My first BLOG entry, woohoo! I actually like the word BLOG. Of course, being a data programmer, I had to find out what BLOG means (I mean separate from the obvious of original "Web Log" definition).
So I searched (NOTE: I do not "google" anything, it's called searching and I refuse to use that term, or for that matter use Google. I use Yahoo - besides it just sounds like more fun ... YAHOO)
BLOG Web Log Internet
BLOG Better Listings On Google
BLOG Bears Little Organizer GUI
BLOG Boring Lump Of Garbage
BLOG Based Loosely On Groupware
BLOG Boring Lesson On Galaxy
BLOG Biological Links On the Globe
I like the Boring Lump of Garbage one. Cute. I digress.
I work for a company that writes parking lot software. I enjoy what I do--I enjoy doing the detective work and finding ways to force data from old systems into our newest T2 Flex system. I know many people would think I am crazy, it is tedious and it can be exhausting. But at the same time, it is also challenging and puzzling.
At times, I really have to be a detective. Trying to figure out what the customer needs and how our parking solution will fit their style is rewarding...and they're all so different! For example, cities usually need more citation management and boot/tow capability. Along with that, they need an appeals system. And of course, they need to take payments and report on people and vehicles. Colleges need to have permit solutions and a way to get the students information, give them a permit, and take that payment. Another common need of higher education parking systems is a way to put permit holders on a payment plan for the accademic year, or to take it out of a student account at the bursar. Parking garages need to have lots and facility management along with the ability to park the customers (and know how many spaces they might still have left), manage events that would use the garages, and allow secure credit card payments.
Now I get to Blog about it, this should be a lot of fun!
Wow! What an awesome week. I really enjoyed seeing many of you, our customers, at UserGroup - those that I haven't seen in a while, those that I had only previously talked to on the phone, and all the first-time attendees who I hadn't had the opportunity to meet before Training Camp. I know it was a great opportunity for you to learn all those things that Flex can do to make your life easier, save a little time and keep you out of trouble...but User Group was a great opportunity for me, too. I got to learn about your operations - how you are using Flex for your parking permit management (especially as it relates to inventory control), how you are using Flex for your total parking revenue control system, and how you are using the Flex to track your carpool and vanpool participants. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the training table to say "hi" or chat about a challenge.
Remember to take advantage of everything T2 has to offer to make sure you are getting the most out of your parking system software - the free release training, Flex On-line Help, the T2 Listserv and everything you learned in the Training Camp classrooms. But most importantly, lean on all the contacts you made this week. The people who are already using the parking solution you are considering are an invaluable resource.
I'm off to climb some stairs to work off all that good food we ate all week. Hope to see you all next year in Orlando for another event-filled parking adventure!
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend Training Camp, T2's annual User Group Conference, in Indianapolis! In attendance at Training Camp this year were players from across the United States. I had the pleasure of meeting customers from California to Vermont, Wisconsin to Texas, and just about everywhere else in between. We even had a customer or two attend from as far away as Alaska.
All of these players came to Training Camp to learn more about T2 Flex, network with their peers in the industry and have plenty of fun along the way.
As I sat in on the different training sessions each day, I was astounded by the knowledge transfer that was taking place in front of me. The T2 employees provided all kinds of useful information about the different functionality inside T2 Flex. Topics ranged from Parking Citation Collections to Campus Parking Solutions, Handheld Ticket Writers, and Parking Permit Management. Customers would often make comments like, "Wow! I did not know you could do that in Flex!" or "I can't wait to get back to show my employees these new tricks in Flex!"
In the sessions, I also noticed how customers would take the time to help each other. Many times, a customer would present a problem they had at their specific college, municipality, university, city etc., and another customer in the room would have an answer to their problem. Questions were resolved, best practices were shared, and connections were made in a matter of seconds. I can't count how many times I saw things like this happen at User Group.
