We have done our best while working remotely, and eventually got back to our old desks these days: alternating shifts, maintaining the due distance amongst colleagues and replacing video-calls with mask to mask interactions.
Our Head of Product Marketing, Enrico Filippi, was looking forward to coming back to Bologna headquarter, and its Jupiter showroom. We’ve been pondering with him on the pandemic impact on the parking industry, and how HUB’s Jupiter and mobile apps can help tackle the new concerns and challenges of this period. Read more!
I am glad it has been so well prepared by HSE team, under these new conditions: alternating shifts, masks and gloves available at all entrances, temperature measurement before accessing the building, and social distancing reminded through the new arrangement of the office furniture.
However, I’ll be happier when our showroom can open again: for the time being, it is of course not open to customer visits nor engineers’ trainings. We are moving forward with online meetings, technical webinars, and remote sessions but definitely cannot wait to meet up with customers again, here!
Being in touch with our local HUB offices across the globe, we see that markets do face common challenges, and repost similar concerns from their customers. After freezing operations for weeks or even months, the markets look more dynamic, eager to catching up, and more cautious at the same time.
We are willing to support the efforts of all businesses – I think of airports, hospitals, city garages, and more - in reducing the risk of virus transmission. Moving to touchless solutions has become essential to operators and parking owners who wish to offer parking services with minimum touch interaction, both at the access and the payment phase.
From the perspective of service & assistance providers, we also acknowledge that the restrictions on travel and on-site activities still create a challenge for installation timing, and maintenance scheduling. This has led us to adopt new ways to keep everyone safe, plan for maintenance, and rethink the delivery of the same excellent customer service with fewer staff onsite.
This is already happening! For parking operators, digital platforms and flexible solutions offer the unique opportunity to respond to increasing safety requirements within their facilities - immediately.
Social distancing, remote working and the transformation of almost all human activities we know, into digital ones accessible from one’s own smartphone, do not exempt parking.
I am thinking of alternative purchasing options, for drivers to buy their parking tickets and subscriptions in advance, thus avoiding queues close to too many people. Also, they might wish to better plan their commute, make sure they find a parking space, and reach the car park as quickly and safely as possible.
All of these features are native to mobile apps, if we just look at the bigger picture, where parking is one of the daily experiences of our urban life. That is how far these changes are pushing operators and parking owners: to embrace the mobile solutions that grant drivers more autonomy, more options, hence alleviate the stress of parking.
Operators look for rapid and easy deployment of parking services. Not to mention, an easy and comprehensive way to access and analyze their parking data, which is fundamental to quickly react to changing drivers’ demand, habits and trends.
Thanks to Jupiter’s modular structure, the deployment and service time is reduced to minimum, ensuring higher safety to service staff.
From the users’ perspective, all stations come with an intuitive set of icons and guidance elements that turn the interaction into a flawless process: so straightforward, that users do not risk getting lost or panicking over buttons and inlets. Jupiter is touchless by design: ticket and proxy scanners are clearly recognizable, and so is the NFC device/icon for contactless payment.
On top of that, it can be configured in varied ways, to address most safety concerns along the entire user journey. Access to the car park can turn completely free-flow, when an entry station is combined with LPR technology, or with credit in/credit out functionality that leverages the drivers’ card as virtual ticket. Virtual means it is paperless, too! This eco-friendly access medium is also available within our app JPass, or as an integration with other third party apps that might be used on the parking site.
Even though remote work has boomed, we shall expect people to gradually come back to work and so, road traffic to gain back its fair share of cities space and time. Drivers will be more careful, more attentive, and more demanding: let’s make sure we can meet their safety expectations, and equip parking operators with the most adaptive solutions available.
Digital is the evolution that we are living through now, and Jupiter was born ready for that!
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