Suncorp | DIVVY Parking Pty Ltd

How Suncorp used DIVVY to save costs and help their staff during COVID-19

Businesses everywhere have been faced with all manner of extraordinary challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaks havoc around the world. When restrictions came into force in Australia at the end of March, Suncorp turned to the DIVVY Enterprise parking management system to help them navigate the complex and rapidly changing situation.

Suncorp, one of Australia’s largest financial services brands, has relied on DIVVY Enterprise to manage the onsite parking for their fleet of trade vehicles at their Brisbane and Sydney offices since 2018.

In late March 2020, Suncorp was one of many Australian businesses to transition as many of their employees as possible to working from home. Even so, there remained a core group of essential staff who needed to continue to work from the office.

At a time of heightened social restrictions, Suncorpwanted to help their essential employees avoid commuting via public transport. The onsite parking at their Brisbane and Sydney premises, usually allocated to their tool of trade vehicles, was offered up to their essential workers.

Suncorp were also quick to lease additional off-site commercial parking to ensure they were able to meet the parking needs of their essential staff.

The essential workers had not had access to Suncorp’s onsite parking before COVID-19. The sudden change to Suncorp’s parking usage meant an entirely new cohort of parkers had to be onboarded into the DIVVY system very quickly, so that they could access the car parks.

Over the course of the lockdown period, Suncorp would add more than 100 new users to the DIVVY system.

Because the DIVVY system is so user-friendly, they were able to do so without a hitch. A couple of weeks into the new working arrangements, Suncorp called upon DIVVY’s reporting functionality to reveal the actual usage of their parking bays during this period.

The reports issued by the DIVVY Enterprise system showed that as employees stayed at home as much as possible, actual parking usage was lower than Suncorp’s initial projections. Suncorp were able to relinquish the additional commercial parking bays they had leased at the beginning of the restrictions, thereby returning savings to the business, and transfer the staff who had been using those bays over to the DIVVY system to use Suncorp’s own onsite parking.

Suncorp’s onsite parking never reached full capacity during lockdown because DIVVY optimised the use of the spaces so efficiently. DIVVY managed the high number of parkers and the ad hoc, unpredictable pattern of parking usage without fault.

As restrictions ease and workplaces re-open, Suncorp are gradually transitioning their staff back to their offices, with groups of employees starting to return from mid-June. Subject to government advice regarding safe public transport usage, staff will be encouraged to return to public transport and onsite parking will revert to the tool of trade vehicles. Suncorp will continue to use DIVVY Enterpriseto manage and monitor parking usage during the transition period as COVID-19 working procedures are wound down and the trade fleet return to their onsite parking.

Joseph Harmon, Fleet and Car Parking Manager for Suncorp, says,

‘Since 2018, Suncorp has depended on DIVVY to provide convenient and reportable parking management at our Brisbane Square and Shelley Street locations.

DIVVY Enterprise gave us the flexibility to start using our parking bays for a completely different sector of our team almost overnight, helping us to manage our business efficiently during a very unpredictable time.’

DIVVY was fantastic during the COVID-19 restrictions. It gave us complete and accurate visibility over parking bay utilisation and was so easy to use as we added more than a hundred new parkers to the system.

For further information, please contact Kat Fowler, DIVVY’s Marketing and Communications Manager at kat@divvy.com.au.

Suncorp & DIVVY: A case study in efficiency and savings

Discover how DIVVY Enterprise helped Suncorp make the most of their existing parking assets to deliver big savings for the business.

Suncorp, one of Australia’s largest financial services brands, operates a fleet of trade vehicles and manages the associated parking. In late 2017, Suncorp commenced a trial with DIVVY Enterprise at their 123 Albert St, Brisbane premises. The challenge was to efficiently manage the parking for their trade vehicles at the site, where there were two-thirds fewer parking bays than vehicles. Suncorp had been managing parking manually via spreadsheets, and to meet perceived demand, additional parking was being leased offsite – at great expense.

DIVVY’s trial got underway and the manual spreadsheets were eliminated, with DIVVY providing precise, accurate real time reporting about vehicles entering and exiting the onsite parking bays.

It wasn’t long before DIVVY established the patterns of usage and it became clear how the trade vehicles and their parking could be managed more efficiently. As a result, Suncorp achieved thousands of dollars’ worth of savings by terminating all additional offsite parking, as with DIVVY’s real-time parking bay management it was no longer needed.

Suncorp also made significant savings by downsizing their trade vehicle fleet, after DIVVY’s reporting showed that the fleet could be streamlined without compromising the business needs.

As well as understanding what DIVVY could deliver in terms of efficiencies and cost savings, Suncorp was keen to trial the DIVVY user experience. Would it be a user-friendly parking management solution for their business? The outcome was clear – DIVVY had helped deliver significant savings to the business and the system was easy to use. The trial was deemed a success and Suncorp rolled DIVVY out to its Brisbane Square premises as well.

In mid-2018, hot on the heels of the Brisbane success story, Suncorp expanded DIVVY into 10 Shelley St, Sydney office. Just as in Brisbane, DIVVY’s reporting established that fewer parking bays could be made to work harder with the DIVVY system.

DIVVY showed that not only could Suncorp use their existing parking bays more efficiently through real-time management with the DIVVY system, but the number of bays under lease also exceeded requirements. Suncorp was able to reduce the number of parking bays, thereby returning even more savings to the business. As well as managing Suncorp’s parking bays efficiently, DIVVY reporting is enabling Suncorp to manage the internal cost allocation of the car bays without fuss.

Suncorp is using DIVVY reporting to allocate parking charges to business cost centres, based on how long staff park for. The data is gathered over a period and projections made, allowing costs to be appropriately distributed between business units.

Suncorp also plans to unlock the Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) reporting feature of DIVVY reporting this financial year, allowing maximum efficiency at tax time with minimum effort.

Joseph Harmon, Parking Administrator for Suncorp, says

“Suncorp started working with DIVVY in 2017, in our buildings in Brisbane and Sydney, as we were looking for a better system to fulling utilise our larger leased car parks and provide more accurate FBT reporting. Suncorp uses DIVVY to provide convenient and reportable parking to our team members with tool of trade vehicles. The biggest change we’ve experienced since partnering with DIVVY is the ability to have online, accurate reporting of parking usage, along with better utilisation of our car parks. This enable our teams to book leased parks for specific time frames and provides greater flexibility and efficiencies for our business. We are currently looking at expanding the service to our other buildings”.

Suncorp is happy to recommend DIVVY to other businesses looking to improve their parking systems

For further information on this case study, please contact our sales team at sales@divvy.com.au