Finally, after spending long days learning about T2 Flex and networking with their peers, our customers got to have some fun. At the customer party, they got to try out their passing skills, shooting abilities, and bowling prowess while supporting the Special Olympics of Indiana and hanging out with T2 staff and customers. Oh, and there were a few thirst-quenching beverages for all of our hard work throughout the week, of course!
Facilitating the Asset Management class at T2's User Group always proves to be a learning experience - even for the instructor. This year I was happy to see the turn out was as good as it was a few years ago when I taught the class. In those few years, T2's Asset Management module, which is part of of the
T2 Flex parking system software, has evolved quite a bit. It now includes automatic assigned work order responsibilities and scheduling for reoccuring work orders.
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.
After 7 years of working in a major retailer's IT department, I decided I needed a change of pace. While I built up some great relationships with my coworkers, the work itself was monotonous. I needed to work on something bigger and more creative. So when I got a call from one my friends who worked at T2 Systems, I was curious. Two of my friends had left my current company to work there, so I'd heard a lot about the awesome T2 culture. But how would it benefit my career as an Application Developer? How complicated could software that lets you in and out of garages be? I mean, you drive up, press a button, and get a ticket, right? Turns out, there is a whole lot more involved than just that! This week has been eye-opening as I've learned about everything our main product, T2 Flex, does. It is a single unified parking solution covering everything from parking access and revenue control to parking permit management to even handheld ticket writers. It is all highly advanced and fascinating to learn about.
So how will this move benefit my career? T2 has taken pains to stay ahead of the curb--I mean curve--in the industry, and the technology that makes all of those things possible is innovative and interesting. I'm now able to develop and code with experts in the field using software and technology that is industry-leading, be challenged by my work, and have opportunities to be creative!
So now I'm shifting gears and looking forward to the future with T2!
I made the choice to take a position at T2 for a variety of reasons; one of the biggest was the culture. After one day at T2 I was impressed by what this organization has done to create such an exciting and refreshing atmosphere. While many people have moved and changed jobs, moving into this company was like none other. The transparency T2 provides shows great pride within the organization and it’s reflected in each associate. In never having worked for a company that so conciously promotes culture, it has been a wild experience getting involved in T2.
I was also impressed by the industry. At first I didn’t know what to think about access and revenue control, parking garage software and parking ticketing management, but getting more of an understanding of this 25 Billion dollar industry, I see nothing but more potential, growth and opportunity. T2 is an industry leader because of our products, and I am proud to be part of the excitement. I never thought that working in advanced parking solutions, talking about access revenue control and permit management would be my next career move, but after getting learning more and meeting so many of our great customers at User Group, I see nothing but potential. When the staff likes the company and the customers like the company, it creates a really special place of incredible promise.
It’s the people that make this company what it is. It seems like in this economy, business is all about the bottom line. While financials are important, the leadership here at T2 doesn’t forget about their roots and how vital each person is in the grand scheme of things. I was excited to get to work today and I cannot wait to see what’s in store for me tomorrow!
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!
When it comes to parking citation collections, New York City has a $16.7 million problem on their hands. Diplomats, it seems, do not like to park legally.
New York City is home to 289 foreign missions and consulates, many of which have been issued multitudes of tickets for safety violations and blocked fire hydrants. Scofflaw diplomats, drawing on the power of their national treasuries, owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid parking tickets, and the leaderboard is impressive:
- Egypt: $1.9 million
- Nigeria: $1 million
- Indonesia: $725,000
With hundreds of diplomats swarming the city last week for the UN General Assembally, one congressionial spokesperson said, "We can only imagine how much is being racked up."
The phenomenon has already been legislated against in Congress; current law states that 110% of total unpaid parking fines owed to NYC and D.C. are to be withheld from foreign aid and obligations. But New York remains diplomatically shorted--they never collect the missing millions.
Congress is not one of the most advanced parking solutions, and in a last-ditch effort to reign in the diplomat's debts, they are considering an alternative option: revoking diplomatic liscenses from nations with outstanding parking fines.
