Tag: COVID-19

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News

Queuing & Contact Tracing Platform

DIVVY’s new Queuing & Contact Tracing Platform

DIVVY’s new Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform helps any business that is visited by the public to navigate venue capacity, social distancing and record keeping regulations with ease. It gives customers the peace of mind and confidence to visit shops, pubs, restaurants, galleries, gyms, hairdressers – any business, large or small, with publicly accessible premises.   

Businesses with premises visited by the public face unique challenges under COVID-19. Governments have introduced capacity limits to ensure social distancing can be maintained. Businesses are required to keep records and contact information for all visitors.

Not only are there government-mandated obligations to adhere to, but businesses also need to consider their customers’ mindset. Customers and patrons need to be assured that their visit will be safe, and that the business has taken all possible precautions, or they simply won’t come. 

At DIVVY, we optimise bookable assets through smarter technology. After witnessing the challenge faced by publicly accessible businesses during COVID, we turned our efforts to developing our Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform.

Our Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform enables any shop, venue, or premises open to the public to communicate with its customers when its peak periods are, which are its busiest and quietest days, and, in the event of queuing, the wait time to enter the venue.

By helping customers plan their visit before they leave home, our Platform makes it easy for them to avoid busy periods, save time, and visit with peace of mind. To find out how DIVVY is helping Australian supermarket giant Woolworths take care of their customers with their Q-Tracker tool, click here.

Our Platform also has pre-book capabilities, giving customers the opportunity to book their visit in advance to avoid queuing. By allowing businesses to control the time, duration and number of customers accessing their premises, and even manage separate areas within the venue, it helps businesses to adhere to venue capacity limits and maintain social distancing within the premises. Visitor record keeping has been mandated by many Australian state and territory governments.

Our Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform allows businesses to capture visitor information quickly and easily, including contact details and day and time of visit.

Our Platform makes it possible to track interactions and crossovers between visitors and employees, helping with contact tracing should it be required.

Some businesses require visitors to complete health attestation questionnaires, declaring any symptoms before entering the premises, and our Platform can manage this too. Using our Platform, it’s quick and simple to conduct these questionnaires, collect the required information and store visitors’ responses.

Effortlessly fulfill your COVID Safe obligations, give yourself peace of mind, and your customers the confidence to visit your business with DIVVY’s Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform.

For more information, please contact our team at sales@divvy.com.au.

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News

DIVVY supports Woolworths with the development of Q-tracker

As the COVID-19 situation continues to unfold, the Australian tech company DIVVY supported Woolworths in building an online booking system -Q-tracker that allows shoppers to assess crowd capacity before making their way to their local store. The customer tool is in addition to the existing measures Woolworths has put in place for COVID-19.

This new technology will monitor queue lengths outside shops with restricted customer numbers – and will help shoppers pick a less busy period when there is no waiting time. The Q-tracker makes use of real-time data to show customers whether stores have had to implement a queue at the entry to support social distancing and any wait time associated with it.

DIVVY’s Chief Information Officer, Anton Mills said:

“This technology was built with the ability to translate to other industries who are also facing similar challenges. It has been built to be agnostic to the industry and can be rapidly integrated with organisations to assist them to adapt to queuing and distancing measures throughout COVID-19.

I’m proud of the team for turning this around in one week, to ensure our client Woolworths Supermarkets could roll this tool out across its four stores in Victoria.”

Currently, this new online booking technology is being trialled at four Woolworths stores in Victoria including Taylors Lakes, Hampton Park, South Melbourne, and St Helena. With this system, customers can book a time to do their shopping without the need to stand in a queue if one exists and be able to safely practice social distancing.

Woolworth store

How does it work?

  1. Head to http://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/q-tracker and simply search for their preferred store by postcode or suburb.
  2. Use the key, to view the estimated queue wait time to enter the Woolworths stores closest to you.
  3. Based on the entered location, it will show the closest stores and also highlight it on the map.
  4. To help you plan when to shop, click the store card which will expand to show when to enter the store and when it is busiest during the week.
  5. The tool updates every 5 mins so you’ll have the latest information whether you’re about to leave home or on your way.

