurable?
Typical number
of items stored
Can they be “daisy chained”
(linked together)
Pro’s
Con’s
Yes – provided the item will fit in
the locker cell, a different items
can be stocked every time
To ensure items are dispensed
successfully every time the
machine is configured for each
item type
Changing like for like items
is possible, but may require
physical configuration changes
of the VM for new items
4–36 per locker 60–300 per vending machine
Yes
Easy to configure
Very flexible to changing items/
use cases
Low Meantime between failure
MTBF (less moving parts)
More user cases
Items can be taken and returned
Low volume of items stored
Less time between restocking
Yes
High volume of items stored
Long time between restocking
Higher MTBF (due to more
moving parts)
Less Use Cases
Items can only be taken,
not returned
While a Smart Locker can be dynamically reconfigured via the cloud (dependent on the door sizes) to stock
a variety of items, a Vending Machine cannot be reconfigured so easily. Before you commit, you should
validate the items and use cases you want and check that your chosen device type can deliver those
use cases.
EXAMPLE:
Configuration
To realise the potential improvements and deliver the required ROI, your device needs to be
stocked with the correct items in the desired qualities. This requires a calculation that will need
to be based on predefined use-cases and supported with real-life data.
What monetary value are the items you are stocking? How many items?
How many refill trips per month works out to be the most economical?
It may be more economical to have a higher number of available lockers at a given site, than to pay for
a single locker to be repeatedly filled every month with several visits. What is more, this data will be key
for the calculation of accurate ROI projections.
11

Shipping & Support
Global shipping, support & logistics all contribute to the “non-functional” aspects of your
solution selection, but they are often overlooked, which can be a fundamental error. While
many Smart Locker providers may offer the hardware to customers, there are few that can
provide a full support and logistics capability on a global basis.
THINGS TO CONSIDER
Where to install your Smart Locker?
Place
There are several considerations when choosing the right location for a Smart Locker,
the most important being the level of footfall or access that any site offers.
Customs requirements
Clear and transparent reporting
of the progress taking place
Incountry Device Certification
requirements for your chosen
countries
Installation and commissioning
once in place
End-to-end collection and
‘white glove’ delivery to your
precise desired location
Ideal locker locations
High Footfall
Easy Access
24/7 Access
Easy Visibility - Surveillance
Reception Areas
Cafeteria / Kitchen Areas
High volume sites e.g. Main / HQ
Expensive to serve, remote sites
Bad locker locations
Secure locations
“The IT guys’ corner”
Basements
Back office corners
Places without power
Locations with powerful internet signal
This is an important aspect of any solution that could prove very expensive if overlooked
in initial calculations.
The ideal are locations with high footfall, access and visibility, such as a reception area, or cafeteria,
as opposed to a basement or janitorial area that might seem hidden or inaccessible. There is also
the essential prerequisite of powerful, secure and reliable internet access.
13

Security
The security of the items within the locker and the avoidance of theft or vandalism is of course
is of course important, but so is the safety and sense of personal security of staff who are
retrieving items. Is the location staffed 24/7? Is it well lit? Is it in a location that is easy to access
without necessitating long walks or commutes? You will only achieve a high level of uptake
from staff if the location is easy to reach and safe and secure.
Space
A common mistake is to find the perfect location for a Smart Locker, but to fail to consider how
the locker might arrive in that place. Smart Lockers are large and bulky items that can weigh
as much as 250kg. When choosing a location, a site survey should be undertaken, as well as a
risk and method statement. This can identify the methods to get the locker in, the height and
width of the access, the load-bearing strength of the floor, and the methods required to gain
access, e.g. stair climbers, trolleys, blankets or skids to protect polished floors, and the safety
equipment needed for the job. This can avoid the nightmare of a locker travelling thousands
of kilometres to a destination, only to become stuck in a stairwell!
More about this is covered in our eBook ‘How to successfully implement Smart Lockers
into your business’.
How to integrate your Smart Locker
This is the area with the highest risk for error, misunderstanding or major overspend due to a lack of scope,
a lack of planning, or assumptions about the scale and complexity of the task.
To get the best out of your Smart Locker solution, it’s essential to understand the benefits of integration.
It’s also important to know that despite what some Smart Locker manufacturers claim, not all integration
options deliver the same benefits.
Why is integration so great?
Most Smart Lockers will have a a cloud or internet-based management application which will provide
you with a console to do the basic task for managing your smart devices:
1. Adding or removing Smart Lockers from your account
2. Adding or removing user permissions who can use the Smart Lockers
3. Adding or removing items which can be placed into your Smart Lockers
4. Reporting on usage and stock levels
5. Device monitoring and alerting
6. Some may have the ability to hold approval (either max. number of items or max. value of items
per month)
15

As good as this sounds (and will be sold
by the locker manufacturer), this isn’t the
tool your support teams use to perform
their day to day tasks, namely your IT
Service Management (ITSM) platform.
Without ITSM integration the standalone
challenge of this console will create serious
operational headaches as they have to use
the Smart Locker portal in parallel to your
ITSM platform.
Standalone Challenge
Your support teams will have to “swivel chair” and
copy each request from your ITSM platform
to your Smart Locker App, manually raising
every ticket
Requests can only be raised by your support
teams when they receive them
All your user data (user names, email addresses
and security badge numbers) has to be copied into
the Smart Locker console and then kept in synch
with numerous updates
All your Smart Locker transaction data is stored
in the Smart Locker console
All of your catalogue information on what items
can be stocked and are loaded into the lockers
has to be maintained
Any reporting out of the Smart Locker console has
to be manually exported and then combined with
your usual IT Service Reporting
Operational Headache
Your Smart Locker solution now creates MORE
work, rather than saving time. You end up with
unhappy support teams who refuse to use
the solution
You can only offer a reactive 9–5 Smart
Locker service
You have a security and GDPR problem – how
secure is this Smart Locker console anyway?
Where is the data stored? Do you want all your
important company information hosted on some
third platform?
You have to manage and maintain your catalogue
of items in two places – yet more work
You cannot get a real-time combined view of use,
spend or savings linked to your existing service
reporting
You have to keep checking the Smart Locker
console for alerts
You have to check the console for alerts and
to check stock levels. Before you know it, your
support teams forget, the solution runs out of
items and your business loses faith in the service
17

