The global parking interview series

The Global Parking Interview Series Learn from parking industry’s top leaders who share their invaluable insights, successes and failures.

Interparking’s Rolf Oostendorp sharing his insights on centralized parking operations

“Centralization is a must, but don’t overdo it.”

We believe leaders in parking operations are thinkers as much as they are makers. And if there is one industry topic that needs both, it is centralization. If you are a multi-facility parking operator, chances are good that either you have already started centralizing, you are underway with it, or you will be soon. So you probably have many unanswered questions. What exactly do you plan to centralize? What benefits will it bring you? How do you start?

For us at FlinQ, it’s obvious: we work at the heart of many centralization projects and see the undeniable benefits. But we meet so many entrepreneurs and municipalities who are unsure where the benefits reside exactly, what the potential pitfalls are, or what such a project would mean for their daily business. They say, ‘we have no time for it,’ or they just don’t know where to start.

We decided to interview leaders in the parking industry to understand and share their experiences. We asked, what made them decide to centralize, what did the project include, how did they learn and what did it bring their organizations? What did it mean for their customer experience, their revenue, their business intelligence, and the future of their business?

Learning from other professionals’

“It’s not our screen wall that impresses.

It’s being organized that convinces.

The positive effect on our quality, market position and customers’ experience is beyond doubt.”

experiences, from their successes and failures, will hopefully inspire you to continue improving your business or to rethink it and begin taking important steps now.

The willingness and openness of our guests to share their experiences within the industry is remarkable. It allows us to provide you an exclusive collection of ideas, insights and advice. Information that we believe can help a lot of people in our industry.

Hope you enjoy the ride.

Centralization entails so much more than just the parking technology.

In this part of our series about centralization, Rolf Oostendorp, CEO at Interparking the Netherlands, shares valuable insights and practical advice on how to centralize your operations successfully by focusing on your customer’s experience. Rolf describes his success-based approach, step by step, taking centralization seriously but not overdoing it. All while keeping business intelligence at the heart of it.

Rolf Oostendorp, CEO at Interparking The Netherlands

Meet

After earning his Bachelor’s degree in Technical Business Administration and Industrial Sales, Rolf (1971) started his career as a Sales Executive at Nashuatec. In 2000, Rolf joined Interparking as Manager Business Development and a member of the management team. With over two decades of business leadership, Rolf built extensive experience and a track record in parking, including business strategy, innovation, marketing & sales and the development of customer friendly parking facilities. Rolf rolled out a successful growth strategy including a company acquisition in 2015, contributing to Interparking the Netherlands’ growth from 20 locations in 2000 to 130 today. Flagship location ‘Markthal’ Rotterdam won the European Parking Award in the category ‘new parking structures’ in 2015. Beside location management for third parties, Interparking initiated own operation via rental, acquisition and development of parking locations.

Centralization and growth of Marketing & Sales, Digitalization, Legal, Control Room and (Field) Service have been key factors for the success of Interparking.

Rolf

“We just scale better.”

October 2019 – 20 min read

Q Can you explain Interparking’s business model?

We have a strong market position in location management for third parties and invest in own locations as well. In Europe, we have many concessions and long-term lease agreements, while in the Netherlands, we want to grow on all fronts: buying or renting parking garages and management for third parties. That blend of both business models makes our organization stronger.

The advantage of own operation is that we can hire the right people and save time on external reporting to clients. And

management contracts keep our organization and business model sharp.

Because we always have two kinds of customers: the consumer and the client. It involves a lot of work and the bar is set high. That’s challenging, and of great value for our total business.

Q So demanding clients ask for detailed information?

Yes. Our reporting and portfolio management are advanced. They have to be. Our clients see more than we do since they are on site all day. As owner-operator you can condone certain things from time to time.

“Our reporting and portfolio management are advanced. They have to be. Our clients see more than us since they are on site all day.”

Q What information do your clients usually ask for?

During tenders clients expect very detailed information, they require the full package.

But in practice they utilize only a fraction of it. We have very extensive dashboards that show all KPI’s and revenue data. An example: in our control room the phone needs to be answered within 15 seconds. I can follow this in real time and this visibility alone generates an enormous awareness and drive for our own employees.

