Banque Populaire du Sud is making it easier for its employees to get around and park by sharing its70 parking spaces between 400 users thanks to Sharvy.

Context of Banque Populaire du Sud

Banque Populaire du Sud is a regional cooperative bank in the BPCE group. It operates in 9 départements, mainly in the south of the Occitanie region (France). It currently employs 2,200 people in 260 branches, serving 580,000 customers and 227,000 members.

In 2024, the support teams based at 4 sites around Montpellier (south of France) moved to a single new site: the ETIC building, in Cambacérès the new economic zone of the city. These new premises, which were co-constructed with the employees, were designed to be both responsible and innovative. During the design and construction phases, working groups including employees from Montpellier were set up, which highlighted a number of key issues, including parking. How was the company going to meet the parking needs of its 150 employees and dozens of other occasional visitors? And yet, with 70 parking spaces available, Banque Populaire du Sud had a ratio that is rare to find today!

With the parking irritant quickly identified, the property management team searched on the internet for solutions able to meet this need. Sharvy, a car park management solution also based in Montpellier, was identified and selected.

Setting up of Sharvy

Once the decision had been taken, the Sharvy and Banque Populaire du Sud teams held fortnightly meetings to define the best configuration. In just a few weeks, the solution was up and running. Since the solution has been deployed, monthly meetings are still held to make the necessary adjustments and answer any questions the bank may have.

Fairness in the allocation of spaces was one of the most important points for Banque Populaire du Sud. All employees had to be given the same opportunity to use the car park. For this reason, a number of decisions were made in the configuration of the system:

• Naturally, the group chose to allocate spaces using Sharvy’s fair algorithm. In concrete terms, if there is only one space left in the car park for 2 people who have made a request, it will be the one who has received the fewest spaces in the past who will get it. There is no question of favouring the first and quickest to request a space.
• In addition, all employees are on an equal footing. Everyone has to make their requests from the application if they want access to the car park. No employee, not even management, has a designated space.
• Employees assigned to the Cambacérès site have priority in the allocation of spaces over employees from other sites. In fact, these employees who have no other choice than to go to the site should not be disadvantaged in obtaining a space, quite the contrary!

Finally, access to the car park is secured and facilitated by a number plate recognition camera connected to the Sharvy application. As a result, only users with an active reservation for the day can enter the car park. The barrier opens automatically when a vehicle with a number plate recognised by the camera approaches. If no reservation is associated with the vehicle, the barrier will remain closed. What’s more, the camera has been shared with a neighbouring company occupying the same car park as Banque Populaire du Sud, halving costs for the company.

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Benefits noted

The solution was adopted very quickly by all employees. It has to be said that Banque Populaire du Sud provided excellent support for its employees during the move. In fact, a welcome booklet was distributed to all employees, as well as to new arrivals. In it, they can find all the information they need to know about life in the building, including how to get there by car, Sharvy and parking. What’s more, the project team who worked on the parking issue during the co-construction of the premises acted as ambassadors to their colleagues. The result: users are unanimous about the efficiency and ease of use of the application!

Today, very few negative feedbacks have been received and it is very rare to see the car park saturated. Almost all of the employees’ requests are met on a daily basis, which has taken away the fear that was present before the move. Finally, this positive response received prior to arriving on site removes the daily stress of finding a parking space. A few days in advance, they know whether or not they will have a parking space or whether they will have to plan to come by another means of transport or park further away.

Without Sharvy, Banque Populaire du Sud would have had to stick to a more traditional method of allocating parking spaces by name or let things happen naturally on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. In other words, fairness would not have been respected, since employees with personal obligations who could not arrive before 9am would be disadvantaged in terms of parking in the company car park. In addition, an access control system with badges would have been necessary, which would have been much more costly and time-consuming to manage given the number of visitors and staff from outside the building coming to the site. All in all, Sharvy saves time and money for the company, and enhances well-being at work and QLWC for its employees.

Do you need to optimise your company car park? Do you want to modernise its management and make it fairer?

Follow the lead of Banque Populaire du Sud and opt for Sharvy!