This was a busy morning for my team. Mark was up a bit before midnight to do security updates in the PCI environment. Scot was up at 4:30 moving customers to newer, faster servers running the latest version of Oracle. I met Grant at the Hosting Facility at 6:30 to install a new server, decommission two older ones, and to meet the EMC engineer to install more drives in the SAN.
It was a busy morning, but we don't mind. That's what we do. We want our customers to be able to focus on managing their hosted PARCS solution and running their parking operations, not have their servers compete for attention. So if early mornings make our sophisticated parking software perform just a little bit better, if they make parking management just a little easier, it is all well worth it.
Happy parking.
Jim
We all know the benefits of a good employee training program; training has a positive effect on performance by allowing employees to learn advanced techniques to help them complete their everyday tasks more efficiently. More efficient employees feel more valued and appreciated which leads to reduced turnover and less of a need for supervision. Trained employees are motivated employees and the entire organization achieves its goals more readily.
Don't invest in your parking management software and hardware without also optimizing your staff. The T2 Training Department offers several solutions for all your parking permit management, parking access and revenue control and parking citation collections training needs - and at quite a reasonable price! Arm your employees with access to a recorded video library with over 60 courses they can view at their convenience. Further reward their accomplishment by allowing them to become a Flexpert on your parking system software with T2 Flex certifications on Front Line Permits, Front Line Citations, Front Line Supervisor, Access and Revenue Control and Finance and Audit Control.
Training does not have to be costly. Access to the Recorded Video Library is less than $400 a year and every member of the organization can access the courses that are relevant to their roles. For just a little extra, the training team will set your staff up with an agenda and links to tests. Upon successful completion of all 9 courses, the participant is awarded a certificate. It's a win-win solution to the age-old problem of providing a successful training program. You have the peace of mind that your staff has demonstrated competency and your staff has the skills to meet and exceed expectations in their career. Make the investment that will ensure your team’s success - invest in training!
We discussed ways to become more unified in how we use T2's advanced parking solution during the session. Many customers also take advantage of T2's Parking Access and Revenue Control solution, Handheld Ticket Writers, and Event Parking Management solution. With the Asset Management module, users can now track the hardware and other assets used for those solutions!
Tracking regular maintenance of parking garage equipment, handheld ticket writers, customer self service kiosks, even elevators and vehicles with T2 Flex's Asset Management makes our customers live's easier, and nothing feels better than that. Asset Management in T2 Flex conveniently maintains the scheduling for an asset to be used with an event or scheduling regular maintenance or a repair as it prompts the user when a schedule conflict occurs.
Many of T2's customers were also excited about taking another approach at being unified in that they could use the T2 Flex Report Scheduler to send automatic notifcations to workers about assets they manage that require maintenance. Even better is the fact that parking enforcement officers can enter, maintain, and close work orders (including attaching photos!) right on the handheld ticket writer!
Becoming unified means becoming more efficient with your parking system software.
So, I've been with T2 Systems for 12 days now. I've jumped in feet first, and the water is great, folks!
I spent my second week at the 2011 T2 Systems User Group 'Training Camp' Conference. The event registration and information desk was, at times, the social hot spot. There was no better place to be to hear what people had to say about this conference.
As attendees went to their sessions, I took some notes on what people were sharing with me. I wanted to know, "What's all the buzz about this conference?". After 4 long days of informative sessions, social gatherings, celebrations, training, and networking, it finally "clicked".
The Top 5 Reasons to attend a T2 User Group Conference:
5. Impress your boss. After the conference, return home with cost saving or revenue generating solutions. Most people told me that they learned functionality and solutions that they didn't know prior to the conference.
4. Join the T2 Community. Find out what other organizations are doing and how they use Flex. One of the most amazing things I witnessed as a newcomer to the conference was the camaraderie among all of the T2 customers and staff. [PS- T2 throws a great party!]
3. You don't know what you don't know about parking management software. I must have had over 100 people cross the registration desk telling me "Wow! I had no idea I could do that with Flex [or other services]".