But we need to guide our clients how to benefit from this information. Every quarter we report on revenue and expenses and we share the complete audit report. And we

keep adding more information to the latter, for instance: where do visitors come from, do they make their reservations on their mobile, how many visitors do we get on our website and how many of them convert to a booking? At some locations, revenue has improved 20 or 30%. Our clients are happy but – so far – haven’t asked for more information yet. But we make them aware that it’s available and I see this changing very quickly.

Just like a central control room was special in 2008 but is standard today, the need for information will grow. For example, we measure the monthly revenue per charge point. This leads to a clear view on the number of electric cars passing through.

Q What was your path to centralization?

In the very beginning, we connected two locations to see how we could improve planning of on-site staff. That wasn’t as

obvious as you would think because the data connection was very expensive back then. Following that, we implemented intercoms and parking systems. Video was not possible due to limited bandwidth.

Next, Skidata introduced a solution to control their equipment remotely.

“Just like a central control room was a unique selling point in 2008 but is standard today, the need for information will grow.”

Around 2007 we started taking control of a whole garage remotely which increased our efficiency considerably. Our flagship project Markthal Rotterdam was a great step forward. We built a centralized control room where all intercoms come in, we have multiple screens and workstations.

All our Dutch locations are connected to our control room.

However, we still want to have people onsite at all our important locations. We definitely don’t believe that centralization is an instrument just for cost saving and that we don’t need people on-site.

More efficiency is possible and always welcome, But operating completely without staff on-site is not an option. It helps that intercom calls from all locations are handled centrally. Our employees perform much better on other tasks, like local customer support, cleaning, monitoring, creating a safe social environment, getting a jammed ticket out of the machine, maintenance work— mostly facility tasks. Before, at our large parking locations, we needed at least two employees at peak times. Three years ago we made a clear choice for a

centralized approach, but not at the expense of our decentralized organization.

Actually, we are about to reach the ideal number of people. Employees often worry about the employment opportunities, but they shouldn’t. In the Netherlands, we now employ 250 people, 70 of whom are in our office. Could this mean we don’t need the rest except for breakdown services?

We don’t believe so.

Q What was the biggest problem centralization had to solve?

One of our most important goals was and is - to serve our customers faster and better. And to analyze and solve problems more efficiently.

Before, our employees would walk through the garage helping customers but get interrupted by intercom calls. Now we have a dedicated team continuously

“We definitely don’t believe that centralization is an instrument just for cost saving and for not needing people on-site.”

“The quality of work in our garages is much higher, we have more time for it.”

answering these intercom calls. Some colleagues feared this would decrease our service level in the garages, but instead we provide more and better service. Visitors using the intercom really value a quick response from us. Waiting and not knowing if you will be helped is a big problem for them. And at the exit barrier, speed is even more important.

Secondly, our data provide great insights.

We receive all error tickets centrally which enables better and faster analysis. For example, we see the peak error moments and the reason for the tickets. With this information we can improve our processes, train employees better, and manage our suppliers more efficiently.

Thirdly, the quality of work in our garages is much higher because we have more time for it. It’s easier to finish a job if you’re not interrupted by intercom calls. Maintenance is quicker and better and the same goes for customer support, like when a ticket is jammed in the machine.

Some people feared this would decrease our service level in the parking garages, but instead we provide more and better service.

Q Did you expect these outcomes beforehand?

Ha, I would like to say we did, but the truth is not everything is all thought and planned. It’s a process you grow into.

The roll out happened step by step. No big make-overs. When we added a new location, we took the opportunity to implement some new features or services. Centralizing the intercom calls, adding remote log-ins into our parking systems, implementing screens with camera footage, and so on.

Starting in 2014, we really began to professionalize centralization. We set out to manage everything remotely, with 24/7 support, including screens with information on all our locations, and intercom and video. In a few years everything will be connected. It makes our organization more agile. If a parking attendant is ill, our business can continue uninterrupted.

Q And what’s next?

We’re now improving the cooperation between customer service, where we receive questions about subscriptions and complaints, and our control room.

Our aim is to solve complex errors ourselves, remotely. We’ve set up ServiceNL, a team of service coordinators who try to fix problems remotely. If necessary, they send in our Technical Field Service or they contact the vendor directly. These field

“It’s a process you grow into. The roll out happened step by step.”

engineers are technically skilled employees. Our control room, customer service and ServiceNL are working together in one room to create optimal communication between them.

