Why wouldn’t you use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR, also known as LPR for license plate recognition) in a pay-per-use service – that lets you pay as you go?
The fact is, there’s no reason not to. Keep reading and we’ll show you why you should go for cloud-based ANPR in three specific scenarios.
A General Notion of Cloud-Based ANPR Service
Overall, one of the most fantastic advantages of using such a service is that it is transaction-based. If you sign up for one your business won’t have to make a big outlay in initial investment costs.
It’s kind of like a device that’s “plug and play” – you’ll be up and running virtually immediately.
In a nutshell, with a cloud system, you are paying for, sometimes subscribing to, computing capacity and programming knowledge. Usually, there’s no software that you need to download or install, like our ALPR software. On the contrary, a cloud system is like renting the service, in a similar way you use an online invoicing system.
Pay as You Go
You pay for the service regularly. For example, your company pays its dues monthly, for a subscription package or the exact number of transactions, but you pay for its use on a regular billing schedule. If you opt for a subscription package of say 1,000 recognition transactions/month, you’ll know exactly what your monthly and yearly costs are for the service.
Optionally, you can choose to pay a unit price each time your hardware submits a transaction to the ANPR service. This way, you’ll end up paying only for exactly how much you use the system.
Flexibility, Cost Savings
Can you imagine how much different that is from having to purchase on-premise software? You can say goodbye to installing and programming it and have programming experts on board to make sure things continue to run smoothly.
If you’re not completely convinced yet, read on and hear about three cases in which cloud-based ANPR service simply is the best choice when you consider its advantages against the upfront investment costs and hassles of “shrink-wrap” (the other name of on-premises) software.
When to Use ANPR for Pay-Per-Use Projects
Case #1: When You Have No Idea How Much Capacity Your Project Needs
Let’s say you’ll soon be in charge of vehicle identification for a new section of the road still under construction. While there may have been some estimates, it’s just really difficult to measure how much traffic it will accommodate. You wouldn’t want to set things up for too many or too few license plate recognition transactions.
If you’re on a conservative approach and your ANPR capacity is too low, you might not be able to identify every car traversing the section. But there’s also a chance that a new, yet-to-be-discovered motorway only sees an auto every few minutes. So there is no need to overcompensate and install too much ANPR capacity, either. Isn’t it better to choose a dynamic, pay-per-use online system that you can adjust as you go?
Another example: you’re responsible for a parking lot at a new shopping mall. It is also difficult to predict just how many cars will park there daily. Once you figure out that number, you can adjust the usage of your SaaS subscription for the ANPR service to suit your needs.
Case #2: When Road Usage Has HUGE Differentials
Imagine a road that leads to a nearby lake where the level of traffic varies greatly in summer and winter. There can be huge differences, which require a different number of ANPR or vehicle identification transactions.
But even on roads that do not vary that much in seasonal traffic, ANPR requirements can be different depending on the month. For example, across the globe, motorway systems employ compliance checks on motorists to determine any potential violations like speeding, lack of a toll sticker, etc. Just to make sure that the authority does not fine someone unnecessarily, the road authority’s system does a double-check, taking an extra license plate reading – another ANPR check – to verify a driver’s license plate before sending out a penalty fine.
This means that the more times drivers potentially commit road violations – say lack of a toll sticker – any ANPR system needs to do twice the number of checks for each potential violation. The number of such violations is always different; even higher differences can occur during the holiday travel season, for example, resulting in an increased number of potential violations. And that’s a “feast or famine” situation, where sometimes you might need to identify 2-3 times the normal amount of road traffic.
That makes it difficult to estimate how many ANPR transactions the organization needs. A cloud-based subscription service lets you figure out the numbers and adjust how much you purchase according to the load.
Case #3: When It’s More Difficult to Get CapEx Approved Than OpEx
It is often difficult to start a new investment when huge capital expenditure (CapEx) is a must. This may be due to a corporate bureaucratic problem, because it is difficult to authorize a new investment, or it is a simple budget limit. In such cases, it might be a lot easier to approve a smaller monthly operating cost type expenditure (OpEx), like paying for a regular subscription service that entails a certain number of license plate recognition transactions.
Maybe you want to perform a “proof of concept” test run to demonstrate the capabilities of a future system at the lowest possible cost. A cloud-based ANPR service gives you a much less expensive option for doing just that and not having to invest in a full-blown software solution.
Seeing is Believing: Free Cloud-based ANPR Trial
If you like what you’ve been reading, and hopefully one or more of our cases has rung some bells in your mind, why not try such a pay-per-use vehicle identification system for free?
Try out our Carmen® Cloud vehicle identification service – without any financial risk:
