T2 Guest Bloggers

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

Oh, how I remember the day you came into my life.  It was exciting and scary at the same time.  As a staff member in the parking office, I wondered – Were we ready to take such a great step?  Would we be able to handle this?  Were we doing the right thing?

Before you, we had Terminator.  What a cool name!  It did what we needed.  Didn’t always do everything we wanted, but it earned its keep.  But, the day came when we had to say goodbye and welcome PowerPark with open arms.

I remember asking, “Can we just go back?!?”  I was ready to hang up PowerPark and bring back the ole familiar Terminator.  But, I discovered all the new cool things we could do and realized that going back was not an option.  The learning curve and extra time we put into this new product was worth the effort!

PowerPark evolved.  Lots of new features were added as it grew.  We used it…sometimes abused it, but it treated us well.  How glad I was that we as a parking organization adapted and changed to take full advantage of the new technology.  We got new handheld ticket writers and implemented new processes that not only made our jobs easier, but allowed the organization to be more efficient overall. 

PowerPark grew to be an adult and was very much a contributor to the success of the parking business.  However, like all good things, it must come to an end.

Our new friend, T2 Flex, was born about 5 years ago and is allowing us to do things I never thought were possible.  Even though I am now a T2 staff member, I hear the same familiar words from users, “…can we just go back…?”  Change is sometimes hard for all of us.  But, change is necessary and good.  It pushes us to reinvent ourselves and our processes and to reach new heights.  So now that PowerPark has taken its last breathe, it is time to say good bye old friend.  You were good to me and I will remember you fondly.  I look forward to the future with T2 Flex….to T2 Flex and beyond!


Michelle Pritchett
Manager, Product Support

My title says I am the Director of Parking & Transportation, but many days I have to remind myself that my job deals with everyday parking. The cool part of my job and for many in our industry is that we get to be involved in so many facets of a university, a city, an airport, a hospital, or any other organization. Now some of the challenge is to push our way to the table to make everyone realize how important parking and transportation is, but once you’re at the table, you can’t leave.

Some days I hop from construction to construction project, figuring out how we’ll close a major road so the contractor can run a sewer line across the street and another can repave the road they tore up last week. Some days I sit around and decide which construction project to begin just so I can close a lot, as I like nothing better than making my job more difficult.

Some days I hop from one event meeting to another, figuring out how we’ll handle event parking for a sold out basketball game, a swim meet, a few conferences, and those classes the University insists on scheduling each day-unfortunately not many classes on how to read parking signs.

Some days I sit around talking to students who claim it was unfair they were ticketed at 2:14am the night before for being in the parking garage that is signed as no parking between 2am-5am-they had no idea despite having been cited for the same offense three times this year and the large 4-foot tall signs reading “No Parking 2am-5am.”. Some days I have to respond to emails from visitors who tell me how horrible we are for having cited them for having illegally parked in a drive aisle-as they were late to their child’s event, and I of course failed to recognize that their child is clearly more important than anyone else’s child. Some days I have to explain that it’s actually state law to not park in fire lanes or disabled spaces without a disabled placard-although it’s a bit much to expect people to know that since we’re the only jurisdiction with fire lanes and disabled spaces.

Some days I sit around talking to employees about how horrible we are for charging so much for parking when we haven’t gotten pay raises for three years. Good thing my parking staff and I are immune from the state’s budget cuts and have gotten double digit percentage raises the past few years-and don’t have to pay for parking.

Not to be forgotten, some days I sit around trying to figure out how to make our buses slower-as in why else would they be a bit late during rush hour or while it’s snowing. That is when I’m not explaining why the 5pm bus hasn’t shown up yet when it’s only 4:58pm.

So what’s my job again? Despite all the complaints, knowing I’ll be blamed for what others have done, or not done, it’s certainly never boring and always challenging-which is what makes the job enjoyable and worth coming into work. You never know-I may actually help someone one of these days.


Josh Cantor
Director of Parking and Transportation
George Mason University

I came away from T2 Systems User Group 2010 with Becca White’s challenge in mind: take something home and take action. The energy and information sharing at T2’s User Group is always exciting. Previous years as a PowerPark customer, I often felt a little “left out” because I couldn’t learn much more or contribute to the “new” Flex users. This user group was one of the most beneficial for me and our organization than any before. It wasn’t all Becca’s challenge that inspired me to bring something home, but it certainly helped to boost my confidence as a lone attendee from our organization.