"If you get a ticket in NYC, you have to pay it. No exceptions," said a spokesperson. "New York City's budget is tight enough as it is, and foreign diplomats do not deserve a free pass at the expense of New York City taxpayers." This issue calls
Citation Collection Services (CCS) to mind, another T2 innovation that has helped our customers reclaim hundreds of thousands in lost revenue. Check out this free
case study if you'd like to see just how significant collections can be for boosting and managing parking revenues.
Read more about New York's Parking problem
here.
This week I set a new personal record for the ratio of time-in-a-plane to time-on-the-ground. I spent about 9 hours on Tuesday flying to/from Arizona to hang out with the good folks at the Southwest Parking Association for about 5 hours. I landed just in time to hear Liliana Rambo give the keynote address. She talked about her initiatives with High Performing Teams as she works with the three Houston-area airports and her experiences with City Parking Solutions in Miami and Houston.
After a great lunch with a table full of folks from Arizona State University ( a T2 Flex customer that uses our Hosted solution ), I was privileged to have the opportunity to give my presentation "Parking in the Cloud - Practical Benefits of a Hosted Parking Solution".
There are so many good reasons for moving to a hosted Parking Enforcement System or Parking Access and Revenue Control System. Hosting with a good partner provides increased uptime, headache-free access to data, huge cost savings, and much, much more.
But that's all I've got room for here. If you want to hear more, I guess you'll just have to catch me at my next speaking engagement.
Happy parking!
Jim
Recently, I got a question from a customer about PCI – one of the many that I answer on a regular basis - and it caused me to pause and think about what PCI means for T2 and our customers. One of the things I'm very proud of about the T2 Systems Hosted Parking Solution is that we're a PCI-DSS Level 1 Service Provider. That said, PCI is a *pain*. It is a really big pain to become a Level 1 Service Provider. It is expensive. It is time-consuming. It is difficult. So why do we do it? So our customers will have Parking Access and Revenue Control systems, parking permit and enforcement systems and eBusiness solutions that require a lot less work on their part to become PCI compliant. We're already hard at work on meeting all of the compliance standards of PCI 2.0. It is better that we do the work once, for all of our Hosted customers, than require that each one go through the process on their own.
Most PARCS solutions are validated to PA DSS 1.x. Like T2, they're working on PCI 2.0. The key difference is that the PCI 2.0 compliant version of T2 Flex comes as part of the customers’ subscription at no additional cost. And the substantial hardware upgrades for the server environment, which can cost tens of thousands, are taken care of by T2 as part of our hosting. And no expensive upgrades to peripheral devices like fee computers are required.
Lower cost and less work are always good.
T2's Hosting Environment includes a dedicated PCI Card Processing environment, and it is T2 that does the upgrade work to the hardware and software as all of the compliance work for PCI. For all of the pain that PCI complian
ce induces, it is intended to protect merchants and cardholders from many of the modern dangers associated with credit cards.
Security is important. Our focus on security makes it easier for our customers to focus on their parking operations.
...and some are made for locking. Check out this city parking solution from the City of Seatle! Thanks to our friends at Montclair State University for passing this along, and to whoever designed this little gem.
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.”
I just passed my four-year mark working in parking. After nearly nineteen years in banking, it took me a while to really understand. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a long, long way from being prepared to sit for the CAPP test, but I think I can honestly say "I get it" when taking about Parking Access and Revenue Control, Parking Garage Software, Handheld Ticket Writers, and a lot of what goes into managing them.
For me, all that complexity translates back to computing systems that talk to all of those advanced parking solutions that are out there in the world dealing with all of the parkers. Even in the summer when many of T2's customers that use our software as a campus parking solution are at a relatively low volume of parkers, we're seeing around 20,000 transactions a day amounting to around a million dollars and that's just for our customers that use our hosted parking system software. A similar number run their own computer systems running T2's parking software.