How to mitigate problems when
integrating Smart Lockers
All of these problems can be mitigated by integrating the Smart Locker console with your ITSM platform.
However, while the most popular ITSM platform is ServiceNow, there are still different levels of integration
that affect the quality of your solution.
Smart Locker manufacturers will often try to sell their customers their own solution on the premise that
it “Has an ‘Application Programming Interface’ (‘API’) to connect to ServiceNow” for example, but as we
will discuss, there is ‘integration’ and then there is “Built On” App integration.
Integration is generally through an API, which is the software equivalent of Google Translate –
a software connector which does a couple of things:
Pre-maps fields from one
application to the equivalent
field in the next application
Performs a translation or calculation to one set
of variables to make them understandable to
(or perform an instruction in) the next application
19

You can either have a general API (a “port” which enables the application to talk “to the outside world/
internet”) or a specific API pre-mapped from one application to another application it commonly is
asked to conector to (i.e. a “ServiceNow API” would have the commonly used ServiceNow fields already
mapped). This will enable one application to either pass information to, or “call” information from the other
application the API is connected to.
If you find a Smart Locker manufacturer who says that they have an API, or even better a ServiceNow
API, challenge over, job done right? Unfortunately it gets a bit more complicated...
Even with an fully functioning API, you (or your ServiceNow development team, or a third party ServiceNow
consultancy) are going to now have to do the hard job of integrating the way the locker works with your
existing workflows, data models, asset databases, approval models, request forms, agent dashboards…
the list is extensive to get the solution to work in the automated, self-serve approach which delivers the
massive ROI which your business will need.
The price of all this bespoke development work? Typically a project of this nature will take over four months
of time and cost a minimum £250,000 ($350,000) to implement.
But this isn’t the biggest issue with an API
based connector; the biggest issue, as your
ServiceNow team will tell you, is a dreaded
concept called “technical debt” – the idea that
a design choice you make today keeps costing
your business time and money in the future.
The technical debt issue with an API is that if either application on each side of the API has any upgrades
installed, the application on the other side of the API has to be retested to check that the API still works.
This sounds simple, but with ServiceNow installations often becoming complex, and ServiceNow requiring
each customer to stay with one version of the current release (of which there are two a year), you can
suddenly find yourself facing four or more costly API and application testing mini-projects per year.
Suddenly you’ve added another £50,000 ($65,000) per year just to keep everything working. This is on-top
of any additional ServiceNow licences which you might require as you extend your database tables (which
ServiceNow tends to charge hefty sums for).
Now this whole Smart Locker solution begins to sound really complex doesn’t it? Failing ROI without
integration or high levels of bespoke development, additional licences, technical debt and mounting
cost to maintain. If only there was another way?
21

Beyond integration – Built On Now
Application
This technical debt and ROI value challenge is the reason why Velocity Smart Technology embarked on
the ambitious goal to become the world’s first and only Smart Locker solution not to be built on a separate
cloud-based console. Our application is “Built On Now”. This means that our application is one that is built,
natively, on the ServiceNow platform. In other words, it’s an application that has the primary business logic,
user experience, and end customer value all driven/experienced/designed on ServiceNow.
In simple terms; The Velocity Smart Collect TM App which is written in ServiceNow, is certified by ServiceNow
themselves to the standard they certify their own products and installs from the ServiceNow App store.
This means that the Velocity Smart Collect TM App installs in a matter of hours and is fully
configured for your specific business needs in a matter of a few weeks. Being a Built On
ServiceNow application, as you would expect, the App uses all your support portals,
existing approvals, workflow, asset management rules, CMDb and reporting.
Remember the R = Q x A concept we talked about? Well as Velocity Smart Collect TM is just another
ServiceNow App, all your employees and support staff already have have access and know how to use
the App — so you don’t need expensive training and communications. This drives the easiest Adoption
possible, which, when combined with the best solution, will maximise your results.
VELOCITY SMART COLLECT RESULTS
100 Velocity Smart
Collect Results
= 10 The best X
locker solution
10 The easiest
adoption and use
Better than that, the App is certified to work with each new ServiceNow version, so you can say goodbye
to costly API testing and technical debt issues.
23

Decision Time
Velocity Smart technology can transform your IT support with the world’s first and only ServiceNow
certified Smart Locker and Smart Vending solution. The Velocity Smart Collect TM App means no new
applications to install, which saves time for your support teams and users, offering the lowest total cost
of ownership by proven, demonstrable savings in support effort and asset procurement costs.
Can the capability of your
prospective Smart Locker
manufacturer cover all of
your use cases and deliver
the automation savings
you are looking for?
VELOCITY SMART
COLLECT – THE ONLY
COMPREHENSIVE
SMART LOCKER
SOLUTION
FOR MODERN
ENTERPRISE
Hopefully with this ebook we have helped guide you through the design challenges of creating
a Smart Locker solution for your business which really delivers on the investment you have made.
25

uilding
Velocity Smart Technology
16 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4QH
envelope
phone
e: info@velocity-smart.com
t: +44 (0)20 3608 2768