Introduction

ParkFast is a company that provides quick and reliable parking for more than three million vehicles a year, with a combined 10.000 spaces across New York and New Jersey. This obviously comes with a lot of data management. In 2019 – 2020, dotCode stepped in to build a new version of the client's API that would improve existing features and provide new features to both clients and employees. Outdated architecture that led to laborious workflows was replaced with a software interface based on automated processes, reducing time and costs and improving client experience.

Objective

Build a new ParkFast API capable of streamlining workflows and supporting new features (backend software development).

Challenges

The architecture of the client's service used a group of unsynchronized monolithic applications. Because of this, some data changes had to be replicated or moved manually. This data fragmentation was caused by the fact that a part of their e-commerce internal workflows used an obsolete approach, involving e-mails, documents, papers, and SharePoint.

The client had also been encountering difficulties while trying to implement new features needed to keep up with business requirements. As the codebase was outdated, the implementation process for these features was expensive, error-prone, time-consuming, and very constrained. The service lacked essential modern features, including customer account, online payments, and ticket payments. Everything was hosted in-house.

Solutions

Software design and implementation. A new service was developed with architecture based on microservices with stringent responsibility segregation. Removed many paper processes and other laborious internal workflows and replaced them with automated and improved processes and workflows. Hosting was moved to the cloud. Data arrangement and synchronization, consolidated in single point of truth.

Analyzing customer requirements, dotCode built a modern REST API that handles customer and employee needs by today's standards. As a result, new features were implemented for both customers and employees.

New customer features:

• Online parking reservation
• Parking location search
• Online payment for parking services
• Calling for the car (as some locations use car lifts, this allows ParkFast employees to take the car off the lift before the customer arrives)
• Customer account and profile management (reservations, history, billing, payment methods)
• Notifications (e-mail / SMS)
• Integration with external parking providers
• Monthly parking subscription (customers pay a fixed monthly sum and have access to unlimited parking services)

New employee features:

• Parking data management (rates, live parking occupancy/reservations/payments, location details including the number of parking spots, features of each location, address, etc.)
• Notification templating and notification management
• Integration with internal APIs (e.g., accounting) and other company software
• Reservation management
• Payments management
• Monthly account management
• Reporting/data science

Outcomes

ParkFast can now offer faster and modern services and features powered by a smart website. On-site services have also been improved, and customer-related workflows are more user-friendly and streamlined (e.g., paying for parking tickets). This leads to a better customer experience and improved brand perception. These new features have also created new income sources for our client .

Moreover, due to clean business implementations, future extensions are now possible. Better software extensibility means it will be easier for the client to keep up to date with the market's growing and changing demands. This also provides our client with improved scalability opportunities. New features will benefit from faster time to market and improved future-proofing. All this leads to greater business agility and support for DevOps.

By streamlining and automating employee workflows, we have eliminated human error from many processes, making the whole system more consistent and improving internal operations. For example, the client now has automatic revenue reporting and overall better revenue control. Another improvement is having more resilient applications and better fault isolation.

The API is considerably faster, up to 20x in some cases. Moreover, the new REST API allows building different kinds of frontend clients based on needs and target audience (web, mobile apps, internal communication).

The client company now has all data in sync and consolidated in a single point of truth, leading to optimized workflows and no more data conflicts. ParkFast's services can now guarantee better data security. Subsequently, the company benefits from better data security compliance, also improving customer trust.

The process

Very close work with the customer's development team and project manager, offering daily updates on the process. The customer's project manager oversaw business to functional requirement analysis. From functional requirements, dotCode covered all of the implementation processes:

• Designing software architecture
• Data modeling
• Implementation
• Integration design and implementation if needed (with other APIs, external and internal)

dotCode often suggested improvements and, even if we did not work on the frontend, design decisions. Apart from implementation, we also participated in testing. The customer was responsible for deployment, but dotCode also took part in the process, ready to offer support if needed.

Our strengths

Strong communication. The entire project implementation process has been executed fully remotely. dotCode has never visited New York. As an international-oriented company, we can offer high-quality services anywhere around the world with the same speed and attention to detail as if we were in the client's city. Great data modeling and software architecture building skills. The old codebase was undocumented. dotCode dug into the implemented process and related data and assessed how it would fit into the new system and how to improve it. Implementation speed without cutting corners, meaning fast turnaround, but with due thoroughness. Sharp assessment capabilities. We can understand requirements and business needs and develop solutions tailored to clients' profiles and their clients' preferences. Honest with our clients. Using our extensive experience, we can assess a solution, idea, or design from a software point of view and offer an honest opinion, having the ability to say no and discourage a potentially lousy strategy. dotCode is a small, agile, and flexible team, meaning we can adapt in no time to our client's business needs.