2. Build relationships. Get face-to-face time with account managers, T2 thought leaders and most importantly--industry peers. [also see #4]
1. I overheard a long-term customer say, "You really can't afford not to go".
After just one day at T2 Systems, I can tell you my answer would include parking payment systems and parking permit software. Who knew the parking management industry and even moreso that a parking software company could be so awesome?!
The culture at T2 Systems is one that will foster my creativity, and the people are great! After all, the whole is the sum of its parts.
You've heard the saying "product of your environment". Metaphorically, I believe our product is a "product of our environment". The flexible culture is the foundation of what has built FLEX. I believe it is our flexibility that sets us apart from competition, with our people and with our product.
I was the lucky T2 Systems representative today at a ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the launch of new pay-by-phone services in the City of Houston, Texas. And by lucky - I do mean that! It was a pleasure to meet so many great people - our great customers at the city, our great Parkmobile partners, and Houston Mayor Annise Parker.
For those cities and municipalities out there that may be looking to upgrade and improve your parking solution and your parking management, Houston is an excellent example to look to. A T2 customer for a little over two years, Houston uses the T2 parking enforcement (parking citation) and parking permit management solution. However, the city understands that in order to get more people to its thriving - and beautfiul - downtown area, they need to make parking easy and convenient.
Now drivers can pay for parking through their cell phone. During my very short comments at the event today, I mentioned how our mobile phones are so much a part of our lives; we surf the net, we check e-mail, and we make purchases. Why not use them to pay for parking? The City of Houston - and many other cities - have embraced this technology whole-heartedly, and their constituents are better off for it.
But this solution doesn't just make life easy for customers - it makes life a little easier for the enforcement officers, too! Information about the status of the parking meters is sent to their T2 handheld ticket writers in real-time, making enforcement officers more efficient and reducing errors. It's a great, integrated parking enforcement system that benefits the parking operation and the city's constituents.
Occasionally I still find it funny that I work in parking. The parking industry is something we sometimes take for granted, but it was great to see that my colleagues and my great customers in Houston - as well as city officials - understand the importance of how parking, when managed properly, can make a night out, a shopping visit, or a walk downtown not only hassle-free, but super convenient, too.
Great job Houston and Parkmobile!
One of the cool features of the Canadian Parking Association annual conference is Lunch with a Parking Doctor, where delegates come with their parking management ailments and get a prescription for the cure from experienced professionals in the parking business. Sounds, great, doesn't it?
Since I have never managed a parking operation, and since my primary goal at the Conference is to meet with T2 customers and others in the industry to learn about trends and needs in parking enforcement, permit management, acess and revenue control and event parking, I am typically the patient at these lunches. But not this year.
I was summoned to one of the tables by CPA's Sandra Smith and given a patient to consult with. To be honest, I did suffer a short moment of panic (did I mention I had never run a parking operation?). But then I summoned all the knowledge I had gained over the years from my friends and customers who run some of the most advanced parking operations in North America, took a deep breath, and started the consultation.
The patients were quite new to parking and I actually was able to provide them with reasonable recommendations. Their need was to increase revenue from a downtown garage in close proximity to an arena that was only used for monthly parkers. Here was my prescription:
1) Implement a Parking Access and Revenue Control System, collect and analyze occupancy by different groups (residents, employees, etc.) by time of day and day of the week. Then allocate identified open capacity to transient parkers.
2) Make the building security card the parking credential for Parking Access Control.
3) Use the relationship with the arena management group to start pre-selling parking online when patrons buy event tickets, to drive event parking customers to your facility.
4) Offer online coupons to parkers to attract them to your facility.
If you have other ideas please send them to me and I will share with my patients during the next consultation.
Most of the discussion centered on parking management systems and strategies that promote use of alternative transportation, reduction of mandatory parking requirements for developers, and improving the customer's experience during multimodal trips - when they drive part of the way and then park and ride public transit.
I was particularly interested in understanding what T2 Systems, as a parking management system provider, can do to support these TDM initiatives, and the speakers delivered. Lots of ideas for smart people at T2 to think about. One in particular sticks out: how can a parking system support the concept of shared parking? If anyone has ideas, please send them to me.
