What role does data play in digital parking management?

One of the reasons why it is smart to digitize parking management is that you collect all the information (data) in one place. Parking agreements move out of their binders and into a system, the keel lists are digitized and the physical parking spaces indexed in a digital view. Once that's done, people can use their data to make smarter business decisions.

The majority of our customers find an additional 10% seats that they can charge for in their stock.

— Veronica Lind, Head of Sales & Marketing at Mobility46

In the view of all your parking spaces, thanks to the data you have collected, you can quickly and easily get a complete overview of all your parking spaces. You can see the size of the parking spaces and which are located in attractive locations. Based on that information, you can then price the seats according to their actual size and how attractive they are. By the way, did you know that many property owners who digitize their parking management find places they didn't know existed when they index their locations in a digital view?

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Digital parking management is more than an administrative job

It is easy to see digital parking management as an administrative task, but it is much bigger than that. It is about taking advantage of all available information and making business decisions based on it that strengthen and develop the parking business. Of course, making the administration much easier and the user experience much better are important aspects, but it is the collection of parking related data that is the basis for digital parking management to work as well as it actually does.

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Anyone who works with your parking management should understand how to interpret your data

It's one thing to have access to the data but another to actually be able to interpret it and make the right decisions based on the facts that are on the table. In order for you to make full use of your data, it is smart that everyone internally (who works with parking management in one way or another) learns how to make decisions based on the data.

Say an administrator sees that a certain type of parking space is not rented out as frequently as the others. The occupancy rate is below the cut. Instead of simply stating that this is the case, they should delve into that information and perhaps take the issue further internally to establish a thesis and make suggestions for possible solutions based on the available data.

By collecting a number of different graphs and bars in one dashboard, it becomes easier to decipher and understand for everyone.

In other words, your data is only useful when you know how to use it in decision-making. It can sometimes be difficult to decipher the data in its purest form, but to facilitate the process, it is smart to visualize it based on a number of parameters that are extra important to you. For example, occupancy rates, queuing lists, the use of electric car chargers or the like. By collecting a number of different graphs and bars in one dashboard, it becomes easier to decipher and understand for everyone.

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Quality of data sources is important

It is difficult to touch on the subject of data without mentioning data quality. There is a propensity of many organizations to collect data just because it can. But it is important that it is high-quality data, otherwise you will still not be able to trust the data. No one wants to know how many parking spaces you have. Rather reduce the number of data sources and make sure they are of high quality rather than collecting all the data you come across just for the sake of it.

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Equally important for optimization as a basis for investment

To a large extent, digital parking management is about optimizing the parking business. Increase occupancy rates, compare prices in your areas to optimize pricing, group parking spaces based on the right conditions, and so on. With data as a basis, it is easy to constantly screw on a number of different parameters to improve over time.

But the data is also useful as a basis for different types of investment decisions. Say the demand for electric car charging is increasing, then it's good to be able to go back to their data and see if there are indicators of where these places would be used the most, what power is needed (Our product manager explains it brilliantly in this interview) or if there are certain places that, purely in terms of size, fit better.

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Summary

Digital parking management is so much more than a way to simplify administrative work. It is about optimizing and developing the entire parking business using the data available. When everyone who works internally with parking management learns to use data in their everyday work, you will have more accurate decisions that are good for your efficiency, profitability and customer satisfaction.

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Do you want to optimize your parking business?