By Dave Herbert
We’re almost at the halfway point of the year and I think that we’re all agreed that this year is going really quickly. Not only have we released new features, in particular some vital ones to support ZatPark’s competitive advantage, but we are excited to be launching our new mobile app which includes new features such as time management, bi-directional communication (which allows both the back office and the CEO / patroller to send messages or action tasks within the app – a vital feature which will support the new code of practice and new remote working methods) and an improved ANPR scanner.
There have been some big events already in 2023 for Unity5 as we’ve been consolidating our position and implementing our ambitious growth plans. Below is a summary of what we’ve done so far and plans for the near future.
USER GROUP
Customer feedback is really important to Celina, Lukasz and I, as well as the rest of the Unity5 team, it’s how we’ve evolved our product and services to support your businesses across the last 13 years. The user groups used to be such a big part of this, understandably we put these on hold for a couple of years, however this year we were back with 2 regional groups, 1 in London and 1 in Manchester. These meetings provided an opportunity to see many of our customers, but also for new members of the team to meet many of you for the first time. The key topics for discussion were the product roadmap, improvements, team updates and future plans.
Nothing beats meeting our customers, we appreciate your support and we saw a great mix of familiar faces as well as welcoming some new ones. The team came back inspired by so many of the conversations. Having listened to your feedback, we’ve already implemented 2 new features to support our Kiosks – qwerty keyboard and heartbeat monitoring. We learnt how our customers are growing and what our users’ feature and function needs are. We’re already planning the next one for September.
A GROWING TEAM
We recently appointed our non-executive Chairman, Richard Houghton, who, as well as holding several Chairman positions, has worked across several private equity backed businesses for more than 20 years. He has an enviable track record of success, and we are confident that bringing someone of his calibre on board will allow us to deliver the product and company initiatives that support our customers as well as continue with our ambitious growth plans.
Richard is one of several new starters in the last 3 months, we are continuing to invest heavily in our team, including doubling the size of our support team and expanding our commercial teams.
A NEW BRAND IMAGE
Hopefully you will have started to see some of the new brands and logos that we launched last week. Most of our customers and others in the industry refer to us as ZatPark, so we’re using this brand relaunch to bring together the rest of our brands including permit and environmental. We’ll be showing them off at ParkEx, we hope that you like them.
PARKEX 2023
Next week, we will taking part in the parking sector’s big event of the year – Parkex – at the NEC in Birmingham. The event always attracts the great and the good from across the sector and it will be a fantastic opportunity to see customers, colleagues and friends. We’ll be on stand P151 showcasing our new brand, custom ticket feature, the new, improved app as well as having the team on hand to answer any questions. If you’d like to come and chat to a member of the team please book a time slot here or drop by the stand.
We will also be hosting a drinks reception on our stand from 15.30 on 6th June so please join us, we’re looking forward to catching up with as many people as possible.
NETWORK UPDATES
As a technology provider, we like to stay on top of the updates that may affect our customers. Many of you will have seen in the press that the 3G network is being discontinued. Please get in contact with us if you are unsure whether this will affect you and we can take a look, if you are using phones purchased in the last 3 years then this will not affect you, if you’re using older phones, you should check to ensure that you won’t lose connectivity.
The rest of this year is shaping up to be just as busy and productive, and we’re looking forward to making more positive changes to support your parking operations.
In the meantime, we’d like to thank you for your support and feedback, please keep sending it across via either the support team or through the account management team so that we can make sure that we continue to deliver services and features to make the complex simple.
Many thanks, Dave.
