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Dear Customers and Partners,

A tool that has already been in common use in other sectors - Application Service Providing (or ASP for short) - is now finding its way into parking management for the first time with DESIGNA. But what does ASP actually mean? In today’s issue of the DESIGNA TICKER you can find out all about the benefits that ASP brings, especially with regard to car park operation security. We will also show you how you can use ASP to reduce costs and increase the productivity of your parking systems.

On top of this, we are delighted, with the ALLEE project in Budapest, to be able to introduce you to another of DESIGNA’s large-scale international projects. With PM ABACUS, DESIGNA is able to supply the most innovative parking management system available to counteract parking problems in the heart of the fast-growing Hungarian capital.

We hope you enjoy your read!
The DESIGNA team

Fundamentally, “Application Service Providing”, or ASP for short, is nothing new. Many companies are already taking advantage of the opportunity provided by ASP services to outsource entire areas of their administration and procedures in order to concentrate more fully on their core skills.

The use of the most up-to-date technologies and databases, and many years of experience in operating networked system structures are now providing DESIGNA with the chance to offer car park operators the ASP model as a service.

Be it individual hotel garages or major worldwide networked projects, “Application Service Providing” is suitable for any kind of car park. The reasons for using ASP are clear: in comparison with conventional server structures, in which each parking facility is controlled by a separate server, with ASP it is possible to network every facility together via a central server. Through this efficient and reliable data centre, car park operators have access to the most up-to-date software applications, which are made available and retrieved over the Internet. This service offer helps car park operators to achieve greater cost efficiencies and time savings. The costs for personnel, updates and maintenance, as well as downtime in the event of server malfunctions, are reduced or entirely done away with.

What remains is the question of security. On this subject, Stefan Ille, Development Manager at DESIGNA, says, “Above all, centralising the facility means security for the operator. Manipulation of the system will no longer be possible, since the company’s own personnel on site are unable to intervene in the server’s technical functions. Furthermore, all data is secured via a central backup system, so that the facilities’ smooth operation is guaranteed at all times.”

The first operator to utilize “Application Service Providing” for its car parks in Osnabrück and Hannover, is OPG Parking GmbH, who adopted the system in September 2008 with great success.

The historical city has witnessed unstoppable growth in recent years. Furthermore, city planners react to the Hungarians’s growing willingness to consume and therefore one shopping mall after the other is currently inaugurated in the city centre.

With the ‘Allee’ project on the former Budai Skala premises, the international investor ING Real Estate combines shopping, living and working in the heart of Budapest. With the PM ABACUS system DESIGNA can meet the high quality demands of this project as they have done before for various other malls in Budapest.

“The new garage will host just under 1200 parking spaces”, explains Michael Gradnitzer, DESIGNA’s area manager for projects in Eastern and Central Europe. “The project includes the installation of a networked PM ABACUS system with a range of additional features, such as automatic LPR at four entrance and six exit points to facilitate the car park use for the numerous regulars and inhabitants.”, states Gradnitzer. “In addition, the clients will be quickly directed to free parking spaces with the help of a modern parking management system, which can also register the single parking spaces.”

Eleven automatic pay stations ensure straightforward procedures, regular clients can easily re-charge their debit cards and pay later.

Allee in figures: Cinema, cafés, restaurants, sports facilities: 5,500 m²
Shopping mall and leisure facilities: 46,000 m²
Supermarket: 6,000 m²
Number of flats, apartments: 88
Offices: 7,000 m²

In today’s episode: The tariff switch card.

Claus Customer is in town with his family to go shopping. Luckily they quickly find a parking space in Paul Parker's central car park; after all, they don’t want to have to carry their purchases all over town.
Claus also has a customer loyalty card from a large department store with him and can use it as an additional insert card when paying for the parking. In this way he will be identified as a customer of the department store chain. This is good, because customers of the department store get their first hour’s parking free! The DESIGNA automatic pay station recognises the card and immediately works out a different “shopping tariff”. Claus Customer and his family think this is great!

Just before the weekend Paul Parker’s boss is once again sharing out jobs among his workers. He asks Paul Parker to give him a report in to how much money the customers of the department store had saved in parking fees over the last week.

Since Paul Parker already has plenty of other things to do in the car park, he asks his boss to look at the PM ABACUS web report himself, as every transaction will be clearly itemized in a customer loyalty card report.
The boss looks at him helplessly – how is he supposed to access the report without any additional software being installed on his PC? The answer is quite simple - over the network!

With his computer linked to the PM ABACUS Server, all he has to do is open Internet Explorer and a login screen appears. Simply by entering his name and password, Paul Parker’s boss can quickly and easily analyse the reports for the periods he is interested in.

If you’d like to know more about customer loyalty tools like this, then please give us a call!