I came home and suggested, rather strongly, that we needed to implement the waitlist process in Flex. We have talked about waitlists for years, but there was always some reluctance to change and the promise that we would consider it later. I knew that Flex could meet our needs and the time was right to just jump in!

Waitlists were to replace what we called “Wednesday Permit Sales” that had been used in this office since before my time in Parking. The process went like this with online permit sales:

·         I would have to disable all student sales late on Tuesday afternoon.

·         The manager would give me the numbers of what permits would be available and to whom.

·         I had to check the control groups to be sure the right subclasses were included (since that often would change)

·         Allocate the appropriate number of permits (after being sure that there were hangtags available to accommodate the number to be released)

·         Our code made the permit sales available at midnight on Wednesday’s date.

·         Needless to say, the first couple of weeks when we would release more “prime permits,” we would literally have a couple of hundred students waiting up until midnight and hitting the site concurrently trying for that “25” or “20” or whatever number of permits. Lots of unhappy people, ones who didn’t get what they wanted, emailing us the next day, calling to ask when would more be available, etc. Also, the hundred or so who purchased all hit the office the next day to pick up the new permit (since classes were already in session, we required pick up). It was a cumbersome process to explain to students. Waitlist could solve these issues.  

I volunteered to take on the responsibility of a manual implementation: direct students to a page on our Web site with details about the “New Waitlist Process for spring 2011. “ They sent an email to our office with a “Waitlist request for XX” subject line. (It was some consolation that we would be able to address any ‘exceptions/issues’ on an individual basis by managing it manually). All I could think about over the holiday break when we were closed (our office is not an essential function on campus during breaks :-) were the hundreds of waitlist requests and emails that would be streaming in…I never voiced that anxiety but was confident it would all be done and it was going to work. The long term gain was well worth my short term stress/anxiety level!

I was pleasantly surprised that we only averaged about 50+ emails at the peak of requests. It was easily managed, they were added to the appropriate list and a reply email was sent in Flex to acknowledge they had been added. I had to create some subclasses and still change the control group to allow those awarded the right to purchase to buy online, but it has gone very well! We have awarded rights to purchase and sold over 200 permits, but it has been spread out over 2 weeks. It has evened out the traffic in the office. Phone calls have been almost non-existent since the third day of class. Less stress overall for the students and the office. Whew! It has been busy making it all come together, but it is a success and I look forward to the smooth transition to offering the waitlist option online for fall 2011! What a huge improvement for everyone involved!

Next project…Event management enhancements! I look forward to the new “what can Flex do for me now” session at UG! Thank you, Becca, for reminding everyone about how truly valuable the UG experience is (but I really did already know that! :-). I hope to see ya’ll in Indy, November 8-10!

I just returned from my first on-site customer consulting engagement since joining T2 Systems. I met with Jennifer, Dianne, Dennis, Kevin and many of the staff members at Western Kentucky University to discuss how they are using T2 Flex, what we could streamline and what current functionality is available but not being used. It was an enlightening experience for all involved, including me. Before my arrival they provided me with a list of processes they wanted to review prioritized by “It’s broken and we need to fix it”, “It works but can we make it better”, a “wish list” of things they were not doing in Flex but would like to be, and “Best Practices” – how is everyone else doing it.

I was extremely impressed by the integrity of their database. They run daily queries and reports to connect permits, vehicles, citations and customer records. No stone is left unturned when it comes to matching responsible customers to charges and they use all resources available to them including RoVR, student records, payroll records and appeals filed. 

During my two day visit I was able to observe the day-to-day activities and challenges and talk with staff who had carved time out specifically to review business practices. We found ways to prioritize wait lists using custom fields which will allow them to more fully take advantage of this feature in T2 Flex. We identified the difference between a pre-paid citation and a pre-entered citation which will allow WKU to accomplish the intent of getting the boot information in Flex without causing errors when the handheld ticket writer downloads the same citation but also without attaching a financial transaction when no payments have been collected. We also identified records that could be marked historical to save on screen real estate and processing resources which in turn save time. And what trip to a Parking Office is complete without the sharing of Appeals? Just as I remember – you can’t impound my car, I’m tenured faculty; I had to park close to the door because I had to go to the bathroom (yes, I cleaned it up a little for this blog); and I’m doing my part by riding a bike, you shouldn’t charge me for chaining it to the handrail.

