Page 2 - Software for Parking

Parking is Complicated

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 by Jim Hutchins

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.

Mobile Computing and Parking in 2011

Friday, April 29, 2011 by Jim Hutchins

So I was one of those folks that stood in line to buy an iPad 2. I've never been one to do that kind of thing, but this thing just looked cool to me. It is cooler than I ever expected. It has changed the way I access the online world. That got me thinking...

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.

Our Customer's Success is Our Success

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by Stef Faulkenberry

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:

Theme Park Parking - Room for Improvement?

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 by Stef Faulkenberry

Okay, so lately I have been spending a rather high percentage of my time at the amusement parks of central Florida. The weather has been beautiful and I just like to get out and about...people watch so to speak. What amazes me though, is the parking operations at the different parks. For example, the Disney parks use manned lots to control parking. You pay your $14 fee to gain entrance to the attendant and follow the cones until you get to the designated parking row where several additional parking attendants guide you into your space for the day - ones even on a Segway (which I think is really cool, but...I digress). The same work flow happens over at Universal Studios with one exception, you get to park in a parking garage instead of having the sun beat down on your car in a lot. Other than that, everything is the same - okay no Segway here but everything else is the same.

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 like an Airline

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 by Blake Laufer

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.

Old School Parking Tickets

Friday, February 11, 2011 by Jim Hutchins

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.

Once Upon an Adjudication

Thursday, January 6, 2011 by Needham Atkins

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. . .

Crazy Parking Predictions of 2011

Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by Blake Laufer

As the Old Man of 2010 way to the New Year's Baby of 2011 the question is... what does the New Year hold? Given that some of the most famous prognosticators predict with only 39% accuracy you'll be equally forgiving with these Crazy Parking Predictions of 2011!

> In 2011 parking meters will experience a software glitch similar to Y2K. Twenty-four hours of free parking will be given to anyone who feeds a meter at 11:11am on November 11, 2011.

> 2011 will be the Year of the Parking App. If you have an iPhone, an Android-phone, megaphone, Blackberry, Blueberry or Halleberry then you'll be able to get an "app" that lets you find parking, reserve parking, pay for parking, or share parking with somebody you don't know.

> In 2011 the Internet will officially be renamed "The Cloud". Use of the word Internet will disappear overnight. Nobody will really be sure what the cloud really is, but there will be Parking in The Cloud. One enterprising American City will rename itself The Cloud.

> In 2011 sales of electric vehicles will exceed expectations. With these new vehicles we will see the creation of the electric license plate, which will subsequently befuddle all existing LPR systems.

> 2011 will see rent prices rise in London, England to such a high level that it will become cheaper to live in your car than in an apartment. Parking garage owners will offer cash-for-clunkers to fill empty stalls, and then lease them out as hotel rooms.

Best wishes for a great 2011!

How to get Beat Up and Fired in the Same Day

Wednesday, November 24, 2010 by Jim Hutchins

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.

New Parking Technology in Washington, DC

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 by Stef Faulkenberry

I normally wouldn't write about parking technology. I mean although I work for a parking software company, I am technologically challenged. However, I saw an article recently about Washington, DC testing parking occupancy sensors. A small disc is placed in the parking space that sends information telling officials whether the parking space is occupied or not.

As of now, Washington, DC is just using the sensors to track parking habits. However, in the future the information could be funneled to a smartphone or computer telling customers where to find empty parking spaces. Now, that would be awesome!

Permit Season Help

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by Stef Faulkenberry

Hello!

Since many of you are smack dab in the middle of permit season, I thought it would be approporiate to re-post something our own Maggie Vercoe, Director of Client Engagement wrote last year:

We are in the thick of Parking Permit Season! It requires capitalization because of the sheer craziness of it. Universities especially across the country are bracing themselves for the onslaught of students, staff, faculty, etc to hit their offices and their web pages to get their prime parking permits.

If you are just reading this, and haven't begun your planning, you might be in trouble. Grab the bottle of Jack and hide under your desk until it blows over.

In seriousness, there are a lot of things that you can do to get through the season with little pain.

1. Plan, Plan, and Plan. Run reports over the last year in this date range to see what sales you did, by customer type, by permit location, permit type, and location of purchase. This will help you to plan your communications to your customer. For example, if you had more purchases in your office than online, now is the time to communicate to your customers what a great web page you have and how easy it is to purchase a parking permit online!

