Tech, Tech, Tech - When is it too much?

Having worked onsite early in my career I have a special place in my heart for our frontline property workers and made it my goal to improve their daily tasks by creating efficiencies with technology. This included launching online applications with lease execution, an integrated screening solution, utility billing with energy management, a crm platform to keep track of follow-up, and online payments, call centers, package tracking, and integrated collection services. With each new service, came another log-in, another link, and one more dashboard the operators needed to keep up with. Admittedly, it was overwhelming to the point that some of the more “nice to have” tech saw lower usage. As technology progressed some of these services were consolidated or integrated and automated into the main pm software. With each new consolidation or automation adoption rates soared.

With Entrata coming along and offering a single platform for all of their services, Yardi consolidating their own solutions with RENTCafe CRM and offering single-sign on, and RealPage offering a single sign-on dashboard with access to each of their solutions, things seem to be moving in the right direction for the major players in the space. ResMan and Appfolio are also gaining ground with their barebones simplicity.

Things should be getting easier for our property team members but unfortunately that isn’t always the case.

If you read my “email blog post link” blog post then you may recall the property shop I did where they had 3 different guest card solutions on their website. This property has their online guest card from their pm software provider, a guest card from a 3rd party chat bot, and a guest card from their tour scheduling widget. On top of their website availability they also have a third party property map solution to show locations of their available apartments. From a prospect’s perspective the online user experience felt disjointed, repetitive, and unnecessary. I truly feel for both the corporate and property level team members managing these services on a daily basis.

How does this happen? Software and marketing services are added without regard or change to existing functionality. Multiple people at the corporate level cultivate relationships with vendors and when it comes time to reassess, change is met with pushback. People think of themselves first in decision making and it takes a strong collaborative corporate culture to combat. This can stem from a fear of change, wanting to feel important, lack of understanding of the implications that come with each new service and integration, or greasing of palms under the table. If there isn’t an internal champion for efficiency that is well connected with each department then the company sticks with the status quo but then layers another service on top of it and continues to “slap lipstick on a pig” because it is the path of least resistance. Let’s all take a step back and appreciate the bloated budget this property must have.

One thing I was mindful of with each new technology we added to properties was to ensure it did not introduce overlap. If a solution had functionality to replace multiple others, then the older solution would be dropped. With the implementation of new websites, a resident portal with payments, Craigslist posting, syndication, online applications, and lease execution were included. With one contract we could cancel 6 products and eliminate 3 log-ins for our properties. It sounds like a no brainer but IT, marketing, learning and development, revenue management, and operations all had to buy in to the change before it could be fully executed. Let’s just say I learned my sales skills in a property management organization and not on the vendor side.

How does an organization avoid tech and marketing overload? First, there needs to be an internal champion for change who isn’t afraid to break the status quo and who has executive support. Depending on the size of the company this could be a group of people such as project management. This could also be a person that has access to the C-suite where their ideas for change and efficiency will be met with an open ear and a platform to voice why the change is needed. Another way to propagate change is for corporate level team members to spend a week at a property and complete the same training as a property manager. Talk about eye opening! This is especially important for those that have never worked at a property.

My suggestions may sound like oversimplification when considering the different organizational structures but you would be surprised by how effective they can be even in some of the largest organizations.