In addition, we’re also optimizing other processes like procurement. The regional manager used to be responsible for his own purchases. In the past, if he needed new paper for the ticket machine, he would call the supplier directly. That is all centralized now.

This year we implemented a new process automation system which also logs and checks the whole procurement process per location. It improves our quality and saves time and money.

Centralization entails so much more than just the parking technology. If you centralize your supporting processes and departments, you can expect big advantages.

Centralization entails so much more than just the parking technology. If you centralize your supporting processes and departments, you can expect big advantages.

Q Is a cashless operation part of that as well?

This varies per location but on average 70% of our transactions are cashless.

Over the years, the number of cash parking machines has naturally declined.

We outsourced this whole process, so that relieves a lot of worries. We can see

“With this information we can improve our processes, people can be instructed better and we can manage our suppliers more efficiently.” how easy things would be for us if everything was cashless, but we don’t force it. It is way too unfriendly towards our customers. You want to have the choice to pay cash at the supermarket, right? Here in the Netherlands we are pretty advanced, but in many other countries customers still prefer cash.

Also, in entertainment areas with a lot of

nightlife we noticed that people prefer to throw a coin in the machine.

We also continue to improve automatization. For procurement we manually place our orders—for things like tickets and clothing—directly into our supplier’s portals. We will further digitalize and automate this. It’s part of the organizational improvements which support centralization.

But at the same time, we believe in a decentralized approach. Labour might be as high as 50% of all costs and doing everything remotely would save a lot of these costs, but that would result in a customer-unfriendly parking garage.

We only consider organizing on-site operations from one of two locations if we can reach the location within 5 minutes and it is possible to have regular inspection rounds. We’ve

already realized a considerable cost reduction while maintaining our service level by taking this approach.

Q Are you still able to connect with the local communities around your facilities?

Linking with the communities around our parking locations is important for us.

Our location managers and regional managers are responsible for doing that outreach and they report directly to our headquarters. So yes, these tasks are centralized, but with the objective to improve our local involvement.

Business Development is responsible for acquisitions and development, while Portfolio Management is responsible for customer satisfaction, adding great value towards our clients. Technical Service, the central control room, customer service and ServiceNL fall within the central Operations.

“Doing everything remotely would save a lot of these costs, but that would result in a customer-unfriendly parking garage.”

Q You need volume to organize this way. How big has Interparking grown?

In 2000 we had twenty locations, in 2008 fifty, in 2016 eighty, and right now we have more than 130 locations.

Many of these are managed for our clients. In Europe we have more than 930 locations.

For us, centralization is mostly about service coordination and real estate management. On top of that, we see a growing role for Marketing & Sales. For example, we spend more attention on link-building with important customer destinations like museums. We make

deals, sell exit tickets and promote on their website. In the past, the regional manager used to have a big role in this kind of local marketing & sales, but we are increasingly centralizing these activities. The regional managers are still our eyes and ears in the field. But today, they focus on the customer experience in our parking garages. We bring the commercial activities to our central organization.

Our customer service is getting involved in marketing and sales as well. Customers can now order subscriptions online and we’ve become more reachable even on Saturdays.

Q How do you manage such growth?

We just scale better. The decentralized jobs are more about keeping the garage in order. Our regional managers play an important role in this and they need to control a lot more locations. Our central office keeps taking over more tasks, like management, marketing, and sales. So the

job profiles change along with centralization. A portfolio manager must think strategically, while an operational manager is more focused on conservation.

A few years ago, the regional manager was also the contact person for our clients, but today we have portfolio managers who

“In 2000 we had 20 locations, in 2008 50, in 2016 80, and right now we have more than 130 locations. In Europe we have 930 locations.�

are responsible for this. They stay in close contact with the regional managers. The portfolio managers analyze data and translate that into management information for our organization and clients.

Q So your management information works for both you and your clients?

Indeed. We provide our team with advanced Business Intelligence tools which we use intensively ourselves, and also share with our clients. These information services are developing quickly. For us, the visibility of this information, presented in nice graphs, ensures that our goals and KPIs become more tangible. The graphs show clearly if we meet our goals, for example to answer a call within 15 seconds. We learned that 10% of intercom calls are just a customer pushing the wrong button. We share such information with our clients, and it enables us to improve continuously and measurably.

