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Tuesday , 19 March 2024

Future Proof Platform that Connects Parking & Mobility

Parking Management Technology has to be sensitive to factors like the local context, socio-cultural dynamics, purchasing power and political stability. It is not just about managing the parking spaces; it is also about making mobility simplified. Rasik Pansare Co-Founder & CMO, Get My Parking talks about the software platform his company has created to empower the parking operators.

The aforementioned sensitivity to non-tech factors, that’s what clicked for team Get My Parking. They focused on how parking technology can be designed to make it work for the operators in the ever-changing consumer mobility space.

It is this sensitivity and a big picture vision that have helped Get My Parking (GMP) to digitize 300+ parking lots with 85,000+ bays in just 30 months. Now, the company is evolving to become a global tech enabler for parking operators around the world. Central to this evolution is its IoT Platform.

GMP want to empower the parking operators to help them control their business and maximize revenues with least effort. Today, even though a lot of innovation is happening in parking equipment industry, they all are proprietary hardware that works in silo. Different OEMs would not integrate with each other and the operators would end up as victims with a disarray of equipment that is not interoperable.

THE team does the grind work of integrating with all these OEMs and providing single interface for operators and other stakeholders to engage with all the parking equipment.

What Get My Parking has done is analogous to the computer OS created by Microsoft, the OS maker works closely with all the electronics makers so that varied chipsets and components can all work interoperably to provide the same front-end interface and user experience to PC owners, regardless of what goes inside. This way the chip makers can focus on improving their core competency, i.e. making chips, while Microsoft does the grind work of creating a layer of software that connects all the components. That makes it possible to have the same interface on an old, low-budget i3 processor laptop as on a high-end latest computer. The PC owner community benefits from a standardized experience across all systems. Same goes for GMP Platform, wherein the focus is on making life easier for parking operators by providing them a standardized interface regardless of what type of equipment is installed across all of their parking lots.

Live Example of the Platform

One of GMP’s client who operate hundreds of parking lots in Europe had the classic problem of having no visibility of accurate business data. The client had invested huge investment over the years in different parking equipment, which were of varied brands and versions that could not integrate with each other. The boom barriers would function independent of the bay sensors inside, and the pay stations would not be connected to ANPR cameras. Their head office had no real-time insights of occupancy and revenues of each of their parking lots. Now, with GMP Platform, they have a single dashboard that gives them all historic business data as well as actionable insights. They can use GMP’s tariff engine to experiment with dynamic pricing across geographies from a central place and see the impact in real time.

This client is now offering the automated access control, auto-payment, pre-booking, and hassle-free experience to its consumers across all parking lots regardless of what brand or version of equipment is installed. Recently it had to replace its boom barriers at one location, but that had no change on the dashboard or reports, as the new boom barrier was integrated with GMP Platform. Overall, there is increase in revenues and reduction in costs, thereby increasing bottom line.

Future-proofing Parking Investment

Today’s ever-changing domain of consumer mobility puts a lot of pressure on all service providers to constantly keep pace with the demand. Parking operators usually rely on existing vendors to give them updates and help them remain relevant with changing consumer expectations. But this creates a big dependency on their vendors, and becomes an impossible task if there are multiple vendors for the same parking lot. Its also unfair to expect that each OEM should be responsible to provide updates every six months, as it distracts the OEM from the long-term benefits of new product development, to instead focus on old product updates and countless integrations.

But now, parking operators and city administration can rely on GMP Platform to protect their ‘smart parking’ investment against future technological changes. They get a plug-n-play system that can easily absorb future advances (like electric charging stations or driverless cars) in a standardized manner. The underlying hardware and technologies will keep changing with time but the business processes, consumer touch points and experience will remain on common interface.

East To West

While facing a highly unorganized industry and limited options of affordable parking equipment, GMP were forced to create a modular, interoperable platform that can connect the best of the world to help create order out of chaos. Such market necessity forces frugal innovation that is impactful across the globe. Now, with the power our IoT Platform, the company has ventured into international market with active projects in three countries within the last six months. We are on the track to be in 16 countries within next year with some major partnerships recently signed off.

For long time urban mobility was digitally disconnected with parking systems, but GMP’S platform changes that in practical manner. The team at Get My Parking is set aggressively to expand worldwide, while continuing to be market leaders in home country.

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