2. Map it out! Consider laying out all of your parking permit configuration in a spreadsheet, for example. This will help you identify all of your pricing structures, rules around your permits, and keep you organized. It will make configuring them in your database easier every year if you maintain the copy.

3. Plan out what the week will look like. Staff accordingly. If possible, over-staff. There could be lines out the door. It may be useful to have someone handing out materials while you wait. Rutgers University used to have a tent set up to shield the heat and cold beverages while people waited. If you have to allow people to purchase in your office, this is fantastic customer service for a Department that is not always so liked by its customers!

4. If you do online parking permit sales, make sure that you have tested out everything with your new rules, permits, and pricing in a test environment. This includes test transactions through to your payment gateway and file transfers to payroll or the bursar. If any of your rules or software has changed, testing is key!

These are just a handful of tips. Make sure you plan early and involve all of your key players. Good luck!

T2 Introduces eTicketBook Software

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 by Stef Faulkenberry

So, you are a parking organization that is stuck in the 1960's handwriting parking tickets. There's no budget for handheld ticket writers for all of your parking enforcement officers, so some of them use the old ticket book to write up parking violations. Well, as you and I both know, there are often challenges with writing those parking citations; it can be difficult reading the officers' handwriting (especially if it is like mine) and the time and effort required to locate and manually input the data into the parking management system can be significant.

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.

Don't Follow Leaders Watch The Parking Meters (Bob Dylan)

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 by Stef Faulkenberry

Wow...I have no idea what Bob Dylan was trying to say with those words of wisdom(it's a little before my time). However, I think it is pretty cool that someone like Bob Dylan would even reference a parking meter in a song. That being said, let's get to the meat of this blog...

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.

A Geek's View of Parking Management at IPI

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 by Jim Hutchins

In my last blog entry, I said I thought I should stick to what I know (technology) and not dive too deeply into the industry side of parking that many people know so much better. I'll be keeping that in mind again today. So last month I went to the IPI (International Parking Institute) Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. This was my second IPI (after a bit over three years working in the technology side of the parking industry).

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!

We all want the closest parking space possible - admit it!

Friday, June 11, 2010 by Tracy Maymon

Ok, I don't consider myself a lazy person... I like to walk, bike ride, swim; I always choose the stairs over the elevator (unless we're talking about more than 5 floors of course), and I get peeved whenever I see the same person circling a parking lot or parking garage multiple times just so they can get the closest parking space available. I just think that's ridiculous...by the time they find something, I'm already in the store getting my stuff done!

However, I must admit that there are definitely times when I sooo want to take advantage of the new "mommy" (or should I say "parent") parking spaces that many stores and other areas now provide - even when I don't have my kids with me! How horrible is that?? Have you seen these spaces? They usually are indicated by a drawing on the space that shows a parent with a car seat, stroller or other contraption for transporting your children. And even though my kids aren't with me, the car seats in the back are clearly visible. Would anyone really see me walk out of the car without the kids? Is there an enforcement officer walking the grocery store parking lot with a handheld ticket writer making sure that you really do have your kids with you? Would they really give me a parking ticket or citation?

Believe me, there have been days when I'm so tired and there are clearly no spaces that are close - so I've been tempted to snag one of the "parent" spaces, even without the kids. For those of you who may watch "Desperate Housewives", there was an episode in which one of the wives (Gabby) mis-used her husband's handicapped parking hangtag - just so she could be close and not have to walk far in her high heels. Does my tempatation put me in the same category as her? I certainly hope not!

Let's face it - there are times when we all want to park our car as close to our destination as possible...there are days when we just don't want to walk it. As one who works for a parking management solution provider, I understand the importance of parking rules. That's what keeps me employed! Businesses, cities/municipalities, colleges and universities all need rules, and ways to manage those rules and all of us that park. Why else would there by the need for parking system software, parking permit management systems, access and revenue control systems, and a ton of other parking management solutions?

It's because at the end of the day, we're all selfish - willing to fight, drive around, waste valuable time - and break the rules, in order to snag that coveted close parking space! We all just might as well admit it!

She Has Her Husband to Thank for Her Parking Career

Thursday, June 10, 2010 by Stef Faulkenberry

Continuing with our stories about how T2 employees came to parking is a short blurb from Natalie in Support:

My husband jokingly credits himself for my career. He was writing parking citations at the beach as his summer job when we were both in college. I was tired of working part time in restaurants when a bookkeeping position opened in the office. It turned out that working in parking was a great job to have while also completing my degree. Over the course of the next few years, I worked in customer service, wrote parking citations, booted and towed vehicles, and helped in the parking office. I worked in three different parking operations which were all managed by the same private company. Eventually one of those operations switched their software to T2 Flex and I was introduced to T2 Systems.

