If you think a property management system is simply a way of systematizing your existing processes, think again. For the betterment of the property management profession, it’s much more. It’s a solution so potent it solves deep-seated problems of which even the most keenly aware property managers may not be aware.
It’s a way to automate redundant paper-based processes, simplify compliance, ensure security, improve tenant service, and reduce maintenance/operating costs.
As urban development, city planning, and widespread construction efforts across America increase, the property management industry faces opportunities as challenging to execute as they are exciting: the good news is there’s a way to seize these opportunities while conquering the challenges they impose, all through use of a property management system.
Answering Resident Questions
Although the answers to these questions may at times seem painfully obvious, relying on the information to assert your claims in response to legal questions requires having it readily available.
With dozens of questions piling up in an inbox an any given day, trying to find the information you need to adequately answer the questions can become painstakingly slow, unless you make use of a property management system.
Its metadata-enhanced, predefined templating nomenclature makes files readily accessible within seconds, and at specific search content confidence intervals, too.
This imperative becomes even more necessary when most property managers discover they spend 20 seconds of every minute on the clock searching for information.
A Property Management System Simplifies Bookkeeping
Given that a vast number of property managers already have a job or career focus outside their property management roles, keeping track of things with ease can be very difficult, particularly from a bookkeeping perspective.
Most property managers also find that a strictly accounting-based software leaves much to be desired in the operational processes outside typical bookkeeping procedures. However, relying on a number of different software companies to manage granular components of a business is far more difficult than using a system that touches every aspect of the business process, but already integrates with software property managers use to carry out their routines.
Maintaining tenant records and finding a way to make them readily accessible to the extent that they do not detract from overall productivity is especially useful. Having an in-house accountant is usually out of the question for most property managers, too, as it is just an additional cost to handle.
A Property Management System Simplifies Payment Problem Management
One of the proverbially difficult things to deal with in the property management industry is the difficulty faced in retrieving payment when it’s due. Keeping track of rent payments in a manual fashion can prolong the property management process to the brink of oblivion.
And it’s better to discover a payment hasn’t been made as shortly after the fact as possible than it is when tallying up the balance sheets for your business at the end of the month. Utilizing document lifecycle management within a property management system also ensures you’ll be able to organize document-related information in a way that helps you predict future outcomes.
A Property Management System Organizes the Document Lifecycle
From the capture and imaging process to the management of documents in a workflow, including the permissions and secure file transfer, to the automation of document retention, clutter can be reduced by a property management system. Not only are compliance
Property Information Management Simplifies Operations
If there’s an aspect of property management that most property managers are still learning to handle in the earlier days of their career, it’s the operational aspects of running a property management business. Most property managers are great at leasing, but they are yet to master the finer aspects of management, such as legal affairs, marketing, and loss prevention.
When operations are simplified, costs are reduced, and time is more effectively managed at every stage of the property management process.
It Helps You Hire and Maintain Quality Staff
Hiring the right people has become a buzzword in and of itself. But the sentiment is truer than even its cliché can indicate. Hiring the right people for a property management firm or company is so important, in fact, that it accounts for 27% of the biggest challenges property management firms are facing.
In today’s information economy, knowledge is our biggest asset, but it cannot be leveraged without talent management and acquisition, which is more readily adhered to under specific conditions: simple documentation, improved efficiency, and the automating of redundant processes.
Ensuring Overall Responsiveness to Tenants
Living situations are always taken seriously by the American public. After all, aside from the car we drive, the places in which we live are the biggest indicators of our status within the culture. So, it only follows that when an issue arises with the living situations, tenants demand responsiveness from their property managers.
To make matters worse, most people who are yet to hit their 30s live in apartment complexes, and demand that maintenance issues are immediately fixed before “big dates” or important company arriving, even if the request is issued in an untimely fashion.
To make matters worse, without a property management system in use to create the kind of efficiency that makes leeway to be helpful at all hours, the tenant will likely hold ill will against his or her landlord. Statistics also suggest that most residents leave a living situation overseen by a property management they perceive as being careless to their requests, resulting in lower retention, referrals, and fewer dollars in revenue.
Jesse Wood is the CEO of document management software vendor, eFileCabinet. Founded in 2001, eFileCabinet, Inc. began as a cutting-edge tool to digitally store records in accounting firms. As it grew in popularity, eFileCabinet developed into a full-fledged electronic document management solution designed to help organizations automate redundant processes, ensure security, and solve common office problems.
