Property management: streamline operations and improve efficiency

Introduction

Today's property management companies have a lot on their plates: organizing maintenance, invoicing and collecting payments for rent or HOA fees, managing leases, fielding questions and complaints from residents, and so much more.

While there are plenty of software solutions to help property managers accomplish these tasks, most of the off-the-shelf solutions on the market streamline one or 2 aspects of the work, but not all.

As a result, property managers find themselves adopting several different platforms in order to fulfill all of their many roles. Rather than making the job easier, however, this strategy results in teams spending the bulk of their time managing software.

They try keeping up with varied subscription terms, learning multiple platforms, and migrating information from one to the others to avoid gaps or redundancies. All of this comes at the expense of a property manager's real job: taking care of the property and its residents.

So, how can a property management company get the support it needs to optimize its front- and back-office operations, automating the grunt work and improving the tenant experience? The answer lies in custom software development.

Replacing a network of disparate systems (whose limited functionalities and integrations often complicate rather than simplify business) with a custom software solution designed to be the foundation for all of your property management activities comes with a whole host of benefits, to both your reputation and your bottom line.

Let's take a look at a few of the biggest ones.

No more juggling multiple vendor contracts

Managing multiple systems means working with multiple vendors and keeping up with multiple contracts. Each system comes with its own price point, renewal schedule, and payment methods that your finance team has to juggle. Each vendor also has its own support teams and processes, meaning when something goes wrong, you've got to track down which support line to call or portal to access for the particular platform you need help with.

Finally, each system probably also has different rules about access, some limit the number of users, while others are only available on certain devices.

All this makes working across different systems a logistical headache for both the employees using them and the administrators keeping them up to date. Not to mention the residents who have to log into one platform for maintenance requests, another to communicate with property managers, and yet another to pay their rent or HOA fees.

But when you're working with a single custom application, these frustrations, and the expenses of multiple payments and management resources required, disappear.

You own your software, so after the upfront investment, there are no more ongoing renewals and payment methods and cost increases to juggle.

Your software development partner becomes your single point of contact for all of your support needs, so no matter what goes wrong, you have one number to dial, and the person on the other end understands your whole system, rather than just a small corner of it.

Since you make the rules, you no longer have to worry about whether your software comes with enough licenses for every property you manage, whether renters and homeowners can take advantage of services both at their desks and on their phones, or whether your property managers have access to everything they need to support their residents.

No more gaps or redundancies in data

When you're working with a network of systems, there are extra hoops to jump through to be sure all of your data is up to date across every platform. For example:

• when you log residents' monthly payments in the billing platform, you have to have some mechanism in place to be sure their payment status is up to date everywhere else so they don't erroneously lose access to other services.
• when a new tenant signs a lease, you have to be sure the old renter's information is scrubbed and replaced on every platform and that her new lease is tied to her billing account correctly.
• you have to ensure that owner and renter contact information matches and is correct on every platform so that, for example, repairs are billed to the right resident and owners who don't live on property are kept in the loop about neighborhood meetings, updates, and events.

While some of this can be automated among systems, there will inevitably be inconsistencies in data management that lead to missed maintenance appointment, duplicate billing, and other errors that may lead to costly fixes, angry residents, and even lost accounts.

But when everything is managed on one platform, a centralized database means correct, consistent information can be found in every corner of the application, every time.

Seamless integration

Similar to the data management issues, a network of software solutions often leads to integration challenges when one technology doesn't play well with the others. This leads to time-consuming and error-prone manual workflows, silos between different activity centers, and ripple effects where updates or repairs to one system may jeopardize its integration with the others.

A single, holistic platform will enable full transparency across your property management organization, automated workflows, and seamless communication between one function and the next.

Control over the future

Finally, as the owner of your custom software solution, you're in total control of how it grows and evolves with your organization.

When you're juggling several different off-the-shelf solutions, you may find yourself hamstrung, unable to make progress toward business goals or make much-needed improvements to the resident experience until your vendors decide it's time to make upgrades.

When you're operating from one single, bespoke platform designed and built to meet your company's unique needs and goals head-on, then you can be assured that platform will accelerate, rather than slow your growth. Now, and in the future.

Wielding the secret weapon

If your property management company is ready to optimize back-office processes, enhance the customer experience, shore up expenses, and improve the bottom line, a custom software solution might just be your secret weapon.