The Christmas countdown is well underway. We all see the Christmas items appearing in more stores everyday now. Retailers all have sales targets to meet, not just for Christmas but all year, Of course Christmas will play a huge part of the financial year for most retailers.
Just think of shopping in town, or on a retail park when it’s really close to Christmas, It’s cold, It’s dark, the Christmas lights are flashing everywhere, people are packed into every store, the car parks are full, the car park is jammed and it takes ages to get parked.
The retailers always forget this next bit, so the shops are fully staffed, the stock is all on the shop floor, and everything is going to plan. Or is it?
If we take away people walking and public transport, the majority of us will drive to do our shopping, so the whole shopping experience begins when you turn into the car park, and this is the bit that is always overlooked. Most big retailers only have ANPR cameras and they expect them camera’s to manage their car park.
It’s quite unreal that companies believe this works? ANPR is blind to your problems, especially at peak times. ANPR can not see disabled bays, parent and child bays, loading bays, no stopping areas, double parking etc. So all the main potential problems that can arise are not looked at. Please see my earlier blog about ANPR Vs Humans
In my eyes, you can’t replace human interaction in some things, and a shopping experience is one of those, you need wardens on the ground, speaking to people and doubling up as a marshal. Helping people reverse, stopping traffic to let someone else go to create less of a problem and to get traffic flowing again. Christmas parking is solved!
I will say it again that ANPR is great, when used correctly, but ANPR used on it’s own just doesn’t solve anything. If you are a retailer and you are reading this, You can probably understand for the first time why your car park is always manic, or how people always get away with parking in disabled bays etc.
I hope you all have a great Christmas and if you would like me to visit your site and meet you, please email or call me.
‘Let me, help you, hit your targets’
Email: kenny@hx-pcn.com
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Thank you for reading,