While I was able to use my 12 years experience in the parking business and with the T2 products to offer suggestions, they challenged me with “How can we do this better?” at every turn. A lot has changed in the product since they implemented in 2005 and like most of you; business as usual has prohibited WKU from reassessing the capabilities provided by Flex.

If your department is interested in an in-depth review of your current business practices incorporating any changes since your implementation and suggestions to improve efficiency, contact your Account Manager or the Training Department at T2 Systems. So…on to my report for WKU.

Cases, cases and more cases that is what surrounds the Product Support team day in and day out. If it isn’t one case it’s another. On a daily basis my mind shifts anywhere from Colorado to North Carolina to Alaska to Georgia and everywhere in between, all the while I sit with my feet resting on my cozy heated foot rest. I may not be with you in person but I am in spirit. It amazes me that I can be talking on the phone to someone with problems and testing in their system hundreds of miles away from where the problems are. No matter what the support request is, the support team is there to help you. I might not know the answer right away but I can guarantee that I will try to remember it for the next person that asks the question. Believe me it makes our lives a lot easier if I do. 

In a way, that is how product support really works, you have to see it broken in order to fix it. Product support relies on the users to let us know what we need to fix. Specifics of the situation are always helpful, otherwise we will probably start every case with the suggested solution of - please turn your computer on. I myself was a user of T2 Flex prior to working at T2 Systems and I broke our system - a lot. It wasn’t that I was clumsy, okay I am, it was that I tried new things and they didn’t always work perfectly the first time. I used support more often than my old boss even knows, or needs to know for that matter. So, I was glad I had the solutions and support that is provided by T2 to help me to fix the problems I created. In the end, most of my new ideas worked out and I had Product Support team to thank. It’s really a win/win situation for both involved. If you bring us a new problem chances are pretty good that the next time it breaks we should have all the tools we need to get’er back up and running. And we could possibly provide the information to other users to prevent whatever happened.

Prevention is key. There are a lot of things that could be done to prevent the most common support issues. It might take a little bit of time to get it set up but in the end it will save you a lot of time and possible headache and indigestion. Looking for errors in your logs and reconciling payments daily are probably the most effective methods to preventing problems down the road. It may be undesirable but I guess that’s life, we have to have a problem occur for us to realize that monitoring the situation a little more closely would have prevented it. An example from my personal life is that I should have taken the time to shut the door to my car. Why you ask? No it wasn’t stolen or towed, the reason you leave your doors shut is to prevent stray goats from jumping in and having their way with your formerly good smelling vehicle. I can tell you that I am definitely preventing this situation from happening again and I look for stray goats every time I think of leaving one of my car doors open. This may not be a situation most Parking Services departments can relate to but believe me it is was completely preventable.

If your users are anything like I was, I know that Product Support will always be needed. There is always something new to try, and there is always something old to stop doing. The key to all of this is that Product Support is learning right along with you. Partly because some of us (ME!) are new and haven’t been here that long and also because we as a company are always evolving, and that is the way we like it.

As the holiday season draws near, we all find ourselves rushing around to finish up our Christmas shopping. Trying to find that perfect gift during such a hectic time can lead to forgetfulness and behavior that is outside our typical behavior.  Take a few moments and watch people as they stroll through the mall.  Rather than enjoying their shopping trip to locate something special for the people in their lives, most are trudging through the mall with a grimace on their face that would make The Grinch proud and all the while bumping into little old ladies with their multiple packages they are attempting to carry and not even considering to apologize for their inconsiderate behavior.  What could possibly cause people to act so far outside their normal behavior!?  What happened to holding doors for people and wishing them a Merry Christmas?  Offering to carry packages for that little old lady rather than rushing past her?  Or even more, taking a moment to help the single mom struggling to comfort her crying baby while her 3 year old spills his soda all over himself?  Have we all become so caught up in our own lives and the day-to-day rush that we’ve forgot to consider others or even our own behavior?

