Real estate is a valuable resource, especially in dense areas like cities and busy places like airports and shopping centers. Facility managers need oversight of their assets. They need to know how many people are using their real estate, especially when the manager is not directly on site of the parking area (for example a facility manager for a shopping center chain). They want to know:
Manually checking parking area usage is difficult, even when the facility manager works in or near the parking lot. Peak hours, turnover, occupancy during non-working hours or occupancy of specific areas (parking spots reserved for trucks, staff, electric vehicles, etc.) are among the many reasons why it is hard to monitor a parking area without the help of a smart parking solution.
A smart parking solution gives the facility manager real-time results on general occupancy and availability, structured analytics on specific areas, and historical statistics on any duration for any parking area in the entire lot. Some smart parking solutions even provide specific modules that warn facility managers when the parking lot is never used or close to full.
There are a number of different smart parking solutions that provide these kinds of structured analytics, from infra-red sensors to magnetic ground sensors and cameras.
Smart parking solutions enable facility managers to collect and thoroughly analyze data so that they can make well-reasoned, effective decisions for the best use of a real estate asset. Smart parking solutions can, for example:
Implementing a smart parking solution also makes it possible to compile reports. These are powerful tools that provide meaningful insights, enabling thoughtful and strategy-oriented decisions. Some smart parking companies even propose customized reports that can be sent regularly to a facility manager’s inbox. Clients work with smart-parking-solution providers to identify the data and time period(s) most relevant to them, and to specify a data format.
Some smart parking companies also provide data in downloadable formats, enabling clients to cross-link the smart parking information with other data sources such as parking payments, employee badges, customer purchases in a supermarket, plane departures at an airport, etc.