Oh, and in keeping with the spirit of the conference, I took Megabus from Indianapolis to Chicago instead of driving my car.
I was at T2’s Datacenter the other night, staring at the symphony of blinking lights of the servers and network equipment that make up the Hosting Environment. In this environment, we host over 160 customer’s parking operations. To the customer, it’s an application like no other in the industry – allowing a true Unified parking solution with a plethora of business and industry-centric features wrapped around fantastic support and performance.
To me, at the core, it’s a combination of cutting edge servers and equipment transmitting billions upon billions of ones and zeroes, all utilizing amazing technology from top vendors and producing powerful results.
Sound like a lot of adjectives and overly descriptive? Let me simplify it even for myself. The famous science fiction writer and scientist Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I think that’s a great description of what T2 and other companies living in the technology cloud do every day – deliver magic. Behind the scenes of the Flex Web Page customers' back offices access, or the eBusiness webpage utilized by your customers, are some of the most amazing pieces of technology all working in efficient harmony to process, store, transmit and keep secure your valuable business data.
I’ve been at T2 for several years and have watched the environment grow from infancy to a powerful showplace of what a Private Cloud really is and should be (there’s an inside joke in the T2 Hosting Team – “we were in the cloud before the cloud was cool.”) In my line of work, Information Technology, it’s so easy to get caught up in the technical details and live and breathe the infrastructure that sometimes, you seem to forget what your technology is actually providing: solutions to businesses that are run by real people with real needs and real expectations.
And to me, that’s what my job and my coworkers are all about. We take the technical tools and infrastructure and morph and model it into an efficient machine and service that allows our customer’s to excel at their industry – parking management. We’re proud of our results and of our systems, and we take pride in our offerings.
So what does all this mean to me, the Analyst of T2’s Hosting Team? My goal is simple: the next time you sell a Permit online, look up a citation across a complex system using an advanced query, or monitor your garage from a webpage… and someone asks you – “Hey, how does all that work?”
You can respond, “I’m not sure – I suppose’ it’s a little bit of magic.”
How many of the consumers that are accessing the parker side of T2's enterprise parking management software are using mobile devices? We took a quick and informal look at our the logs from the parker portion of our parking enforcement system and saw that a whopping 17% of our activity was coming from mobile browsers like iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. That's a lot of people buying permits, paying parking citations, and generally doing business far, far away from a desk.
If parkers can pay citations before they even pull out of the parking space where they were cited, that's a lot less Parking Citation Collections to worry about. In some cases, it means that citations are going from Handheld Ticket Writers to completed payments in a matter of minutes.
I'm going to keep watching the logs. I want to see how this changes over time. Happy parking.
Recently, I was in Roatan, Honduras and snapped this photo of a parking lot. I tried to be the good T2 corporate citizen and sell them a new parking management system, but they weren't biting. Maybe next time... :)
So I guess what I am getting at is, aren't they even the least bit worried about having that much cash exchange hands without some kind of control? I mean, yeah most times I go through the gates, the parking attendant rings up the money in the cash register so there is no question. But I am sure there are times when it is busy that the cashier doesn't ring up a transaction, for the sake of saving time. I think this would be a perfect location to have a parking management system. Maybe something like T2's PermitNOW (shameless plug inserted here!) I mean, in order for the parking permits to be printed, a transaction has to take place. So whether the customer is paying by cash or credit card, the parking attendant runs it through the handheld ticket writer and out comes a parking permit for the day. The beauty of this is, since payment has to be made in order to generate a parking permit, everything is trackable through the parking management software on the back end.
Well, seeing as Disney has been in business for a few decades, I guess they probably have this parking thing down, but I say, there is always room for improvement:)
Selling parking spaces is kind of like airlines selling seats, or hotels selling room-nights. The supply of parking is pretty much a fixed quantity: it's not like new parking spaces are made available every day (or planes suddenly fly with more seats, or hotels suddenly have a new wing of rooms to sell).