This technology – Q Tracker, can be integrated with other businesses & organisations to assist them to adapt to queuing and distancing measures related to COVID-19.

Woolworths Director of Stores, Robert Moffat said:

“Keeping our customers and teams safe continues to be our top priority at Woolworths.Q-Tracker is a new customer tool across all Woolworths Supermarkets. By helping customers plan when and where they shop before they leave home, Q-Tracker makes it easier to avoid busy periods, save time, and shop with health and safety in mind. Even though most of our stores do not need to implement queuing at the moment, this tool has been developed as another measure to support the safety of our team and customers.”

If your business is facing similar challenges, why not reach out and see how DIVVY might be able to assist – sales@divvy.com.au.

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Press Release

DIVVY supports Woolworths in helping keep Aussies safe during COVID-19 with the development of Q-tracker

Q-tracker

Australian tech company DIVVY has supported Woolworths in the build of an online booking system called Q-tracker that allows shoppers to assess crowd capacity before making their way to their local store.

As the COVID-19 situation continues to unfold, the Q-tracker has been developed using real-time data to show customers whether stores have had to implement a queue at the entry to support social distancing and any wait time associated with it. The customer tool is in addition to the existing measures Woolworths has put in place.

Woolworths customers can head to http://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/q-tracker and simply search for their preferred store by postcode or suburb and it will show you the estimated queue wait time to enter the Woolworths stores closest to you.

Woolworths is also currently trialing a booking functionality designed and developed by DIVVY within the Q-Tracker tool at its four stores in Taylors Lakes, Hampton Park, South Melbourne and St Helena in Victoria.

Customers in these four stores will be able to book a time to do their shop which means they will be able to head straight into the store without needing to stand in a queue if one exists and be able to safely practise social distancing.

DIVVY’s Chief Information Officer, Anton Mills said:

“We are pleased to work in partnership with Woolworths’ for the development of the Q-Tracker tool.

“This technology was built with the ability to translate to other industries who are also facing similar challenges.

“It has been built to be agnostic to the industry and can be rapidly integrated with organisations to assist them to adapt to queuing and distancing measures throughout COVID-19.”

Woolworths Director of Stores, Robert Moffat said:

“Keeping our customers and teams safe continues to be our top priority at Woolworths.

“Q-Tracker is a new customer tool across all Woolworths Supermarkets. By helping customers plan when and where they shop before they leave home, Q-Tracker makes it easier to avoid busy periods, save time and shop with health and safety in mind.

“Even though most of our stores do not need to implement queuing at the moment, this tool has been developed as another measure to support the safety of our team and customers.”

For further information, please contact Kat Fowler, DIVVY’s Marketing and Communications Manager on 0433 669 901 or at kat@divvy.com.au.

About DIVVY

DIVVY is one of the fastest-growing parking software-hardware companies in Australia whose application of marketing leading technology enables a better customer experience through all bookable assets.

DIVVY’s access technologies are tested in the field every month across 30,000 bookings and processing in excess of 45,000 transactions per month across more than 75 buildings and several open-air facilities.

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Case Study staff parking

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

DIVVY’s parking equipment

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, Suncorp wanted 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 did not have 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 Enterprise to 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.  

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News

How your business can save on its car parking spaces during COVID-19

DIVVY allotted parking space

To help businesses navigate this difficult time, here are our top tips for reducing car parking costs during the coronavirus pandemic. 

1. Pay less Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) 

Did you know that your business could be paying less FBT on employee car parking at the moment? If your staff car parking is not meeting all the ATO’s conditions, it could be exempt or receive a reduction from FBT – for example, if car parking is provided for less than 4 hours between 7am and 7pm. 

If your company has staff working from home, and employee parking is going unused, it is worth investigating whether that parking is currently exempt from FBT. DIVVY Enterprise clients can determine exact car parking usage in an instant with DIVVY’s reports portal and potentially save thousands during this time. 

2. Get an exemption on the Parking Space Levy 

Sydney, Melbourne and Perth all have versions of the parking space levy (known in Victoria as the congestion levy), an annual tax payable by owners of parking spaces located in specific high-density districts. 

