By: James Pascascio, Product Manager, Data & Analytics
The parking industry has rapidly expanded in scope beyond the yellow painted stripes and gate arms of parking lots and garages. Coin-fed meters are giving way to contactless payments and mobile payment apps. Pad and pencil enforcement is being replaced by license plate recognition technology. Advanced software platforms are being used to manage every aspect of an operation on the back end.
With all of this innovation has come a plethora of data – length of stay, capacity, turnover, compliance rates, payment methods, etc. This data is essential to answering questions about your operation, making informed decisions, and creating action plans to cost-effectively improve performance and achieve objectives. Below are four specific ways in which data can have a positive impact on your parking operation.
Improve Organizational Decision Making
Gone are the days of making decisions based on “gut feelings” or assumptions. With data coming in from both internal and third-party systems, parking operations now have an unprecedented level of information available for decision making. Data on parker behavior, resource allocation, permit issuance and enforcement, access and revenue controls, parking financials, and more helps decision makers understand the activity and trends affecting their operation and enables them to make informed decisions, taking the guesswork out of parking.
Improve Efficiency & Effectiveness
In addition to making more informed decisions, data also helps parking operations operate more efficiently. Rather than taking assumptions or limited information and going through several rounds of trial and error, organizations can make more focused decisions based on reliable data. For example, decision makers can look at turnover and occupancy by hour or day to determine what times are busiest and incorporate a new rate structure, rather than making uninformed guesses until something sticks.
Incorporate Data-Driven Feedback
Data also helps organizations understand the tangible impacts of their operational decisions. After making a data-based change, decision makers can see the results, compare to prior performance, and determine whether the change was an improvement. Based on the data, they can continue to adjust until they reach their desired results. Additionally, organizations can see the impact their decisions are making on other areas of their operation, providing a holistic view of the activity and trends affecting their parking operation.
Data = Money
Lastly, data can have a direct impact on an organization’s ROI. In addition to increased revenue thanks to improved decision making, data can also help eliminate outdated and inefficient processes to reduce costs. Additionally, the ability to easily glean insights without having to manually collect data or measure results will improve staff utilization, allowing employees to focus on more important matters and positively impact the bottom line.
T2 Can Help You Master Your Data
The completely new T2 Analytics NXT will be the most robust solution available to aggregate T2 and 3rd-party data, convert that data into actionable information for decision making, and present information in user-friendly reports and dashboards. The high performance solution is developed based on the APDS data specification and empowers you to make decisions about every aspect of your operation, including parker behavior, resource allocation, permit issuance and enforcement, access and revenue controls, and more.
For more information about T2 Analytics NXT, contact your Account Manager or reach out to us via our Contact Form.
Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
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