Because the quantity is fixed you want to maximize the usage of the spaces (or seats or rooms) by filling those spaces every day. A day that a parking space remains empty generates no revenue - just like an empty seat on a plane that has taken off.
What's interesting about selling out the spaces - but not overselling them - is that it serves two purposes: (1) it maximizes revenue at the current price, and (2) it maximizes the number of satisfied customers. Oversell may generate more revenue but it dissatisfies some parkers who can't find space. Underselling generates less revenue and potentially fewer total satisfied customers.
In the case where your supply of parking spaces or airplane seats or hotel rooms is mostly constant you have to use pricing to try to manage the demand. Having a number of parking spaces is actually irrelevant, what you want to do is create a scarcity of available spaces. The key is to find the price at which all the spaces sell, but no more than all of them. Economically speaking, this matches the supply and the demand in a way that satisfies the most people at the highest price. Making the price higher will drive away customers, and making the price lower will result in a shortage of spaces.
Airlines realized this a long time ago, and have come up with many ways of trying to fine tune pricing so that the passenger load factor (the ratio of full seats to available seats on a given flight) is as close to 100% as possible. Pricing for a seat on a particular flight can be revised or altered several times a day by computer systems trying to sell out the plane.
In what ways to airlines use creative pricing? We're all familiar with these.
Probably the most common pricing differentiator is by using a "class" system - first class, business class and coach class are three differentiators. The parking equivalent could be the garage near the building versus the economy lot further away.
Additionally, seats within a class might be priced differently. In coach the airline passenger has the option of paying a premium for an exit-row seat, or for a seat with extra legroom. The parking equivalent here could be reserved spaces near a door, or perhaps parking in a nested area on a given floor of a facility.
Airlines also set their pricing based on the desirability of the flight. Morning and evening flights are more popular than afternoons, so these are priced higher. Wednesday is unpopular for flying so it's cheaper, while Friday and Sunday are the most traveled and subsequently higher priced. Parking does the same thing: early bird specials encourage parking before the rush hour; while special events might cause prices to spike on a weekend.
What is a little more unusual about the airline seat-pricing model is that the airline is aggressive at selling out the seats. The airline computer systems and predictive modeling will change the price of a seat multiple times, even in the same day. If the flight looks like it will sell-out then the remaining seats (the scarce ones) increase in value. Now imagine if parking operations did this - varied the price of the stall based on the number of remaining stalls!
There is a parking operation attempting to do this. The SF park project in San Francisco has received a lot of parking press lately on their goal of adjusting meter prices monthly so as to create a small amount of empty spaces on each block-face. The idea is that parking should be mostly full most of the time. The City plans to combine parking management software, space detection equipment, and a variety of metered parking devices to create gather sufficient data to price spaces monthly. Too much availability? Drop the price. Parking too scarce? Raise the price. It's the free market at work!
It's a simple concept but requires a complex implementation. Many eyes in our industry are watching to see how this works. In terms of the airline's sophisticated daily pricing adjustments, these monthly parking updates are as close as we'll get for a while. But rest assured that if this experiment is a success then you'll see more and more parking operations pricing like airlines.
Take Michael Bloomberg for example. The billionaire mayor of New York City - yeah that Michael Bloomberg. Well guess what? He got his start in the parking industry. Yep, he was a parking lot attendant while working his way through college. Now, I doubt he had any advanced parking management system to track scofflaws, etc. But I personally think it is rather inspiring to see someone of this stature start at the bottom and work his way up and for the record, I think it is really cool that he started in parking.
Let's just say my keys went missing one night while enjoying a good time among friends in lovely downtown Boulder. Thankfully I had a friend drive me home anyway, but when I went to go get my car the next morning I had no keys. Although I desperately tried to return before the parking meter enforcement began, I wasn't able to coordinate a ride and a locksmith in time. Reality sunk in that I'd be receiving my first ever parking ticket.
This is not a big deal, right? Now, you've forgotten where I said I was - Boulder. Parking tickets ARE a big deal! Ultimately I decided I should pay it and not make this a huge moment in history. I wanted to pay online as I thought many city parking solutions allow for that. Much to my disappointment an online payment option was not available, so I mailed in a check (on time, mind you).