As part of the NSW Government’s tax relief measures to assist businesses impacted by COVID-19, Revenue NSW have announced that PSL payments will be deferred until 30 September 2020. At the time of writing, the Victorian and Western Australian governments are yet to make similar announcements. 

Now is a good time to investigate whether your parking spaces are eligible for exemption from the parking space levy. In NSW an unused casual car parking space – that is, a car space available for public parking – is excluded from the PSL calculation. 

If your business has car spaces listed for public parking on DIVVY Marketplace that are not being used to their full capacity at the moment, investigate whether you are eligible to reduce your PSL payment. The DIVVY reports portal can provide the usage records required to apply for an exemption. 

If you’re a building tenant with car parking on your lease, there’s a good chance your landlord is benefiting from the PSL deferral. Consider asking them to pass the current deferrals and savings on to you too.  

3. Make money from your empty car parking spaces 

You could be generating revenue from parking spaces left empty by staff working from home. If you have DIVVY access controllers installed in your car park, consider listing your empty car parking spaces for public bookings on DIVVY Marketplace. There are still people commuting to work who need safe and secure parking, and every Marketplace booking returns revenue to your business. 

If your car park has a ticket validator or valet service entry system, your vacant parking spaces can be listed for public booking on our parking aggregator site Justbooked. List parking spaces for free and take advantage of a new marketing channel. 

4. Get efficient with DIVVY Enterprise 

The DIVVY Enterprise parking management system helps businesses get the most out of their parking at any time, and it can make life that bit simpler and safer during COVID-19.   

DIVVY Enterprise uses contactless QR code technology to provide access to car parks, doing away with the unsafe practice of sharing physical access cards. 

The ‘Free Up My Space’ feature offers the ultimate flexibility for staff parking management, even more, useful in rapidly evolving situations like the coronavirus pandemic. Employees with allocated parking who are working from home can make their parking space available for those staff that need to continue to travel into the office and who don’t normally have access to parking. 

The ‘Book On Behalf’ feature makes it easy to enable access to parking for employees or others visitors who don’t usually park on-site, or who usually work from another site, but need access during COVID-19. 

DIVVY Enterprise uses secure cloud-based technology so all these features, plus Enterprise’s multitude of other functions, can all be performed remotely, meaning staff working from home can continue to manage and monitor parking efficiently and with ease. 

*Please note DIVVY does not provide financial advice and we recommend you seek advice from your financial advisory or accountant.* 

We’re here to help. For more information, please contact Kat Fowler, DIVVY’s Marketing and Communications Manager at kat@divvy.com.au.  

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News

How DIVVY is helping businesses navigate COVID-19

Parking Technology or Optimising bookable assets through smarter technology

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has touched the life of every Australian and had an impact on every Australian business.  

Since the first lockdown in March, it has been a time of great change and uncertainty. As individuals and businesses, we’ve needed to draw on our resilience and adaptability.  

Here at DIVVY, we’ve been focussed on looking after our team and supporting our customers. We’ve also been finding new ways to help businesses get back to work as they navigate the new normal.  

Our car parks 

Since the pandemic took off in Australia, we’ve been working more closely than ever with our building owners and parking listers. We’ve been staying abreast of their COVID-19 policies and procedures to ensure safe and healthy car parks. 

Our Enterprise customers 

Our Enterprise system is helping businesses with vacant employee parking to increase efficiencies during COVID-19. It generates reports quickly and easily. The reports help businesses investigate whether they are eligible for a reduction in Fringe Benefits Tax or an exemption from the Parking Space Levy. Click here to read more about how your business can save on its car parking spaces during COVID-19. 

DIVVY Enterprise features like Book on Behalf and Free Up My Space allow businesses to manage changing employee parking needs as the pandemic evolves. The system uses secure cloud-based technology, so it can be operated from anywhere.  

It’s been an opportune time for our Enterprise customers with parking listed for public booking on DIVVY Marketplace. The demand for public parking is on the rise as people return to their workplaces but choose to avoid public transport. 

The contactless DIVVY pre-book parking system offers drivers peace of mind. There’s no handling of cash, pulling parking tickets, using payment machines or touching any shared surfaces at all with a pre-booked DIVVY car park.  

