From several days to a few hours: We helped Toogethr accelerate client portal configuration

The challenge: Making parking easy and sustainable

Encouraging seamless commute and parking journey. Offering a guaranteed spot and making electrical vehicle parking spots more accessible. All to make commuting hassle-free and more efficient for employees.

Toogethr is a full-fledged parking partner for companies across the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Poland, and the UK.

They already had a parking system that was at the end of its lifecycle. To make it fit for their future requirements and increase its scalability and flexibility, the client wanted to rebuild it.
The client has two main digital products:

• A digital parking platform – allows for easier management of users, communities, locations, and subscriptions. The platform contains parking logic but also serves as an API connection for third-party integrations. For example, office management tools can be connected to parking apps and access control systems. That way, it enables simpler creation of bookings and gate management.
• Parking portals – white-label websites that can be easily configured for any of their clients. There are multiple types of portals – consumer and employee. Employee portals are meant to ensure seamless capacity management and optimized parking usage within a company. On the other hand, consumer portals are public, enabling outside customers to use the parking spots that are not occupied by the staff, adding revenue to customers.

The team: 7 engineers as an augmentation of the client’s team

Toogethr provided all managerial roles necessary for the project's success. They needed full-stack software engineers and QA engineers with deep experience in Python/Django and React as an extension of their team.

And that is when Vega IT stepped in. We provided them with a team of seven people who served as their technical knowledge powerhouse.

The solution: Rebuilding the parking management system to achieve exceptional results

The project evolved from a parking system where you can make reservations and overview them, to a complex digital solution that can be configured to meet the different requirements of Toogethr’s clients. Unsurprisingly, the latest version of the system has been significantly improved compared to the original one, coming with a range of new, innovative features.

In addition to this Toogethr’s client wanted a portal that matched their brand styles, colors, and logos. Therefore, they needed to set up a new portal on a new server instance so that they could customize its style for each client. And, that required changes to the code base.

Since using the old portal code base was not applicable, Toogethr asked us if we could build it in Python/Django since that is their technology of choice. We suggested implementing it in such a way as to allow them to configure the entire portal for each of their clients through the administration panel provided by Django.

This way, by centralizing the source code and database, we have helped the client reduce expenses and streamline processes. Since they are now hosted on a single server instance, the setup process is reduced from several days to just a few hours, sometimes even less than an hour, depending on the portal configuration.

The results: An award-winning digital solution

Throughout the collaboration with us, Toogethr received more than mere technical support. We were their genuine software development partner, providing them with our technical expertise and innovative ideas.

We helped them automate portal configuration for clients and simplify this part by developing a centralized CMS available on a single URL. That means that the time required to configure portals was reduced from a few days to a few hours.

Most importantly, they don’t use external services anymore. They have their own API, meaning they have complete control over the system. That means they can develop and implement new features faster, with significantly less costs, time investments, and greater flexibility.

And the results speak for themselves. The parking app received the User Experience Award 2022.

The full tech stack

• Google Cloud
• Docker Images
• Docker Compose
• Python/Django
• React /React with typescript
• JavaScript
• Java and Swift
• HTML
• CSS
• GraphQL
• SCSS
• Jquery