Q Which roles or departments were initially involved in centralization?

These projects are often ICT-driven. But in our case it started pretty simply: our clients asked for it. So initially it was sales orientated. Around 2016 we acquired

“Our data provide great insights.�

a parking and security company. That forced us to rethink our structure and was an additional boost. The third impulse came from our rapid growth. We had to professionalize all kinds of processes and procedures to maintain our quality. An elevator inspection in one or two garages is easy to keep up with, but when you have ten or more locations you have to do things differently.

And we pushed through, started centralizing customer service and real estate management step by step. This whole process was developing for about seven years, until 2017 when we decided to fully commit to centralization and digitalization.

Our CFO and business development manager became involved as well and they brought back a number of software packages and introduced our new procurement platform, Afas. When setting up ServiceNL, we also started

logging all errors in Relyon. That gave us crucial insights, since errors are one kind of information that not all vendors are willing to share. So it was up to us to take control of it. Next, we visualized the performance of the control room in our dashboard with the goal to optimize this even further. We didn’t have a specific plan, but it all grew in a very natural way and we came a long way with it.

“Visitors using the intercom really value a quick response from us. Waiting and not knowing if you will be helped is a big problem for them.”

Q So what’s next?

We moved to our new head office. We took an important next step by putting our control room, customer service and service coordination side by side in the same room and organizing our technical service processes differently.

We know that information needs to be good and fast, and you shouldn’t depend on your vendors to fix problems.

Q Budget is not an issue?

If we take over a location and have to update existing parking systems, those costs can range from €10K to €80K. We consider these costs necessary to keep parking garages safe and secure our data according to GDPR regulations. It’s a long-term investment. So yes, sometimes we have to deal with high investments, but considering the integral business case of centralization, this rarely becomes an issue.

Q What would you have done differently?

Looking back, we should have hired a senior project manager back in 2010.

Someone to develop a project strategy up front and then carry it out. This whole process probably would have gone twice as fast had we done this. But we didn’t, and I think that’s the whole charm of Interparking. In 2014 we decided we wanted to create the best parking garage in Europe at our location in the Markthal,

“Working step by step and focus on success-based centralization worked very well for us.”

“We deliver better services to our clients and customers and gain more profit without having to increase our rates.�

using the newest technology, a central control room, online booking and more.

We just started doing it and gaining experience from it.

“We just scale better.�

Q Is that typical for Interparking in Europe or rather a local characteristic?

In the rest of Europe we centralize as well, but the Dutch market is ahead and completely different from, for example, the Spanish market. Most recently, we use tablets and smartphones to take pictures of errors in the garage and send them straight to our support systems. In the past, such a project would have taken two years to set up, but now we had it running within two months. In our Afas platform, we collect information from all locations: complaints, intercom calls, errors and purchases. All that information is kept in one big database.

We firmly believe in our strategy of “centralized with decentralized�, it makes our organization strong.

Q So centralization is more than parking technology and a control room?

The calls, video and data are an important aspect of centralized parking operations, and we do that well. Integrating new locations into our platform is easy because there are only a few system vendors—for example intercoms are always Commend in Europe—and video is rarely a problem.

And if necessary, we simply put our own camera next to the existing one if that works better. A cost like that is earned back easily. For example: recently, centralization pushed back man hours from 160 to 80 a week in a new location.

Moreover, the quality of work improves, because an employee can now perform facility services without being interrupted by intercom calls.

“We just started doing it and gaining experience from it.”

Q How does your revenue benefit?

The funny thing is that centralization is actually a negative development for our management contracts. Those contracts are based on man hours in the parking garages. For example, we arrange with a client that we’ll have someone on site 24/7, and then we reduce those hours by working more intelligently. But we compensate for it with a service fee for our central control room. That fee could be fixed or variable. We prefer a fixed fee, because a variable fee is an incentive to reduce the number of client calls, and that’s not in the best interest of our clients.

A solution might be to put a map in the garage, but the client has to agree with that. So you see it really is a collaboration between us and our client, and it’s different for every location. What does work is to analyze calls upfront and estimate where we can reduce the number of calls if possible. We prefer to look at the type of location: how busy is it, and how many times do people use the intercom?

