Top 5 reasons property managers should implement a parking management system

Research has shown that up to 50% of parking spots remain vacant, leaving a perfectly good piece of real estate completely unutilised. Solution? Implement parking management software.

It has been seen time and time again – parking management systems work. They work because they make life easier, not just for employees but also for the tenants who own the parking space and the property executives who manage them.

In this blog, we’ll show you how Parkable can help provide a better experience for your tenants, their staff and, with that, help you reach your Yield and WALE objectives as well.

1. Improved tenant experience

Working from home and hybrid teams has become increasingly popular among companies, with many maintaining the new work structures even as restrictions have eased.

Across the world, property managers are focusing heavily on enhancing the tenant and employee experience as a way to promote office working and improve weighted average lease expiry dates (WALE) .

With this being increasingly the focus of real estate companies and office managers worldwide, tenant experience platforms and initiatives such as CBRE Host and Cureoscity are becoming increasingly popular.

Parking management systems like Parkable are often overlooked in this space. Nowadays, commercial occupiers want more flexibility over parking leases to match their hybrid working teams.

“Over the past two years we’ve seen that tenant experience is key to attracting and retaining tenants. Making it easy for people to book and share parking space, seamlessly access the parking lot, and easily pay for parking (when required) can make a stressful part of the day - the commute - much more enjoyable,” explains Parkable CEO and Co-Founder Toby Littin. “Parkable provides value for tenant employees, which trickles down to improved tenant retention and acquisition.”

With Parkable, tenants, such as Meta, IWG, and KPMG can easily provide tenants and employees with bookable parking, seamless access, cashless payment and automated resolution. Share and track parking spots among their team and across other tenants in the building when vacant.

Since employees can book their spots in advance, this significantly reduces the stress of the everyday commute and any frustrations that come with arriving at the office only to find that there is no available parking spot. In addition, by reducing tenant stress by adding a simple yet effective management system, employees are likely to be much more enthusiastic about renting out parking spaces and heading to the office.

Parkable ensures seamless ease with onboarding training and support for tenants. In addition, personalised service is available, where each client is paired with a dedicated customer success manager who is also an expert in the parking management space. As a result, they can answer all questions related to parking management, so tenants have the support they need every step of the way. Plus, with integrated hardware solutions, Parkable simplifies some of the most challenging aspects of asset management, like access control and security, simple.

“With Parkable, parking has been made easy for our staff, and the spaces aren’t sitting empty. The app is easy and intuitive to use, the admin panel gives us really useful information about the parking lots, and the Parkable team has been fantastic throughout this process,” says Brian Miller, the director of asset management of Colorado Housing and Finance Authority.

2. Reduced parking administration

All businesses and sub-businesses value transparency and ease, and it's not that different when it comes to managing parking spaces.   Parkable is built with flexibility in mind and can be suited to any parking set-up, with different layouts and dimensions.

Our Parkable app lets tenants view occupancy in real-time and download reports. Tenants are also able to streamline administration with automated problem resolution. This means ease for tenants and allows them to manage workplace parking effortlessly and spending less time on infringements and paperwork.

Reports have shown that tenants who use Parkable reduce time spent on parking admin by up to 90% through automated problem resolution and monitoring.

Savills - White City Place example

This is what White City Place in West London experienced by installing Parkable. Prior to  Parkable, parking was a huge burden for White City Place. The admin and security team would waste hours everyday due to tenants parking in the wrong location. Vehicles would have to be manually, individually identified so that tenants could be asked to move. This caused admin frustration and poor tenant experience.

Parkable offered a way to automate problem resolution and easily see which vehicles belonged to which tenant. This way, if a tenant arrived at the lot to find their spot had been taken, they would be able to easily use the app to file a report to security. This would also send an automated message to the incorrectly parked vehicle owner requesting them to move their car.

“We had a really manual system for managing the parking and tracking the vehicles, which was a waste of time and resources. To be honest, it was a mess. I wanted a system to automate that administrative work, which I’ve found with Parkable,” says Timothy Scanlon, the engineering manager of White City Place.

3. Increased optimisation of parking at the workplace

Before COVID, companies typically spend 12% of their real estate on car park space. The reality is that, though, for countries like Australia and the US, there are more parking spaces than cars. And this is especially true now with companies adopting flexible working models, leading to car spots being utilized less than before.

With that said, with parking spots causing so much angst and frustration among commuters, it is a necessary expense and resource. Furthermore, having it readily accessible at a company has been shown to add significant employee satisfaction, engagement and thus lead to increased performance. So the question is now:

With the work from home model extending well beyond the height of the pandemic and unlikely to go away, how can you help your tenants optimise this piece of real estate?

Through Parkable, employees or other tenants can book unutilised spots and increase usage and revenue for tenants and landlords. Parkable’s sharing and booking features increase parking availability by 25% on average, allowing more staff to park on-site. This means that with every 100 employee parking spots that are being leased, if there are 33 that are empty during the year, $100,000 of potential assets is lost.

