COMPANY VITAE
...in a galaxy far, far away
ICES made its mark with its stormtrooper display at Parkex 2011 and, as Sarah Juggins discovered, this is a company that is prepared to push boundaries
I
n the relatively youthful business that is IT-based parking solutions, Imperial Civil Enforcement Solutions (ICES) is something of a veteran. The company’s roots lie within the Bristol- based cigar and tobacco manufacturers, Imperial Tobacco. Back in the 1980s, following the downsizing of the large information technology (IT) department by major Bristol fi rm Hanson, three of the directors of Imperial decided to go it alone and set up Imperial Business Systems, offering IT solutions in a range of industries. An early client was NCP, then the biggest car park operator in the UK, managing between 700 and 900 car parks at any one time.
At that time NCP was a property company that owned its car parks, and its directors wanted a bespoke IT solution to manage the cash recording side of the car parking business.
Spotting market opportunties The directors at Imperial Business Systems realised that bespoke IT solutions were not practical for large-scale parking operations, and were seeking an opportunity to improve IT solutions within the parking industry. The chance to acquire NCP’s IT provider, Langdale, was an opportunity not to be missed.
54 APRIL 2012
A lot of the competition has
grown up from the parking industry, whereas we have the core IT capability
The problem with the Langdale software was that the required updating for customers with numerous sites was a time-consuming business, leading to unhappy clients with issues that needed addressing. Imperial Business Systems rewrote the Langdale software and produced a packaged solution: Parking Gateway. This was delivered to all customer sites, offering easy updates and operational consistency.
The company gradually increased its customer base and continued to offer packaged solutions to parking operators across the country. But it was the acquisition of Compex, a software company that had been purchased from Vinci Park, combined with the introduction of
the Traffi c Management Act 2004 (TMA), that set the company on the road to greater success. Harnessing the strengths of Langdale and Compex, it also led to the formation of Imperial Civil Enforcement Services (ICES). Under the TMA, all sites that were adopting civil enforcement had to go live with new systems on 1 April. This meant ICES had to prepare 60 sites to go live on the same day. Managing director of ICES, Ashley Bijster,
said: ‘There was a real buzz and a commitment from the team, with people working late into the night and at weekends. But that sums up the ethos of the company – if we are going to do something then we are going to do it well.’
Problem-free process
The system went live without a hitch on 1 April and the success of the operation ensured that the profi le of ICES was well and truly in front of the parking industry.
Since 2004, ICES has immersed itself in the automation of parking systems and can now offer parking solutions from start to fi nish – as Bijster said: ‘The only bit we can’t offer is the human presence on the street.’ She puts ICES’s success down to its position as an IT expert that specifi cally addresses the needs of parking, rather than a parking operation trying to branch into IT, something rivals have tried unsuccessfully.
www.britishparking.co.uk
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