Optimising bookable assets through smarter technology 

For more than twelve months now, our employees have been entering and exiting our offices using contactless DIVVY access technology. 

Contactless access has never been more relevant. We’ve seen an increased focus on our technology’s ability to provide contactless access to bike lockers, end of trip facilities, meeting rooms and more. 

After witnessing the challenges faced by businesses during COVID-19, we took the booking platform technology that works so well for parking and adapted it for a range of new applications.  

Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform 

Our Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform allow any business that is visited by the public to communicate with its customers: 

  • its peak periods 
  • its busiest and quietest days 
  • in the event of queuing, the wait time to enter the venue 

The Platform makes it easy for customers to plan their visit before they leave home, helping them to avoid busy periods, save time and visit with peace of mind.  

The Platform has pre-book capabilities, enabling customers to book their visit in advance to avoid queuing. It allows businesses to control the time, duration and number of customers accessing their premises, and even manage separate areas within the venue. This helps businesses to adhere to venue capacity limits and maintain social distancing within their premises.  

Our Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform can also capture visitor contact details quickly and easily. It makes it possible to track interactions and crossovers between visitors and employees, helping with contact tracing should it be required. For those businesses conducting health attestation questionnaires, our Platform makes it quick and simple to collect and store visitors’ declarations of symptoms.  

Find out how DIVVY are helping Australian supermarket giant Woolworths take care of their customers with their Q-Tracker tool here.  

Back to Work Module 

To help businesses safely transition their staff back to their workplaces, we have launched our new Back to Work module. It allows businesses to manage how many staff will be in the workplace at any one time, as well as maintaining a digital record of staff attendance in the workplace.  

Staff use the DIVVY app to book a day and time to come into work. The booking parameters – how many staff can access the workplace, on which days and at which times – are set by the business. Just like the DIVVY parking experience, staff use a QR code on their phone for contactless entry to the workplace. 

It makes it easy for businesses to meet public health directions and comply with COVID-19 Safety Plans in their workplaces. The module has already been successfully adopted by TOGA Far East Hotels at their head office in Ultimo, Sydney.  

We are here to help. For more information, please get in touch with our friendly team at sales@divvy.com.au.   

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News

A message from DIVVY’s CEO on COVID-19

DIVVY & Justbooked logo

I’m sure you’ve been hearing from a lot of your businesses and suppliers you work with this week regarding their plans for COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and things to be aware of. And although this can feel overwhelming, we’re also aware that the more information people have in times like this, the more people are aware and informed of how they can make conscious decisions for their own health and well-being.

At DIVVY and Justbooked, we have implemented a couple of policies that we want to make you aware of so that you have the information you need as one of our building owners, parkers or listers.

We currently have no staff who have reported a COVID-19 diagnosis, however as we feel a strong sense of responsibility for all of our staff and customers we have taken all reasonable measures to protect them in these uncertain times. We have implemented a 14-day quarantine policy from Wednesday 25 February 2020 for all staff who had traveled overseas or were living with people who had traveled overseas. Since actioning this policy, we’ve had some of our people working remotely but this has now been escalated and from Monday 16 March 2020, most of DIVVY’s staff have been asked to work remotely where possible.

Our staff are being encouraged to change external meetings to video conferences unless required to be onsite and those staff who are required to travel to site are following up with contractors and suppliers on their building policies for COVID-19 before travelling to these sites to ensure they’re working a safe environment.

What does this mean for our customers? Right now, this should not have any impact on the services DIVVY & Justbooked provide and we’re working as hard as possible to ensure we deliver our best service for you during these times. We’re taking measures to protect our staff from the spread of infection and we want you to know that our team is working with our building owners and listers everyday to keep up to date with their policies that they’re following to offer a safe and healthy workplace and car park for their building visitors.

If a building reports a case of COVID-19 we will inform all our DIVVY Users who have had bookings in the previous 30 days to ensure they’re notified immediately and can action their own plan. We’ve already had to undertake this process for two buildings that DIVVY offers parking and are monitoring for any future cases.

We thank you for your understanding during this time and if there’s any questions you have about any of this please feel free to touch base with any of our DIVVY or Justbooked team members who will be more than happy to assist.

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