And “The sustainability benefits inherent in Parkable are significant,” says Parkable’s Littin. “When someone has booked their parking spot in advance and knows exactly where to go, it reduces the congestion created by circling for a park. In addition, Parkable lets people know not to drive to work when there are no spaces available - encouraging greener modes of transport.”

Oyster Property Group example

Like all asset managers, Oyster Property Group occasionally experiences vacant parking spaces. Since COVID-19, the issue of vacant space has been exacerbated by changing tenant requirements, as workplaces shift to flexible working and tenants require less physical office and parking space.

Luckily, Oyster was able to provide a win-win situation for their tenants with Parkable. Oyster lists any excess car parks at Millennium on the Parkable platform, allowing their tenants to use the car parks on a flexible basis.

This means that if a tenant has more staff members than leased parking spots, their employees can book and pay for onsite parking at Millennium on a daily or hourly basis as needed.

If a new tenant begins a lease, or existing tenants want to increase the number of car parks they are letting, Oyster can easily and quickly reduce the number of parks listed on Parkable to accommodate their tenants.

"Rather than having vacant parks sit empty, Parkable enables us to make those parks available to tenants on a flexible basis, and they're now 85% occupied on any given workday."

- Peter Bowden, Millennium Centre

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4. Increase revenue by increasing yield

There are several things that can be done to increase parking yield, such as increasing parking rates, offering valet services, providing amenities and improving parking structures.

Parkable introduces many features, such as allowing tenants to track which spots are empty and automatically allocate them to other tenants and employees.

Parkable billing also makes it easy for employees and tenants to pay for their parking, whether daily, weekly or monthly. The automated system allows tenants to track employee payments seamlessly through the app.

Other features such as enabling pre-booking, spot-sharing and other useful features for smoother company parking. The ease of commute means an increase in employee satisfaction, which is always beneficial for the company's performance and employee and Tenant retention.

Not only is Parkable able to generate more income by increasing parking yield, another opportunity is the monetisation of new hardware.  These include things such as gate access, automated plate recognition and EV charging management. Hardware such as EV charging stations are a source of revenue. With Parkable, tenants are able to track usage and profits in real-time.

“With Parkable, we’re able to offer tenants at Millennium another flexible car parking solution, all while giving the landlord additional income on otherwise vacant car parks. Win-win!”

Thomas Stott - Commercial Bay Tower (Oyster Group)

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5. Seamless access and EV charger management (integrations)

When it comes to integrating hardware with parking experience software, headaches can quickly arise. This is especially true if you already have existing hardware and infrastructure built into your parking lots yet want to improve the experience of those who use your parking spaces.

On top of this, with the rise of electric vehicles, i.e. EVs, implementing and managing chargers pose another hurdle to overcome.

At Parkable, our hardware and software innovation teams continually work to improve every facet of implementation.

a. EV chargers

In Australia, the first half of 2021 saw 8,688 EVs sold, with researchers noting that the market remained resilient despite COVID still affecting the market and consumer sentiment. In Europe, the United Kingdom is among one of Europe’s largest markets for EVs, with 2020 seeing EV sales soaring 140% year on year. In the United States, EV sales broke records in 2021, seeing a surge of 83% of light electric vehicle sales at 607,600, which marks an 83% increase from 2018. In fact, this is a trend worldwide.

It’s predicted that by 2030, one in four new cars will be battery-powered, and the global market share of EVs is expected to keep climbing, surpassing the 80% mark by 2050.

As property managers, it’s important to be prepare for these industry shifts.

Parkable has launched an EV charger management solution. The goal for this launch was simple: to make EV charging simple and transparent for EV drivers and administrators. From tracking charger use to preventing non-EV cars from parking in designated EV spots to charging staff and visitors for using the chargers to booking a charger – we’ve thought and created a feature that tackles it all.

Our team can help you source your new EV charger as well as provide estimates of the revenue you could earn from charging EV parkers using your space.   If you have existing EV chargers already set up, so long as they are OCPP 1.6J-compliant, they should be able to integrate with our software.

“The Parkable app is a really easy and intuitive way to charge my EV,” explained Mark Haynes, the Northfleet School of Girls assistant network manager.

b. Gate access + ANPR

With Automatic number plate recognition, more commonly known as license plate recognition, seamless entry and exit for staff members, visitors, or anyone you’d like can be granted. The good news is that this seamlessness doesn’t end on the administrative side. With Parkable, you can pre-create a list of approved vehicles and their license plates. From there, cameras detect the vehicles at entry, granting immediate access to permitted vehicles and recording who has accessed the parking space and for how long – all in real-time!

Our platform works with any industry-standard access control gates and barriers and integrates with RTSP-compatible IP cameras.

The process takes 15 minutes, and either an electrician or someone in our team can handle it for you.

“Parkable has provided a complete parking solution for us. Booking, payment, and access control solutions that are easy to use, plus an efficient system for managing the parking garage that reduces the time I need to spend thinking about parking.”

- Sarah Kane National Restaurant Association

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