APRA Mount Eden's parking woes solved

How Parkable is helping a small organisation work a little more harmoniously

It was small consolation, but when Abbie Rutlege was sick in bed, she knew her parking space was putting in a full day. Abbie runs Corporate Services at the Auckland office of APRA, the 87,000 member organisation that helps music creators get paid for their work. Ed Sheeran has ‘people’, but most musicians do not and so many rely on APRA to help them get a fair go.

The 30 people in Edwin Street, Mount Eden, are managing licensing, copyright and royalty issues for an industry that has had its business model turned upside down. They also have a big mission to encourage and nurture new talent.

So they are busy. And they only have 13 parking spaces in one of the most congested suburbs in the city; which means 0.43 spaces each for the mathematically inclined. Which means frustration, endless circling of the block and parking tickets for them.

“These issues were driving us nuts. Someone would be sick or way on business and so their assigned parking space might be free. But none of us knew and so, being polite, we continued to leave the space free whilst risking traffic wardens or paying exorbitant parking fees in Mount Eden,” said Abbie.

“Even in a small office like ours, people’s diary and business movements can’t all be tracked and so whilst we tried to manually sort this out through email and texts it didn’t really work”.

“People were having to park as far as 20 minutes walk away, and in Auckland weather that can be a damp experience, not to mention security issues after dark,” she added.

Enter Parkable. Parkable is an app that dynamically matches your parking real estate and available public parking near you with the real-time needs of your employees and customers. It has thousands of daily users amongst the public in Auckland and now businesses are turning to it to earn revenue for any empty or out-of-hours parking bays they want to rent and, more importantly, to make the lives of their employees and customers easier during the working day.

For example, parking bays that are assigned to senior staff can be made available to others when they're away from the office; staff know in advance whether there is an office park available for them, making it easy to organise alternative transport if need be; and soon, car pooling between staff will be facilitated as well.

Parkable client companies very quickly see significant increases in the ‘optimisation’ of their car parking, but more importantly, they are reporting that what was once a source of employee irritation becomes easy and stress-free. Being able to book a space a few days in advance, allows employees with, for example, family school run commitments to be sure that they can balance home and work.

“I had heard about Parkable and so gave them a call, and in no time at all we had a solution,” said Abbie.

“So when I was sick in bed that day, I was able to list my space on the App and know it would be used and help a colleague.”

“We love Parkable’s schtick. The coordination issues are taken away and you are totally part of our process now.”

“All our staff benefit and it could not have been easier to implement and people got used to it in hours,” said Abbie.

When we asked APRA employees about their Parkable experience, they said:

“It makes such a difference to my working week knowing I don’t have to drive around looking for a park every morning.”

“I love it, to be able to let my park go free and know that others will benefit without me having to gift it is fantastic.”

“There’s nothing that would make it more useful from my perspective.”

“Nothing but good things to say. Intuitive, simple, I’ve used it several times offsite.“

“My daily parking woes are solved by just a few clicks on my phone!”

“Parkable is an easy to use, massively handy app to have if you want to get about Auckland and not outlay huge sums on parking. It’s good value, I like that what I spend is going to businesses and individuals rather than big parking multi-nationals.”

“Its been great being able to book parks the previous night, so I know I have a spot in the morning and don’t have to worry.”

“Parkable has been a lifesaver. Before I was collecting parking tickets far too regularly and it was a nightmare.”

“It’s relieving to know that I’ve got a park before I leave home in the morning as it takes a lot of stress out of the start of my day. Especially after sitting in traffic for over an hour.”

“One thing I found quite helpful with having Parkable for the office was the fact you get the bay number on the app so you know where you can park. Before this someone would offer you a park but you wouldn’t always know where it was!

It’s a great service and so easy to use and means we don’t have wasted empty parks all the time like we probably often did before.”

Music to our ears.