Natalie Baird

Another Parking Story from the T2 Storybook...

Tuesday, June 8, 2010 by Stef Faulkenberry

As you may recall, we have been outlining how some of us here at T2 came into the world of parking. Here is the latest in the series for you to enjoy:

Well let’s see,

In 1986 I decided to become a police officer. But never in a million years did I ever think this would lead to parking, I thought it was all “cops and robbers”, you know chasing the bad guys, high speed pursuits, the occasional “help save my cat”. Well over the next few years I made my career advancements and ended up as a Sergeant with the Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin, Texas. After being promoted I took over the supervision of the Parking Office in the Capitol Complex which regulated parking for 14,000 State of Texas employees. HOLY GUACAMOLE, was I in for an awakening when I discovered what parking was all about. Never in my 14 prior years in law enforcement did anyone and I mean anyone ever tell me, train me or mention in passing anything about parking! Well that was my first taste of parking, the purchase of T2 software and electronic ticket writers came next and then my arrival as an employee at T2 a few years later!

So that is how I came to be in parking, and honestly when I became a police officer I never in a million years ever figured I would end up doing anything in parking, never!

Stu Glaeser

T2 Company Meeting

Monday, May 3, 2010 by Stef Faulkenberry

We are back from the annual T2 company meeting. The meeting was a huge success. We learned about new solutions coming from T2 including the new T2 branded parking access and revenue control hardware. This is cool, T2 Systems now has our own brand of revenue control hardware. This means we offer not only the parking industry's first unified software solution where parking operations can manage both the permits and enforcement and the access and revenue control portions of parking in one web based, fully hostable system, but we also offer the parking access and revenue control equipment in conjunction with our distributor partners. Pretty awesome, huh?!

Back to the T2 Systems company meeting. I promised some photos in my last blog, so below you will see T2 in action at the Shepherd Center. There we cleaned up a bit and installed new patios for the community.

Coming soon...IPI updates (and maybe some pics)..so stay tuned

Back in the day...

Wednesday, March 31, 2010 by Maggie Vercoe

I started at T2 Systems 11 years ago as an Application Consultant. This is similar to what the Implementation Consultants do now, but with a few more components. PowerPark had less moving pieces and parts, so it took less people to implement.

I worked with the University of Virgina, and the energetic Rebecca White, in 2000. This was one of the hardest and most rewarding parking software installs I have had the pleasure to be a part of. Every install has its challenges, but the sheer volume of their data meant we would be running conversion programs for hours through the night.

Becca knows how to make things fun. We started the conversions running at the end of the day, and a shopping cart ride (oh yes, there are pictures, Kendall), one large beer, several BBQ chicken wings later, we were back in the office at 11 PM to get the next round going.

We stayed pretty late, got a couple of hours of sleep and went back to it. A LOT of work, but always easier to do when you work with a group that knows how to pull the fun into it.

I don't do installations anymore, but when I think back to the early years here at T2 Systems (okay and last year at Portland State), these are some of my favorite memories.

Don't think the rest of you I worked with in the past are exempt. I will be blogging about you in the future!

Sexy Voice

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 by T2 Systems Guest Blogger

Being in T2 Systems support I talk to a *lot* of people over the phone. I have heard a lot of things said but rarely does anything actually leave me truly… speechless.

Several years ago I had scheduled a call with a customer several hours earlier then I would normally start my shift.

Now I am a night owl and so not a morning person, and at the time I was working the perfect shift, 12PM to 8PM ET. Since I worked at home, that meant my alarm didn’t go off until 11:45. Perfect… utterly perfect. As such I detested calls I was forced to schedule earlier then when I started.

So I call the customer a few minutes after 8AM to help troubleshoot some parking software problem that I have long since forgotten. As we were working thru the issue the customer out of the blue tells me:

“Your voice sounds different in the morning”.

I immediately know what the customer is referring to. Being that it was hours before I would normally be talking to any customers my tone was a little more curt and rough then my normal nice and friendly tone. I immediately apologize and try to explain that the coffee just hasn’t reached my bloodstream yet, but the customer interrupts with this gem:

“It’s sexy”

…

So after a couple minutes of me staring silently at my phone I finally mutter a thank you. I then proceeded as quickly as possible thru the rest of the call.

Apparently, despite what my wife says, my morning voice is sexy.