And even if we have people on-site, we can still convince our clients to subscribe to our control room service because it improves the customer experience in that parking garage.

Also, we have very little influence on the calls because they are closely related to the location and the environment. For example, if a street is being renovated and there’s sand everywhere, many errors will follow. Another insight: 70% of the calls are questions about the local environment.

You want to be able to help the customer and give a proper answer.

Q What is your ultimate advice for operators who are considering centralization or make a next step?

A client, like a shopping mall owner, wants two things: great customer experience and maximum profit. In other words, they want to serve customers well at a good parking rate and against low costs. We know that information needs to be accurate and fast,

“The customer experience is more important than saving on personnel costs.”

and you shouldn’t depend on your vendors to fix problems. Check what you can do yourself remotely or on site before you notify your vendor and ask them to support you.

As a parking operator, you help your customer to get from A to B and make that as easy as possible. To enable that, you must organize your processes. That takes operational and financial information. Only centralization can make that possible.

But managing a location in a city center completely remotely, without local employees, is not something I’d recommend. The customer experience is more important than saving on personnel costs in such a project.

You’d lose sight over your business this way. You have no idea whether it’s clean and tidy and you lose all social control. You don’t have to put someone on-site around the clock, but

you need to find a balance between control and customer satisfaction, and organize this centrally.

Q How does maintaining that balance impact your physical locations?

If you’re able to design your own parking garage, make sure you increase your options for centralized operations with cameras at the right places and good video management. The easier it is for customers to find their way to their destinations and find their way back to their cars, the less intercom calls and the easier it becomes to operate remotely.

You have to realize: the more you digitalize, the more customer support and the bigger the control room you need.

Digitalization generates more user mistakes and errors. Automatization also means you need a good back office. The threshold for customers to make that intercom call is low.

“You don’t have to put someone on-site around the clock, but you need to find a balance between control and customer satisfaction, and organize this centrally.”

Q Can you survive without centralization?

I don’t have the answer to that, but we firmly believe in our strategy of “centralized with decentralized”, makes our organization strong.

It enables us to take over our competitors’ projects and I have noticed it secures our future. The market is changing a lot and fast, and with this strategy we have a strong position. Business Intelligence is a crucial part of that.

I really want to emphasize that centralization is not only beneficial for technical systems, but also for your organization and its processes.

We deliver better services to our clients and customers and gain more profit without having to increase our rates.

In order to grow, we want to raise our profit, support more customers in the parking garages, develop better service and work more efficiently. Working step by step and focusing on success-based centralization worked very well for us.

“The market is changing a lot and fast, and with this strategy we have a strong position.”

Our customers like it if they see us walking rounds. That has nothing to do with efficiency, but with quality.

Don’t underestimate that.

Q How do you see the future of parking in 5 to 10 years?

Online booking is an important trend.

This is 50% of our profit on some of our sites already, used mostly by people from outside the city or by foreigners.

The number of electricity-powered vehicles is growing rapidly and that creates more demand for charging stations. That brings us a whole new challenge concerning capacity and investments.

Within a few years all cars will be connected. Nowadays, people book their spots online by themselves. In the future, your car will do it for you.

Car sharing is also hot, but we’re not sure if the Netherlands is really the country for that. Today sharing involves about 50,000 cars, out of the 8.5 million total. There is no doubt something will change though. How all of this will develop is still unclear, but we do believe that the demand for

parking garages won’t disappear in the near future. I may be sceptical about the growth of autonomous vehicles in cities, but it’s not up to me to say what will happen or not with certainty.

Our job is to be flexible and wellprepared, with a strong organization that responds to changes quickly.

Centralization is an absolute must for being agile.

“It’s not our screen wall that impresses. It’s being organized that convinces.

The positive effect on our quality, market position and customers’ experience is beyond doubt.”

One practical benefit is that with 80 parking garages, you get an intercom call about once every minute. You need to centralize that. This enables your agents to specialize and it saves a lot of costs. Our agents are also our eyes and ears. Since hiring them, I hear a lot more about what’s going on in our parking garages than before.

So if you want my advice: centralization is a must, but don’t overdo it. Our customers like it if they see us walking rounds. That has nothing to do with efficiency, but with quality. Don’t underestimate that.

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