5 Ways Data and Analytics Can Improve Your Parking Operation
3 min read
Published on Parking Industry
Now – more than ever – organizations of all sizes are gathering data to gain new insights into their customers and develop a greater understanding of their business, and the same holds true for the parking and mobility industry. Parking is an area that is rich in raw data, and the smarter the technology in place to support a parking operation, the deeper and broader the data set that becomes available to owners and managers.
This paves the way to some of the well-known “big data” problems—how to access it and present it in a meaningful and digestible manner, because this is data that decision makers and stakeholders alike want to be able to dive into. The opportunity to learn, understand, and eventually predict a customer’s parking habits will lead an organization in its core decisions and strategies—covering everything from tomorrow’s rates to the ideal permit oversell ratios, and to identify change and growth opportunities while capitalizing on market and supply changes.
To facilitate and automate these efforts, business intelligence tools are evolving at a rapid pace. These tools are connecting data sets – often from multiple subsets – in one location to remove data friction, and they’re helping organizations visualize their most important metrics to gain the greatest insights. And property managers and owners are prioritizing this data analysis to empower business users with the insights they need to improve their parking operations and revenue generation while eliminating inefficiencies.
1. Increase parking occupancy levels based on customer behaviour.
Your parking facility welcomes many visitors daily, all with different parking needs and habits. Keeping an eye on how your parkers are using your facility (things like turnover, average stay, peak times, and peak days) will help you adapt quickly (and at the correct time) to market changes as well as implement the correct modifications to your parking operation to maximize revenue, occupancy, length of stay, and return parkers.
2. Maximize parking revenue streams by right-sizing product offerings.
Another key element in maximizing your revenue streams is uncovered with an understanding of what’s at the core of your parking operation. The efficient use of data-driven insights a BI tool offers lets you find effective, customer-focussed solutions, define and right-size your product offering (decisions like the number of transient stalls versus monthly permit stalls, or early bird rates versus daily max rates, or monthly permits versus flex permits or declining balance permits), and deploy the right resources when and where they’re needed most. Allowing you to turn your data and subsequent analysis into a serious, flexible, and variable competitive advantage.
3. Identify dynamic pricing opportunities that enhance your parking strategy.
Smart technologies such as camera-based parking guidance systems, license plate recognition, and optical character recognition increase your facility’s overall operational performance and help your organization meet greening objectives. But these technologies also provide a rich – and potentially untapped – data set that empowers dynamic pricing opportunities based not only on occupancy, but on location as well. Using metrics derived from occupancy data, customer behaviour, and identities, pricing model decisions are supported by data, and not by a "gut feeling” or what your neighbour is (or isn’t!) doing. And as BI tools continue to evolve to include more AI and machine learning, the availability of predictive analytics will provide organizations with the insights and data to proactively plan and forecast changes to pricing models, providing a significant business advantage. Clearly, analyzing your data can help you make pricing model decisions that meet your business needs.
4. Make period-over-period comparisons.
Parking occupancy levels naturally fluctuate. Data and its analysis allow you to make period-over-period comparisons in all areas of your operation, including metrics like revenue, reservations, validations, payment types, occupancy rates, and customer types. Comparisons give you that moment-in-time view of how your operation is doing and is usually that first sign that something has changed, is off, or is out of alignment. It’s also a good measure to see how changes to your parking program or offering are affecting your standards. Let’s say you just introduced a new early bird rate and your month-over-month revenue from last year to this year has jumped by 17.2%; this is likely a strong indicator of early success with your new offering. But if that same revenue picture has dropped off? It means that you’ll want to investigate all influencing factors like neighbouring rates and offerings, if there’s new availability in the area, and maybe you just need to change the early bird rate or try a new offering. The visualization of this data will be an early gauge of the level of success of changes, external influences, and the overall “health” of your parking operation.
5. Identify successes and pinpoint areas for improvement.
As consumer expectations continue to evolve, so will your operation. Real-time parking data and analytics are vital in identifying what is working and what may need to be changed to continue meeting your customers’ and your parking operation’s needs. An in-depth understanding of all areas of your operation will allow you to propose and implement changes to improve your parking operations, increase revenue, and make data-supported projections for future growth.
Data and analytics are the backbone of any successful parking operation. If you do not have access to real-time parking data, implementing intelligent technologies such as parking access, revenue control systems, license plate recognition, and parking guidance systems will provide you with the tools to fuel future growth.
Reference
Business intelligence for parking - precise ParkLink: Parking management services. Precise ParkLink | Parking Management Services. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3, 2022, from https://www.preciseparklink.com/ps-parking-business-intelligence
Senior Proposal Writer, Precise ParkLink