Each of those transactions generated has a "footprint" on the servers that we use to host. They translate to memory usage, CPU usage, and disk reads/writes. As a geek and a numbers guy, it is absolutely fascinating to watch the metrics as the complex transactions are processed and completed. The main reason we monitor everything that goes on in our Hosting Environment so that we can make sure there's enough hardware to support all of our customers efficiently and well, but I still think all of those metrics are just plain cool.
Happy Parking.
As you know T2 Systems develops parking solutions. We offer software like permit management and access control, we offer equipment like revenue control equipment and handheld ticket writers and we also offer parking ticket collection services through CCS. Who do we offer those products to? Glad you asked, last year at our annual User Group conference we put together a short video concentrating on our customer successes. We did this because we wouldn't be here without our customers and we wanted to highlight a few facts and figures from them. Feel free to watch the T2 Customer Success video:
Used to, we'd use "keywords" in our content to drive Search Engine Optimized results to our Web sites. (ie Buy Advanced Parking Solutions!) Now we put hash marks in front of our keywords and remove the spaces (#buyadvancedparkingsolutions!) as we tweet our content to our followers.
Last year,
one study stated that your friends on Facebook drove more internet traffic than Search Engine results. Google must have found this study credible, as they
just announced their version of the Facebook "Like" button. They're calling this "+1".
How are you driving business to your parking payment system? Are you using Twitter for promotions? If you don't, it's at least a great way to see what other parking operations are doing. Here are some folks you can follow:
Do you know what your folks are saying about your parking operation on Facebook? Or are you avoiding it? Google may have just made it a little harder to ignore what they are saying about you.
Working with Advanced Parking Solutions every day can change your perspective. I've been with T2 Systems for almost four years now and the time has just flown by. This week we were having a technical discussion about some possible enhancements to the features in the eBusiness (parker-facing) portion of T2's suite of Parking System Software and it reminded me of my first day at T2.
On my first day at T2, I got the first and only parking ticket of my life. Yeah, that's what I said. I'd never gotten a parking ticket before being hired at T2 and I haven't gotten one since. That's probably a combination of me being a conformist detail-oriented rule-follower, and living in the suburbs where there just isn't a lot of parking enforcement going on. There aren't exactly a lot of parking garages in my neighborhood.
For the record, I totally deserved the parking ticket. I parked in a two-hour zone and got stuck for a lot longer than I expected. I didn't make it back to my car for almost four hours. The parking ticket was a whopping $10. Thinking back on that now, I'm surprised how old-school the ticket was. It wasn't produced using an electronic handheld ticket writer. It was pen on two-part-carbonless paper. No parking ticket computer for them. Pure no-tech.
The really frustrating part was that the city parking solution was entirely manual. Not just the ticket writing. The whole darn thing. I had to pay $10 in cash ONLY and I had to pay it in person within 7 days. Oh, and the parking office was already closed for the day. If only they had given me a way to pay online, I'd have done it right then and there. I'd even have paid a few extra bucks to save the extra trip back to pay the fine.
At the end of the day, it just goes to show that there are a lot more places than need good parking enforcement systems and that following the rules works well for me.
Did you know the iPhone 5, expected to be released at some point this year, is rumored to have Near Field Communications Technology (NFC) on it? This has the potential to change your customer's mobile phone into an access control device and a payment method within your Parking Access and Revenue Control system.
How would this change the dynamics of your operation? I drive up to your garage for the first time, wave my phone in front of the reader and the gate vends beginning my parking transaction. Maybe the entry station asks me if I want join your customer loyalty program to entice me into repeat visits. Or upgrade me by purchasing a permit privilege linked to my phone. Parking Permit Management straight from the entry lane.
How would this change how you market your garage parking to your customer base? How would this change the equipment you buy when shopping for garage parking solutions?
I've spent the past 8.5 years in parking, and have seen many sides of campus parking solutions. The one that usually brings me an "instant bond" with our customers is the 2 years or so that I spent handling citation appeals.
