Strategic realignment at APCOA

 

As Europe’s leading car park operator, APCOA has built the continent’s largest network of car parks and established a highly profitable business. However, shifts in shopping and mobility behaviors, combined with trends like digitalization, sustainability, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, required the company to rethink its traditional business model. With support from undconsorten, APCOA redefined its strategy, focusing on strengthening its core business in parking management while exploring new revenue streams through innovative initiatives like "Urban Hubs." This strategic shift enabled APCOA to remain future-ready and achieve growth despite a highly challenging market environment.

Despite APCOA’s strong track record, the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and changing market dynamics underscored the need for a fresh strategic direction. In response, APCOA collaborated with undconsorten to refine its strategy, focusing on two key priorities: (1) Strengthening its core business in car park management. (2) Developing adjacent business areas to create fast and profitable growth opportunities.

Strengthening the Core Business

The first step was to consolidate APCOA’s core business—car park management—even in the face of mounting pressures from the pandemic and regulatory changes, such as urban driving bans. Although APCOA had built Europe’s largest car park network over the past 50 years, these challenges put its traditional business model under strain.

To ensure continued profitability and flexibility in adapting to new market demands, the team analyzed various strategic levers. This included optimizing current operations to increase efficiency and identifying new revenue streams. Simultaneously, APCOA’s market positioning was reviewed to maintain and expand its leadership as Europe’s top car park operator.

Introducing "Urban Hubs": A Game-Changer

A cornerstone of APCOA’s revamped strategy was the development and implementation of "Urban Hubs." This innovative initiative transformed underutilized spaces in APCOA car parks into multifunctional ecosystems, far beyond traditional parking services. These hubs opened up new revenue opportunities while addressing key trends like urbanization, sustainability, and digitalization.

Steps for the realisation of the "Urban Hubs"

1. Market analysis and Opportunity Assessment

The process began with comprehensive market analyses to identify growth opportunities beyond traditional parking. These analyses evaluated various use cases for transforming car parks into "Urban Hubs," focusing on their market potential and profitability.

2 Prioritisation and Business Planning

The most promising use cases were prioritized based on their attractiveness and revenue potential. Business plans were developed to set clear, medium-term growth targets for APCOA’s 12 European country units.

3. Implementation of New Use Cases

The Urban Hubs initiative introduced a variety of innovative business models, including:

  • Mobility: Car sharing, micro-mobility (e.g., e-scooters), autonomous driving/parking, and car rental services.
  • Electricity: EV charging infrastructure, fleet charging solutions, and micro-mobility charging stations.
  • New Technologies: Micro-maintenance, mobile health services, and community or entertainment offerings.
  • Logistics: Last-mile delivery depots, self-storage, urban warehousing, and click-and-collect services.

4. Communication and Implementation

To ensure alignment across all country units, the business plans were communicated clearly. Targets were integrated into day-to-day operations, and new services were rolled out step by step, driving seamless implementation.

 

Results of the Strategic Realignment

Through focused strategy work and consistent execution, APCOA successfully achieved its goals within just three years—much faster than initially anticipated. Diversifying its business model proved instrumental in securing APCOA’s position in a challenging market. The new business areas not only generated stable and profitable revenue streams but also strengthened the company’s resilience and long-term viability.

"The best moment for me was when the countries clearly signaled: this is not a concept from an ivory tower. We are behind the ideas, believe in the figures and are ready to get started!"

Frank van der Sant
Chief Commercial Officer at APCOA

Facts about the company

APCOA is Europe’s leading car park operator, managing over 1.6 million parking spaces across more than 13,000 locations in 12 countries. Headquartered in Stuttgart, APCOA has been delivering parking solutions for over 50 years, evolving from a traditional car park operator into an integrated urban service provider. By leveraging innovative technologies and digital platforms, APCOA has optimized car park management and unlocked new business opportunities, including e-charging infrastructure, mobility solutions, and urban logistics hubs. With its strategic focus on digitalization, sustainability, and the mobility transition, APCOA plays a pivotal role in shaping urban spaces and the smart mobility solutions of tomorrow.

Highlights

Incentivisation and Engagement: Key to Success

The introduction of Urban Hubs required a fundamental shift in mindset. Rather than framing the strategic realignment as a cost optimization or efficiency initiative, the company communicated a compelling vision for its future growth. Urban Hubs became a core component of APCOA's corporate strategy, with key stakeholders incentivized and actively involved in shaping the growth strategy. This approach ensured rapid acceptance of the new direction across the organization.

Early Involvement of the Leadership Team

Another critical success factor was the close involvement of APCOA’s leadership team and, later, the management of its national units. Urban Hubs required a rethinking of the existing core business. To break new ground, it was essential to secure the full commitment of the leadership team. Engaging senior leaders early, combined with open discussions about potential reservations and challenges, enabled unified support for the new strategy. To bolster trust and credibility among the country organizations, detailed business plans were developed before involving other units. These plans, supported by concrete data, figures, and pilot projects from select countries, significantly enhanced the persuasive power of the strategy. This careful preparation achieved broad approval across the organization and ensured that all teams stood firmly behind the new vision.

CCO Frank van der Sant on his highlight during the strategic reorganisation at APCOA.

Please note that the interview is in German.

You can find the full interview with Frank van der Sant here.

Broadening perspectives - further topics

Successful organisations are characterised by a common direction, effective positioning, committed employees, efficient managers, high-performing teams, a constructive culture and experience with change. These characteristics are closely interlinked and reinforce each other.

Interview: "Urban Hubs" at APCOA

APCOA has used the time of change to transform itself from a car park operator to an integrated urban service provider. We spoke to APCOA's Chief Commercial Officer Frank van der Sant about the establishment of urban hubs as a further development of the company's own business model and the digitalisation of parking and mobility.

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Team Performance

High-performing teams are the foundation and building block of excellent organisations: Teams form the most important environment for all employees and managers. Collaboration, innovation, problem solving, personal development, learning and appreciation take place in teams.

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Change management

Important decisions in organisations sometimes require far-reaching changes. This can be triggered by changes in strategy, restructuring and efficiency programmes, acquisitions or organisational changes. Changes are more than just the implementation of blueprints. At its core, it is always about people whose behaviour and cooperation must change. Change can only be successful if both are successful.

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Our experts look forward to hearing from you!


Dr. Jens Müller-Oerlinghausen
Dr. Jens Müller-Oerlinghausen
Partner

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Candy Fraedrich
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Dr. Jan Niclas Frei
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