Many of you may wonder where this is coming from, and believe it or not, it IS parking related!  Perhaps it’s because I work in the parking industry, or maybe it’s just because I simply do not like to be unprepared because I’m a control freak; but I always take note of where I park.  We all take notice of where we park when we visit an amusement park:  Scooby Doo, Isle 15.  We’re trained to do this when in unfamiliar territory with multiple lots where finding your car would be nearly impossible without taking note.  However, I see it every day within my profession and also in my personal life.  People simply get caught up in the moment when they are on familiar territory and just park their car and off they go.  Especially, during the holiday season.  This is a period when parking garages are filled to capacity, and we often find ourselves parking in areas we generally don’t need to park in; but because it’s a mall we’ve visited hundreds of times, we don’t take that extra moment to think about it.  I was shopping this past weekend, and as I was exiting my vehicle, I observed two women wondering aimlessly through the garage.  Clearly they were trying to find their vehicle.  To no avail, she was pressing the panic button on her key fob—hoping to locate her vehicle by following the sound.  Unfortunately, there were cars driving consistently through the garage, vehicles beeping, and music playing.  Finding her way to her car by following the “sound” was virtually impossible.  These women were carrying many packages, their purses unzipped with the contents clearly visible, and a perfect victim to a would-be crime.  As frustrated as I was at their lack of planning and concern for their own safety, I approached them and asked if I could help.  I offered to drive them through the garage to locate their vehicle.  I could tell they were skeptical, but after evaluating my 98 lb frame, they determined I was relatively safe.  After quizzing them about the time they entered the garage, I quickly calculated they were likely on the wrong floor of the garage based on where I had been diverted to park 3 hours after they had arrived.  Again, a little trick learned in the world of parking.  Within moments, we found their vehicle on the floor I had guessed, and they were very grateful.  I offered some advice for future shopping trips so they would not find themselves in such a predicament again.  Who knows if they will follow my advice, but it was there nonetheless.  Many of the tricks I use are listed below (these work great when traveling and in strange places too!):

·         Go one floor higher than where being directed in a parking garage to avoid driving up and down isles only to find the car in front of you taking the last available space. 

·         Take note of the floor and isle in which you are parked.  Do not assume you will remember it 4 to 6 hours later.  I don’t know about all of you, but shopping is a regular thing for me, and at the end of a long day of shopping, I can’t remember the last time I ate--let alone which floor I parked on.  9 times out of 10, I’ll remember the floor I parked on a week earlier!  Whip out that cell phone and take a picture of the garage sign that indicates which floor and isle you’re parked on/in.

·         Many garages have multiple entrances/exits for each floor.  Take note of the one closest to your vehicle so you can ensure you leave using the same entrance/exit.  If entering a mall, I take note of the store(s) located at that entrance.  Again, take a picture.  Seems like overkill, but this has saved me many times!

·         Do not text or talk on your cell phone while walking to and from your car.  You’re simply not paying attention to your surroundings, and this is very clear to a would-be thief (or worse).  You can answer that text or phone call after your seated in your vehicle.

·         Make sure you know your license plate number.  I’m shocked every day at the number of people who do not know their license plate number!  Again, don’t rely on just your memory.  Every cell phone has a “Notes” section.  Save your license plate number in this area so you always have it if needed.  Telling the garage attendant you’re in a Red Honda Civic won’t help them much if something should happen. 

·         Before heading to your car, make sure you’re prepared.  Would-Be thieves look for women who are struggling to carry multiple packages and appear confused.  Condense the number of bags you’re carrying by placing smaller bags inside of larger ones.  Zip your purse up, and put it on your arm UNDER your coat.  Have your keys in your hand before you head to the garage.  Standing inside a garage fumbling for your keys is a flashing neon sign to be taken advantage of. 

·         Place your packages in your trunk if you are carrying several items.  Fumbling to unlock your car, place them in the back seat, then get in the car (especially if the person next to you parked very close and getting in your car is a challenge).  The longer you fumble to get in your car, the easier prey you are.  Upon getting in your vehicle, lock your doors. 

Many of these tricks are not only parking tricks but standard safety tricks.  However, they go hand in hand, and I watch women every day who simply do not follow this advice and put their own safety at risk.  People forget these basic tips every day, but even more so during the hectic period that leads up to Christmas.  Keep yourself and your loved ones safe this Holiday season and park like a pro!

Teresa Trussell

Ohio University, Parking Operations Supervisor

One of the things I loved to do as a little kid was lay outside in my backyard on a sunny day, glove in hand, and throw a ball to the sky and see if I could catch it coming down before it would hit me in my face. I know when you’re a kid – you’ll do stupid things. Sometimes, I got hit in the face by my own ball. But when I wasn’t getting hit in the face, I was also busy gazing up at the clouds.

I like clouds, and all the different shapes and sizes clouds come in. The white fluffy “happy clouds” and the dark scary “angry clouds” that shoot lightning rain and ruin picnics. I used to look up at the sky and stare at the clouds and try to see what they looked like. It was a game I used to play with my brother, until he went and got a PhD in Atmospheric science and turned cloud gazing into a mathematical equation. Then it got boring.

Now, as if we couldn’t leave the poor cloud alone again, you can’t turn on the TV or browse through a magazine without some add telling you how “cloud computing” is going to change your life. Perhaps you’ve heard someone say “that’s moving to the cloud.” Or, “the cloud is the future.” Or perhaps you still have no idea what I am talking about.

The whole term “cloud computing” came to earth when a bunch of marketing people got into a room and were generally fresh out of ideas on what to call products that would properly confuse the public. Or at least, that’s my theory. Anyways, where it really comes from is on any computer network diagram a symbol of a cloud was used to differentiate your brick-and-motor network (the computers in your building – the one’s you kick when they break) from that of the Internet or someone else’s data. Effectively, the cloud was the zone of “unknown” or the area where all data that left or entered your network had to pass through. You didn’t own the cloud, you didn’t have to worry about what happened in the cloud – the cloud was someone else’s business. You had your own network to worry about.

That was then. This is now. Cloud computing ultimately refers to the idea that now that we live in a connected world (my cell phone can go anywhere on the Internet - I bet yours can too) we should therefore have access to any of our data, securely, quickly, and from as many devices and locations as possible. Well, in order to do that, we can’t necessarily place the data in the brick and mortar anymore – can we? The next logical place to put that data? The cloud. Think about it, probably you have some sort of free email account. Google? Yahoo? Hotmail? Your email isn’t stored at your house or on your laptop/cellphone is it? Not even your place of work? No, in that case, it’s stored in the “Cloud.”

Therefore, T2 Systems, is a cloud provider. We’ve realized the potential for our customers to access and use their parking data from as many places as possible – specifically over a Web Browser. In our hosting environment, we’ve taken the burden of you having to keep your data in-house, and all the costs of security, hardware, staffing, and general headaches that it means to keep your data out of the cloud. Instead, we’ve secured it in a private cloud for our customers. All you need, dear customer, is a web browser and an Internet connection. Glove and baseball optional.

One gentleman had called to pay his parking citation, he received it that day so our Citation Collection Service representative told him it wasn’t in the system yet and that he could call the next day.  He called the next day and the same CCS representative was the lucky recipient of the call and he said "Hey, you member me? I talked to you yesterday and I need to pay a parking ticket and you told me to call back". The CCS representative told him that she remembered him, he paid the citation then was telling her how friendly she was and how good it was to get a kind person and he then asked if they were going steady yet. The CCS rep then told him that would take a couple more calls he said "Well honey, I like you and you sound cute but I don’t want that many parking citations."

I think it is true love:)

Cindy

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.

JB

First things first.  I want to get it out of the way and make myself feel better.  I don’t blog, I don’t do Facebook, don’t do My Space, and think Twitter is causing the downfall of western civilization.  However, T2 has “asked” that I write a blog about something parking/T2 Flex related.  And so I did what I normally do when I get asked to do something I really don’t want to do, I put it off to the last minute.  So I write this with exactly 40 minutes before it is due.  Woe is me.

Now to the topic at hand, a topic I did not pull out of thin air or steal from a fellow T2er and force them to write a completely new blog entry…

There are a myriad of factors that go into a customer’s decision to either be Self-hosted or T2 Hosted and each and every one of those factors is very important.   But one thing that is often overlooked is the opinion of your future favorite neighborhood support specialist.  We in support vastly prefer having a customer go T2 Hosted over Self-hosting.  Don’t get me wrong, we love all of our customers, but we love T2 Hosted customers just a little bit more.  It’s like your kids (or pets), you love all your kids, every single one of them, but you have a favorite that you love just a wee bit more than the others. :)

Now why do we prefer you go T2 Hosted? 

A big reason is plain and simple: convenience.  It is easier and quicker to help a customer through a process, help a customer troubleshoot an issue, when we in support have complete access to your Flex instance.  We can spot check settings, check to see how your database is doing, see what you are seeing, make changes and fix things on the fly, and research issues at any time (including the ever popular night owl hours that I, and a few others, keep).  With Self-hosted all of the above is just a bit more challenging.  More webexes, longer calls, fighting with IT to gain access to servers, etc.