Aside from being a key component of parking citation management, citation appeals can also provide a delightful source of entertainment. Whether it be the employee who threatened my life from the same "anonymous" email address he used to file his appeal, or the grad student who provided photographic evidence that there were no "No Parking" signs where he had left his vehicle. Granted, his vehicle was 20 feet back from the sidewalk next to the tree line, but he was technically correct.
My personal favorite is still one undergrad who didn't seem to grasp the notion that what she put in an email could come back to haunt her down the line. After offering up several creative activities I could perform upon myself with a BBQ fork, she then followed up by informing me that she had "broken more than her fair share of gate arms over the years" and inviting me to "just try and prove that!" So I hit reply, CCed the dean of students, and sent her the one-word reply of "Done." I miss those crazy kids sometimes.
I think that if I were still working in the operational side of campus parking solutions, I'd have to take advantage of some of the broader functionality offered by today's parking system software. Perhaps a custom field added to appeals records where you could rate them by the creativity of their appeal? Then, when I needed a little pick-me-up, I could run a query to find all my favorites.
I left those appeals behind when I came to T2, but I still have that grad student's picture on the wall above my desk. Just a little reminder that, no matter how delusional, those folks really did believe they were in a legal space. . .
I remember getting my first parking ticket - I knew it was coming long before it ever arrived on my windshield and it was gut wrenching knowing it would be there when I returned to my vehicle.
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!).
Recently I was talking the manager of the company that cleans our office building about facility security to insure that they were following all appropriate security procedures in our space. During that discussion, he told me a story about one of their employees that had a very bad day. The cleaning company has a company-wide policy against propping open doors (even for just a minute). This policy exists to protect their clients as well as their employees. One of their employees didn't follow that policy one night. He had a bunch of boxes to carry out to the dumpster and wanted to do it as quickly as possible. With all of the best intentions, he propped open the door figuring that it would only be for a few minutes. Unfortunately for him, some "bad guys" saw him do that. While he was inside getting a load of boxes, they came in, beat him badly enough to subdue him, and then stole a bunch of computers from the office he was cleaning. Fortunately he fully recovered physically. Unfortunately, his company had to fire him that same day for violating security policies and causing the cleaning company’s client to be victimized because of that violation. Double ouch.
So what does that have to do with Parking, Parking System Software, and Parking Access and Revenue Control? It is all about balancing security with convenience and expediency. Lots of parking facilities accept credit cards. If you take credit cards, you’re subject to PCI compliance rules. Much like the unfortunate employee in the cleaning crew, if you take shortcuts that compromise security, your parking facility could face some rather severe consequences. A parking lot can't be beat up or fired, but your bank could take away your ability to accept credit cards, you could be subject to fines and even huge civil penalties resulting from a credit-card related security breach. When an important or valued customer asks you to "just keep their credit card on file" or emails you their credit card information, it is tempting (and often good customer service) to just do what they ask. Unfortunately, like our ill-fated cleaner, doing that can get you in a lot of trouble.
The key is finding a way to balance good service and following good security practices. Unfortunately, security and convenience are inversely related. It is a heck of a lot more convenient to leave your home unlocked rather than fumble with keys when you come home in the dark with your arms full of groceries, kids, or both, but most of us don’t do that. We lock our homes (and often arm alarm systems) because we want and need to take reasonable precautions to keep our homes safe.
T2 Systems has recently completed our PCI-DSS Assessment to become a Service Provider. As a result of that project, we have been listed on the Visa Global List of PCI DSS Validated Service Providers (
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/cisp-list-of-pcidss-compliant-service-providers.pdf). This is a long, complicated, expensive process, but it was well worth it for us and for our customers. By T2 being a PCI-DSS Service Provider, our Advanced Parking Solutions customers have a lot less PCI-related work ahead of them by using the integrated Parking Payment Systems within our products. Our customers still can’t keep credit card numbers on post-it notes, but they have a whole lot less computer system work to do. Regardless of whether or not you are a T2 Systems customer, diligence with credit cards is critical. Credit card breaches typically don’t result in physical beatings, but if you have to deal with a breach, you may almost envy the guy that was
only beat up and fired.
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