Market Trends and How They Affect Parking

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Market Trends and How They Affect Parking

• Sandra Smith Resort Municipality of Whistler
• Peter Lange Texas AM University
• Blake Laufer T2 Systems, Inc.

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Three Major Trends in Parking

• Seeing the forest instead of the trees
• Focus on the big picture
• Empowerment A buzzword no longer
• Allow staff and vendors to truly add value
• The geek shall inherit the Earth
• Rapid technological advancement

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The Big Picture

• Focus on the big things
• Standardize your operations
• Measure the changes

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The Big Picture - Focus

• Focus on the major items while leaving the minor
  ones to others.
• Know whether the changes youre making are really
  improvements.
• Think long-term you dont really want to change
  everything overnight

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The Big Picture - Standards

• Standardization give you more choice in
  solutions, keeps costs (exceptions) down.
• Do what you do well (parking) and dont do what
  you dont do well (everything else).

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The Big Picture - Measurement

• Measurement is needed to know whether youre
  winning or losing the game.
• Seek out KPIs (key performance indicators)
• To run like a business you must analyze
  everything before making a change.

7
Empowerment

• Buzzword of the 90s, its become standard in
  business models but without the hype.
• Need to consider the benefactor of each suggested
  improvement.
• Opportunities for empowerment
• Staff
• Vendors
• Customers

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Empowerment - Staff

• Front-line staff are a wealth of detailed
  knowledge about the operation.

• Provide very clear objectives for the department
  so that staff can work within these boundaries.
• Give staff authority to make decisions

9
Empowerment - Vendor

• If its not within your core business then
  consider outsourcing.
• Need to really understand your costs and cost
  structure before outsourcing.

• Some vendors even provide services directly to
  your customers on your behalf.

10
Empowerment - Customer

• Provide the right information in a timely fashion
  so that customers can self-serve.
• Providing customer access to a customers account
  does not mean a loss of credibility, security, or
  authority.
• Utilize technology to allow your customers to
  access services on their schedule

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Technology

• Rate of change of technology is not decreasing.
• Technology provides a competitive advantage to
  your operation.
• Some trends to watch
• RFID
• Wireless
• Systems Integration
• In-car Meters

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Technology - RFID

• RFID Radio Frequency IDentification
• Can be used anywhere you might use a barcode
  but RFID is invisible and doesnt require a line
  of sight to read

13
Technology - Wireless

• Wireless technologies have matured and are
  growing rapidly in parking.
• Short range (WiFi, 802.11b)
• Long range (cellular data, WiMax)

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Technology Integration

• Integration means making disparate systems
  communicate and exchange data.
• Overall system integration lessens the load on
  humans, leads to more efficiency.

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Technology - Integration
We need to interoperate, we need to make these
things happen and we need to just stop the noise
and start the collaboration and cooperation
I think there is nothing in this that will do
anything other than to delight customers.
April 2, 2004 Sun Microsystems CEO Scott
McNealy and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
commenting on the Sun and Microsofts new
cooperative agreements.
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Technology In-Car Meters

• This is relatively new in North America,
  successfully implemented at Whistler and other
  locations.
• In-car meter is a hangtag-style device that
  charges for parking when activated.

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Technology - General

• Does implementation of technology take away
  peoples jobs?
• How is business process management changed?

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Market Trends and How They Affect Parking

• Sandra Smith ssmith_at_whistler.ca
• Peter Lange plange_at_tamu.edu
• Blake Laufer blaufer_at_t2systems.com