Market Trends and How They Affect Parking

1. Market Trends and How They Affect Parking Sandra Smith Resort Municipality of Whistler Peter Lange Texas A&M University Blake Laufer T2 Systems, Inc.

2. 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

3. The Big Picture • Focus on the big things • Standardize your operations • Measure the changes

4. The Big Picture - Focus • Focus on the major items while leaving the minor ones to others. • Know whether the changes you’re making are really improvements. • Think long-term: you don’t really want to change everything overnight

5. The Big Picture - Standards • Standardization give you more choice in solutions, keeps costs (exceptions) down. • Do what you do well (parking) and don’t do what you don’t do well (everything else).

6. The Big Picture - Measurement • Measurement is needed to know whether you’re winning or losing the game. • Seek out KPI’s (key performance indicators) • To run like a business you must analyze everything before making a change.

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

8. 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 Empowerment - Staff

9. If it’s 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. Empowerment - Vendor

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

11. 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

12. Technology - RFID • RFID = Radio Frequency IDentification • Can be used anywhere you might use a barcode – but RFID is invisible and doesn’t 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)

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

15. 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 Microsoft’s new cooperative agreements.

16. 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.

17. Technology - General • Does implementation of technology take away peoples’ jobs? • How is business process management changed?

18. Market Trends and How They Affect Parking Sandra Smith ssmith@whistler.ca Peter Lange plange@tamu.edu Blake Laufer blaufer@t2systems.com