How a Global Real Estate Firm Went From Losing $8M on Parking Every Year to Making $2M

Until recently, commuting costs were an afterthought for most companies—if they considered them at all. But that’s changing fast, as enterprises realize how much uncontrolled spend stems from commuting.

This newfound attention to commuting has led to the rise of Commute Capital Management™ (CCM), an approach that reclassifies workforce commuting as a strategic capital domain, placing centralized oversight under the control of the Finance department. CCM treats commute-related spending as an asset class: one with tangible returns when optimized and real risks when ignored.

The opacity of decentralized vendors

Many elements of commuting are local by nature, and, until recently, have been left largely unsupervised. Each site is left to sign its own vendor contracts, including with parking providers that lease and/or manage access to spaces.

But this patchwork of agreements led to some dramatically inconsistent prices and policies. And because data doesn’t flow to a central system, trying to sort the good deals from the bad can be nearly impossible.

Cutting through the vendor jungle

With more than 100 sites, a global real estate and co-working firm Commutifi worked with had more than its fair share of parking headaches. After steps had been made to improve the approach at each site individually, it was time to zoom out and think about how the same could be done at a global scale.

The first hurdle was the sheer number of parking operators the firm was engaged with across the United States. The company chose to centralize the process by running each of these contracts through Commutifi. Now, they’d have to deal with one vendor, not 65.

Because all contracts now lived in one place, it was simple to identify which prices were unreasonable and where leakage was draining resources. More importantly, it became clear that the rates the company charged its real estate and coworking clients for parking spaces were wildly unaligned with market prices. Only this global lens could unveil the reasons certain sites were thriving while others chronically underperformed. With this information in hand, the firm could rightsize parking policies.

The result of such an investment of energy paid off: parking went from losing $8 million USD annually in the United States alone to making an annual profit of $2 million USD–a $10 million swing.

Bring CCM to your organization

Curious about the ways Commute Capital Management can slash your hidden commute spending? Read the definitive guide, or get in touch with one of our experts.