With the high percentage of vehicle ownership in many towns and a growing demand for parking facilities, parking is increasingly a challenge and controversial issue for both property managers and users (visitors and resident).

Problems with parking are an everyday occurrence yet parking facilities are always ignored and poorly managed. Improper management of parking hurt businesses and decrease the quality of life for residents.

Due to the importance of parking, property managers need to study and analyze parking programs and performance on an ongoing basis to deal with emergent issues such as;

• Inadequate information for motorists on available parking spaces.
• Inefficient use of existing parking capacity.
• Economic, environmental and aesthetic impact of mismanaged parking facilities.
• Spillover problems- When parking demand cannot be accommodated by available lots.
• Low parking turnover rate. (when cars are parked in the same space for longer than necessary)

Sound management of parking can allow empower property managers to optimize site operations and improve client experiences

There are several technology service providers that provide parking management solutions. Unfortunately, most potential users can’t afford them due to high capital and operational expenditure needed to run and maintain them.  Such solutions end up being targeted at targeted at high traffic areas such as malls and public parking spaces and run by a few Managed service providers.

In situations where parking is charges are levied. Beyond the financial benefits, parking lots managed with profit in mind as well as efficiency can support the efforts of property managers concerned with ensuring the quality of life and the environment of tenants and clients.

Smart Parking: not just a question of technology

We are entering the era of the “smart buildings.” The smart buildings use information and communications technologies to improve, among others, the quality of life of residents or to reduce costs. Smart Parking is a key element of this emerging concept.

With the rapid advancement of “smart” technologies, we can generate new efficiencies, better control revenues and expenses and improve customer service.

Data: a resource to harness

A lot of critical information is lost when parking data is not collected and analyzed for actionable information and insights that can improve client experiences and optimize parking lot operations. Such information includes, visitors and resident’s habits and exceptions such as misuse of parking facilities.

A good data management system can provide a detailed picture of the parking situation and ensure the accuracy, consistency and speed of accessing historical data. It can almost instantly perform many tasks that were once very costly in terms of time and resources. Effective system can help:

• Provide a minute by minute analysis of site occupancy;
• Flag out exceptions
• Empower Checkpoint Managers (Security Team) with high level information on parking lot utilization levels
• Modeling the new parking rate and measure their impact on profitability and performance.

Data on turnover, space occupancy and parking times by visitors, clients and residents enable continuous business and facility improvements such us optimizing security controls work schedules, checking fraud among others.

The data also empowers facility managers to produce management reports that identify irregularities and site inefficiency causes.  For example: the number of free spaces available to company executives and their value or the best rate to offer based on parking volume.

Parking Management Options

Potential Business and parking management models can emerge from the data collected this include optimization opportunities such as;

1. Charging variable parking rates based on the number of vehicles a tenant has and duration of parking. This can also be extended to the size and tonnage of the vehicle.
2. Past hours parking (Charging higher rates for vehicles parked outside official working hours.
3. Provide parking brokerage services so that facilities with excess parking capacity can seek, lease or trade it to others. This allows all building owners to benefit from flexible parking requirements, not just developers of new facilities.
4. Undertake evidence based evaluation of parking related policies and test the effectiveness of new policies such as time based billing instead of fixed designated parking lots per tenant.

Introducing Soja Parking

The team at Identigate Integrated Solutions has considered some of these problems and introduced a very cost effective parking management solution code named Soja Parking that leverages on Smart Stickers.

Soja Parking is a low cost and effective solutions to smoothly run parking spaces with little effort. The product is bundled as part of Identigate’s Visitors and Residents Management solutions

With Soja Parking, all applications and data such as business-relevant information about the parking such as parking statistics, number of free parking spaces etc. are accessible from anywhere in real-time – through a web-browser.

Property managers can now focus on their core business. Soja Parking eliminates instances of fraud and unauthorized parking through use of fake stickers.

for more information on how we can make a difference in your visitors,  residents and parking management processes please get in touch with us today on info@identigate.co.ke or call us on +254 798 335 732