We recently discussed the importance of customer-related data analytics on helping owners and operators understand and anticipate their customers’ needs. There are a number of metrics across other areas of your operation that must be analyzed to make informed business decisions to run your business in the most efficient and economical way possible,,, while creating loyal, satisfied, repeat customers.

Although every business metric is important and can be analyzed to improve parking operations, in this blog we identify the following metrics:

• Occupancy
• Pricing
• Customer satisfaction
• Turnaround / wait times
• Outcomes from promotions campaigns
• Utilization of parking technology (reservation apps, payment apps, etc.)

The ability to identify trends across your portfolio is essential to evaluate patterns (both positive and negative) and see what is working best for your operation by facility, region, and overall. There are many options available to see both real-time statistics, as well as run reports which showcase your overall operational efficiency.

The reports and data analysis opportunities available with today’s technology provide parking owners and operators with the information and resources to create the most efficient operation possible. These tools can consolidate this data from across your entire portfolio into one easy to evaluate dashboard, enabling you to make the decisions that are best for your organization.

This information is valuable to helping your organization understand the behaviors, needs, and desires of your customers and identify opportunities to support them, as well as your staff, as successfully as possible. You can then make the decisions necessary to help maximize your organization’s efficiency by altering pricing, staffing, marketing strategies, and more. This information can also provide you the information necessary to evaluate supply and demand, efficacy of expenses, and the utilization of financial resources to create opportunities to implement new technologies, promotional campaigns, and more. The parking industry today offers countless tools and resources to provide parking owners and operators with the information at their fingertips to successfully evaluate their entire portfolio. This data allows them to identify valuable patterns, eliminate the activities that aren’t working, and capitalize on the behaviors and strategies that are creating the best possible parking experience for customers while maintaining a successful and profitable operation.

Parking operators face some of the most unique challenges in the parking industry, but also have many great opportunities. They are, in a way, expected to be “everything to everyone,” while having the information and resources to support a wide range of clients and sectors.

Parking operators don’t serve just one type of client. Many operators serve a wide range of clients with very different needs and objectives. One operator can be faced with supporting their clients the areas of municipalities, colleges and universities, airports, healthcare institutions, residential buildings, office developments, and more, at the same time. Each of these clients have very different customers, pricing structures, facilities, technologies, and goals.

In addition to their varying client types, operators also perform a wide range of duties. For one client, an operator may be overseeing parking management, technology integration and support, customer service, facility maintenance, and sales and marketing.

Finally, operators also interact with various stakeholders on a daily basis. In addition to managing numerous employees, operators also work closely with the owner organization, technology and solution-providers, aggregators, consultants, and of course many customers. With all of these interactions and responsibilities, it is vital that operators are equipped with the tools and resources that will help them to efficiently manage all of these responsibilities successfully.

Technology is essential to helping with this success. Solutions such as touchless parking, inventory management, and monthly parking platforms will help to not only streamline their operation and their responsibilities, but they will also help to effectively serve customers, while bringing in increased revenues for themselves and their clients.