Parking Management System

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!

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!

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".

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.

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.”

It’s funny how normally polite and even-tempered people can become crazy when parking their cars. The same person that will hold the door for you and say a pleasant “Have a nice day!” when passing on the sidewalk will honk, scream, and make obscene gestures if he thinks you stole his parking place. There’s just something about being in a two-ton cage of metal that makes people crazy.

We have a good car and a beater. When I drive the good car, I’m a “Park away from the crowd” kind of guy. A couple of empty spaces around me is my preference, that or give me an end spot and I’ll edge as far away from the next car so they can’t door ding my car. When I’m driving the beater, anything goes, wherever the closest spot is. It’s kind of liberating to drive the beater, I say that I don’t care about it, until the day l I saw a truck scrape my bumper trying to get into a space that was way too small for him. Then you would have thought the car was my baby.   I never did get that scratch fixed.

When I was in college (way back in the 80s), I lived in an apartment complex that never had enough parking. I was definitely driving a beater at the time, as was my best friend. We pulled in to the lot to see a new Camaro parked straddling the line, taking up two spaces. After a quick assessment, we determined that we could squeeze our small cars in on each side of the Camaro, leaving about 3 inches of clearance on each side of it. We were careful to never touch the car, but we certainly didn’t leave him room to open his doors. Later on, we heard a bit of a commotion as the Camaro owner tried to leave. We watched him crawl through the rear hatch and wiggle into the driver’s seat to leave. The next day, the Camaro was parked properly, and about a week later we met the owner and all had a good laugh about it. Now I’d be afraid I’d get shot pulling a stunt like that! 

You used to be able to buy a pad of fake parking tickets from the back of Mad magazine. They looked official enough, starting off with an official looking violation code for taking two spaces or parking poorly. Then as a person read on they found that their punishment was that the fleas of a thousand camels should infest their armpits. I never bought one of these pads, but was tempted a few times, and I’m sure I would have used them had I owned a pad.

I’ve gotten a few stupid tickets in my day too. Parking facing the wrong way on the street. I don’t remember why I parked that way, just did, and left the car there for several days. Parking too far away from the curb. I was parked between two trucks at the curb, and my car was well inside their profiles, but apparently the parking authority had a ruler. My rear tire was beyond 12” from the curb. In Indianapolis about 10 years ago, that was a $20 fine.   When I was about 16 I got a warning for doing donuts in an iced-over parking lot. The officer was actually pretty cool about it, saying he knew nobody was in the lot, but I could have hit a light pole and that would have been a mess.

Now my oldest son is driving so I’m teaching him how to assess a parking lot, who to park next to and who to look out for and to make sure that he’s parked properly, between the lines. I hope he doesn’t do the stupid things I did, but I guess everyone has to grow up. And if he parks poorly, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest his armpits.

If PRO’s can’t work right, how is it assumed WE should?!?

Gas in the Indianapolis area reached $4 a gallon (most stations are hovering at $3.99 currently), and I’m already noticing myself doing things to save fuel. Combining trips, making an effort to take our most efficient car when we can, and asking “do we really need to go?” or “Sure it may be a couple dollars more at the local store, but we’ll spend that in gas driving to the city.” While we’ll feel a pinch in the budget, we pay by credit card at the pump and will continue to fill up our cars, however unhappy it makes us.

Lots of people, however, don’t have that luxury. When the cash runs out it’s out. Period. Regardless of what day of the month it is. So the first thing that goes is the discretionary spending.  Rather than going downtown for an evening and paying for parking and a nice dinner, folks stay at home. Concert tickets and the expenses associated (along with parking)? Discretionary spending. Last time gas prices hit $4 a gallon, my wife started car-pooling to work with 2 other ladies. For over a year, they shared a single spot in a parking garage. Currently, their schedules aren’t “jiving” to carpool (funny that happened when gas was $2.50 a gallon), but I hear her talking about getting the carpool back together.

What happens when gas hits $5 a gallon like some “experts” are predicting? Is your business ready for less traffic or fighting harder for the traffic that you can get? What if there’s a major shift to micro cars, scooters, bicycles or even public transportation in your area? What can you do to maintain a loyal and happy customer base? 

Sometimes the first reaction to less traffic is to lower your prices. Before you do this, ask yourself why? What are the competitors doing, are your prices in line with theirs? Parking is a commodity to the average person, so a better deal will get their attention if all other things are equal, but why keep all other things equal? If your lot or garage is better lit and monitored than the next guy’s, there’s value to that. Are your people friendlier and more professional than the next guy’s?   Rather than cutting your prices, how about rewarding people for referrals, or offer loyalty rewards of some sort? 

Yeah all those things may cost something. But what about a warm “We really appreciate your business, Mrs. Jones”? Simple things like that can make a commodity seem like a relationship. If gas hits $5 a gallon, things could definitely change. The more prepared you are, the more successful you’ll be.