You will find many online parking management software promising to transform your office car park overnight. Picking one from everything on offer can be an uphill task. However, your individual needs will depend on a variety of factors.
For starters, you must consider the employee strength a parking management software should support. Secondly, what is the diversity of features you seek, and finally, will there be a high investment cost?
sounds overwhelming? You do not need to fret over which parking management software works best for you, as long as you keep the following five things in mind.
Things to Check Before Choosing Parking Management Software
1. Allows Seamless Vehicle Scheduling
The primary objective of any parking management software is to allow employees and visitors to reserve a parking spot in advance. Doing this removes any uncertainty associated with getting a suitable parking space when staff reaches their workplace. It also saves them time otherwise wasted on winning a spot after minutes of circling the lot.
Naturally, all parking management software out there will carry this feature. But, you must select a parking management software with the shortest learning curve. This is only possible if you use a user-friendly and well-designed parking management app.
Such a parking app will have a visual dashboard to pick a parking slot within an office facility. Not only should it offer facility users eyes on real-time slot occupancy, but also allow managers to reserve parking spaces for their specific teams.
2. Carries Availability Alerts/Notifications
It’s not enough that an office parking management app displays real-time parking occupancy. It should also notify employees with specific details like their slot number, booking time, and validity. Users must also be able to schedule alerts so they don’t miss booking a spot the minute it is available. This way, employees can receive parking confirmation notifications on their work email or the app itself.
This feature can also have extended applications. For example, employees must be able to raise a query to the admin if they stop receiving notifications or cannot reserve a slot that has recently been vacated.
A parking management software that keeps users informed about vacancies in real-time through personalized alerts and notifications allows them to plan their office visits in advance.
3. Offers Real-Time Reporting
Before investing in a parking management software, check whether it generates automated reports in real-time. These reports must carry parking space utilization data at peak and off-peak hours. It should also provide the admin consolidated reports on the total number of cancellations, and unused spots throughout the day, along with the average waiting time for employees looking for vacant slots.
This valuable information assimilated into auto-generated reports can help the parking facility manager conveniently track all activity within their lot. Such data can also help managers understand what the parking facility requires, or what it can do without, and how they can optimize the overall space utilization if needed.
4. Allows for smooth navigation
Often in hybrid workplaces or co-working offices, employees might struggle to find the designated parking facility, let alone their slot. A sturdy parking management softwareeven if it’s part of a bigger hybrid workplace solution, must carry the right navigational features.
After letting an employee reserve their parking slot, it should provide them directions to the parking facility. Most apps can do this by linking directions with Google Maps, while others have a real-time map embedded within the app’s interface. Either way, users must not struggle to reach the parking facility after reserving their slot.
Certain parking management apps also go the extra mile and offer navigation inside a parking facility. This means they don’t simply guide you to the outer perimeter of a parking lot but navigate you all the way to your specific spot.
5. Issues Tickets to Parking Violators
While this is not a “must have” feature, you can definitely include it in your “good to have” features list when looking for a parking management software. If your parking facility deals with the problem of violators and unauthorized parking, you can look for an app that issues fines and tickets to wrongly parked vehicles.
The app can have an online positioning system, through which it can record violators and issue them tickets.
Over to You
In addition to all these qualities, there’s one more thing you absolutely must test before investing in a parking management software. You should figure out your shortlisted parking management systems Compatibility with different platforms and operating systems.
It is pointless if you spend your money on a parking optimization tool only to realize it does not work on, say, iOS or Android. So, you must check whether the parking solution is responsive across handheld devices other than smartphones, like tablets and laptops.
looking for parking management software? check out WorkInSync parking management solution. It comes with features that include entry and exit management, cloud-based parking and much more. To learn more about the parking systems, you can get in touch with the product experts for a demo today.
