Orbility is the name of a storied global PARCS provider, now entering its newest chapter. For fifty years, Orbility has been delivering PARCS solutions into U.S. airports under such names as Trindel, Elsydel and, most memorably, as ASCOM. Under the ASCOM name, the company, at one time, was supporting twenty-nine major U.S. airports. To this day, the company still has many large U.S. airports as customers. Subsequent to a series of acquisitions, in July of 2018, Orbility, in partnership with French private equity firm Andera Partners, completed a management buyout from Conduent and become a 100 percent parking focused company. At that moment, Orbility became the largest PARCS provider in France, with a significant leadership position in the U.K. and Spain and a rapidly expanding presence in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa.
As part of the company’s ongoing innovation strategy, the company released Codex, its 6th-generation line of PARCS equipment, all managed by Multipark, an industry leading software management solution. Orbility has always focused on the three core pillars of a successful offering: quality manufacturing, competitive pricing and world-class support – all of these are evident in the rapid uptake of Codex in the global marketplace. The benefits of a continuous improvement development cycle can be seen in a number of areas: with the input from an ergonomist, all data is reachable within three clicks within Multipark; the barcode ticket is scannable without having to insert the ticket into machine (prescient, as nobody wants a ticket transport mechanism to become an ongoing source of virus retransmission); and with thoughtful architectural design, the PARCS system is not in scope for PCI. This kind of careful engineering lends itself to products that are intuitively easy to use, easy to maintain and provide solid long-term benefits during the product lifecycle.
WebPRCS, the product series that Codex is replacing, was highly tuned for airport operations, which is a nice way of saying that it was designed for a customer base with extraordinarily stringent operational, auditing and reporting requirements, usually resulting in a bespoke system. This also meant that it was not an appropriate fit for a 2-in/2-out commercial garage, either in terms of complexity or cost and hence why the product line was exclusively sold into the U.S. airport parking market. Codex brings all the required features and capabilities that are expected in today’s commercial PARCS environment: barcode-based, available in the cloud or on-premises and open APIs to support integration with the growing choice of third-party products. These third-party products include both hardware and software, such as LPR, AVI, prox, parking guidance, on-line reservations, remote call center integration, etc. Having a robust software platform and architecture provides for the technologies we have today and allows for those which haven’t come to market yet. Importantly, Codex was designed to be fully scalable, easily going from a 1-in/1-out all the way up to the most demanding airport environment. With a U.S. development team based in the U.S. headquarters in Tallahassee, FL and additional technical and project management support in Atlanta, GA, the company is ready and staffed for a U.S. launch of Codex into the broader commercial parking market.
With Codex, a well-built, competitively priced, extensively supported product line, the company has begun to execute its go-to-market strategy: building the final U.S. pillar for success – an enthusiastic dealer network. The investors and senior management are in agreement that a dealer network brings tremendous value not only to Orbility, but most importantly, to the customers. Working collaboratively with a well-trained dealer brings real value to local customers as well as supporting the long-term growth of locally-owned businesses. By offering a true partnership with a dealer, a customer has access to local and manufacturer technical talent, many times at a lower rate than from the manufacturer directly. For dealers, a manufacturer that supports them when needed provides ongoing and new training, provides marketing support at the national level and is willing to assist in competitive situations, is a true force multiplier. Orbility provides such an environment.
In terms of being “new” to the market, it is important to understand that in the last ten years, Orbility has safely and securely processed over $10B in parking revenues for our U.S. customers – a testament to the robustness of solutions we deliver. Today we are, on average, delivering a new Codex system every working day of every week, providing airport and commercial customers with superior solutions.
For more information on how to become part of the Orbility family or for more information about our solutions, you may contact us at michael.bigbee@orbility.com or call +1.972.342.1461.
50 years of delivering excellence into airports. Now coming to a garage near you!