If by chance you encounter a weird issue, an issue that makes us in support go “Wow…  Never seen that before” or “That should be impossible”, we can call in the big guns.  We can get our Enterprise Engineer or even our AppDev group to go in and debug directly against your database to isolate the issue and correct quickly.  With Self-hosted customers if we encounter an issue like this, we tend to have to get an export of your data (if your DBAs/IT even allow it), upload it to our environment, create a database, and import it in before our AppDev group can start even looking.  Usually that process can take a couple days to a week, or even longer.

However, by far, the biggest reason to go T2 Hosted?  Reliable Backups.  We are responsible for your backups, for making sure they run, for making sure they are available in case the worst happens.  We like it that way.  Self-hosted customers are responsible for their own backups and making sure they are being done.

Over the past couple years we have had more than a few customers who thought they had good backups going, but in reality they did not and found out the hard way.  They lost several months of data and it took up to a month to get them back to using their database.  With T2 you don’t have to worry about that, if for whatever reason your database crashes and needs to be restored, we can have it up and restored to within a couple of minutes of the point of failure.  Depending on the size of your data this can be done within as little as a few hours.

Thankfully we have never have had to do that with a T2 Hosted customer (I need to find a piece of wood to knock ASAP).

There are more reasons…  but now I am 17 minutes past the time this thing is due and I need to wrap it up.  So to summarize the above, going T2 Hosted makes the lives easier for us in support and that will in turn make your lives easier.  And I am all for easy.

JB

Jason Berger

I currently work for the Transportation and Parking office at a mid-sized university which sees approximately 80% of its community commute in and out of the school by car every day.   We currently have four times more commuters than we have actual physical parking capacity on the campus. This is a scenario that has become extremely challenging for not only the administration, but increasingly so for students who often will try to arrive on campus hours before their class just so that they can secure some sort of parking in time for their class to start.   In the first few weeks of semesters, it becomes such a tight situation on the campus that members of the community can often wait over an hour to find a space. This is problematic in many ways, especially from a safety point of view.

                As the administration, we have tried to write policy that enables parking permit holders to get what they have paid for and to simply protect their parking rights. Furthermore, we try to run a stringent enforcement operation to hinder illegal parking so that permitted parkers have enough space to park. Every time a newspaper, however, is published at the school we land ourselves on the front page and we are usually being slandered over the cost of parking, not having any free parking, not having enough space, parking enforcement being too severe, etc.  No matter what kind of customer service initiatives we have tried, how many hours we put into effective and transparent policy, what we do to update our parking technology on campus (we are still far from being 100% modern but that’s usually a funding issue) we often fail at keeping our customers satisfied and/or happy. (I’ve seen the anti-parking department Facebook groups and try very hard not to respond with wise comments!) I can’t imagine it’s because we aren’t doing enough, but it seems impossible in this industry to keep any customer happy if you are asking for money due to infractions or for the “price of real-estate”( as we are currently calling our parking capacity that falls in an urban landscape).

                So, I challenge any institution that has a multi-faceted parking operation, to bridge the gap between parking, meeting budgetary needs and providing good customer service. If you’re out there, somewhere, anywhere, S.O.S.!

A theme I believe would be of value if brought before vendors in the parking industry and is not terribly unique to just the parking industry is that Information Technology must take priority within their organizations. There are many leaders in this industry that lag grossly behind in software technology advancements that only handcuff parking organizations that have invested heavily in their hardware/software. Whether its providing interoperability (import, export, API, or interfaces), moving to current IT industry standards (IIS, web services, Oracle/MS SQL, Cloud Computing, Software as a Service), or providing PCI compliance, the simple fact is that vendors in the parking industry have not invested in IT to the detriment of themselves and their customers.

When was the last time you wrote a check shopping? How frustrated do you get when you cannot view a bill or an account online? There is a culture being established that is becoming an expectation of our customers that everything can and should be done from an internet connection (via laptop, desktop, iPhone, PDA, cellular device, etc). Parking organizations appear antiquated if they don’t have an “ebusiness” solution. The reality is that many parking organizations must purchase solutions from vendors rather than build their own due to their own lack of IT investment. The industry needs turnkey solutions developed specifically to meet the technology of the times and the expectations of the customers (both external and internal).

I understand there are some in the parking industry that have already seen the writing on the wall and are pioneering an effort forward in this respect (thanks T2 Systems). My hope is that others in the industry will take initiative to develop enterprise level systems that meet the needs of today as well as tomorrow.

Jeff Reed

Project Manager, PMP

The University of Texas at Austin