Little did I know at the time it would be a foreshadow of my future career. A year or two later I went to work for the city and was heavily involved in the implementation of a new parking ticket management system. I worked very closely with our vendor, T2 Systems in making sure our new parking management system was successful - including offering online citation payments and appeals. I loved working in T2 Flex and taking the trainings offered by T2 that not only increased my knowledge about Flex but also all the available reporting options.
Not a long time later I found myself working at T2! I love sharing my personal experience working with a parking management system as a customer while introducing new concepts to our clients such as an online parking payment system (which Boulder now has - thanks to T2!).
Nope, can't get away from parking - even on a roller coaster.
This made me think. Although some venues handle event parking from time to time, these theme parks do it every day. Thousands of parking transactions happen business as usual. So then, my question is how do they audit these parking attendants? Do these theme parks have a parking management system? If not, how do the ensure every car has paid in some way or another? This is a question I think I should do a little more research on.
Anyone up for a coaster?
T2's new eTicketBook software eliminates the hassles associated with the handwritten tickets by enabling officers to issue parking citations from their in-vehicle computers and automatically upload the citation data into the T2 Flex parking management system.
Cool alert!! The new eTicketBook software also integrates with AutoVu a mobile license plate recognition (LPR) system developed by Genetec.
HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY PARKING METER! Yes, three quarters of a century ago, on July 16, 1935, the parking meter was born in Oklahoma-as was an entire industry. You see, shortly after the first meter was installed, parking tickets came around and of course parking enforcement officers were right there too-only back then, people referred to them as "meter maids".
As seen in some of my previous blogs, joining the parking industry isn't normally your first thought upon earning that college degree, but why not? We have enforcement officers. We work with governments, universities, the private sector and even hospitals. The parking industry is international-just about every country has some sort of parking controls in place. The technology behind parking is constantly being upgraded and tested including things like parking management software, handheld ticket writers, parking pay-by-phone, parking apps for smart phones and of course the new multispace parking meters.
I am pretty sure when Carl Magee developed and installed that first meter, he had no idea he was igniting this industry and in essence changing the world-some think for the better! So, thanks Carl. It is because of you I have a job. And when I tell people I work for a software company that develops parking software, I get that strange look which is always fun.
1. A parking space is like a lawsuit... once you get one you don't want to lose it.
2. Parking at the mall is like the waiting room of a psychiatrist... a collection of people seeking validation.
3. A parking ticket is like bird poop... someting undesirable that shows up unexpectedly on your windshield.
4. Being a parking manager is like a squirrel getting ready to hibernate... you've got to keep track of a zillion nuts.
5. Parking is like paint-by-numbers... results are best when you stay inside the lines.
6. A parking meter is like a pet dog... if you don't feed it then it could come back to bite you later.
7. A manual parking operation is like the BP oil spill... leakage everywhere, no accountability, and a mess that will take years to clean up!
After seeing everything there, I have to say that I'm proud to work for T2. I knew we had some pretty cool stuff (end of shameless plug), but it really hit home how much T2 stood out in that room. Don't get me wrong. I'm not slamming anybody. I'm just so accustomed to thinking about technology meaning servers and terabytes of storage and hosting an Advanced Parking Solution. That makes it easy to forget that a lot of the industry has nothing to do with computers and that technology in parking often has nothing to do with computers.
T2 sells Parking Garage Software, Parking Citation Collections, Campus Parking Solutions, Handheld Ticket Writers and a whole lot more cool parking Technology. That's all cool stuff and I love working with it, but how cool is it to sell a giant ice melting machine that you can drive around. I may have lots of cool servers with a bunch of cool blinking lights, but I can't push a button to melt a bunch of snow off of a parking lot. That's got to be a lot more fun than making something go away with the delete key. Most interesting to me was all of the technology in that melting machine. It (and a few other booths) made me realize that lots of parking technology has to do with fuel efficiency and reliability without having even one server. That said, I think the melter had a few blinking lights so it still made me smile.
Happy Parking!
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