Vrije Universiteit / VUmc
2100 parking spots, 7 locations and one elegant online platform to manage it all. We crafted a tailor-made solution while leveraging the power and flexibility of Drupal.
The entire VU campus houses around 27500 students and personnel spread over 11 faculties and 8 departments. With a combined parking capacity for 1600 vehicles in 7 parking locations, parking capacity is relatively scarce and therefore highly coveted.
Our challenge was to come up with a solution that caters to hospital visitors, students and staff alike about everything related to parking on campus. We created an elaborate online platform that not only informs all drivers and passengers, but also allows for management of the entire parking permit workflow in a secure and stable environment.
Tailor-made
The public website is an intuitive one-stop source of information for staff, students and hospital visitors alike. Underneath is a Drupal platform that not only handles content, but enables VU to manage parking permits in one cleverly customized backend.
Consultancy
As technical consultants, we went to great lengths to gather feedback, analyze data and understand all processes involved. The result was a sophisticated solution that we presented to the board of VU-VUmc, beating some of the country's top IT consultancy firms.
Powered by Drupal
We believe in the power of open source. That is why we prefer using Drupal, a renowned CMS framework that combines flexibility with scalability at enterprise level. Time after time, Drupal has proven a reliable foundation for building the perfect solution for complex challenges such as this one.
Integrations
The platform cleverly leverages the power of several 3rd party APIs to enhance functionality. It connects to Google Maps and 9292 to calculate travel times to test parking permit requirements. We also developed a custom integration for Amano's parking management application.
Answers first
The site enables visitors to find the answer their question in no more than three clicks - whether they are behind a desk, in their car or walking around on the premises.
Given the large number of people visiting the VU campus daily, this website is a crucially important and visible resource of information. Its wide variety of users, including students, faculty, suppliers, patients and the general public, are extremely varying in experience with user interfaces, so we set the bar high for the site’s user experience.
We enthusiastically took up the challenge of developing a clear strategy in close collaboration with VU-VUmc that was the foundation of every decision during the succeeding design, development and launch phases.
The new site debuted to hearty praise from site editors and visitors alike, and we absolutely loved the experience of helping reduce the workload of a number of people burdened with handling complaints and parking related enquiries.