Most multifamily property management companies are significantly lessening their earnings potential because they have not properly focused on internal technology capabilities. These companies are typically not aware of all opportunities for cost management and they are unable to accelerate revenue as quickly as they should because they don’t have the platforms and processes in place to take advantage of automation and smart technology.
While sophistication in the areas of data sharing, analytics, data protection, smart space enablement, property management systems and more have rapidly evolved in recent years, most organizations still aren’t sure how to handle these “I.T.” things. Some multifamily companies are not even sure who is internally responsible for each of these items. Thus, these companies treat I.T. as a game of whack-a-mole instead of chess. Whack-a-mole is purely reactive, as issues arise you fix them. Chess is strategic, you plan out your next few moves that enable you to make tactical strikes to put your competition into checkmate.
Are you playing I.T. whack-a-mole or chess?
At Solvenna, we are often called upon to help property management companies that have unknowingly outgrown their I.T. focus and investments. This makes sense. These companies want to and have been focused on getting deals done. Focused on making real estate investments and making money. And they have done a good job at that, but haven’t spent the time and energy on I.T. stability and enablement. These organizations don’t want to focus on I.T. standards, tools, technologies and vendor contracts. We get that. However, that is exactly why Solvenna can help. These I.T. items and distractions in the multifamily industry are exactly why we get out of bed each day. This is our focus.
In a survey performed by One11 Advisors in 2020, they found that multifamily organizations plan to focus and expand upon each of the I.T. items in the list below over the next 3-5 years (shown in order by respondents).
However, during that same survey, One11 advisors found that most such companies have no I.T. steering committee or clearly identified accountable party for such initiatives.
This means, while most multifamily companies acknowledge that I.T. and data solutions are growing in importance; they still haven’t outlined the framework for how that will happen.
How can Solvenna help?
At Solvenna, we work with multifamily property management companies in two main areas:
- Outline a strategic roadmap to plan out the timing, priority, and cost of upcoming technology initiatives and make sure these are aligned with near, mid and long term business objectives.
- Tactical outsourcing for key initiatives ranging from smart space enablement, cybersecurity, remote worker enablement, virtual leasing, data management, reporting, analytics and our favorite … marketing.
Strategic Roadmap
The following is an illustrative overview of the process we follow in order to define a tailor fit strategic roadmap for your company. The purpose of this type of project is not to simply build PowerPoint slides or other documentation. Rather, we focus on creating an actionable, prioritized list of projects that can directly lead to business transformation — and more profits.
The detailed issues, available resources, existing data and system capabilities do vary from company to company. However, the general challenges, approaches to resolution and business transformation opportunities are surprisingly similar. Through our work with a number of companies in this industry, we have been able to catalog commonalities in data needs, vendors, investor needs and customer needs to define an approach that allows us to move through the strategic planning process very efficiently. We want to help you define the key improvement opportunities and put a plan of attack in place to tackle each based on value, upside potential, resources and timing.
Tactical Outsourcing
The opportunities for improvement and projects identified on your roadmap will certainly differ in some way from those on others in the industry. Here is a preview list of the common projects we have been including over the past 12-18 months:
- Virtual Leasing
- Smart Spaces (locks, etc.)
- Self-guided Tours
- Resident self service
- Establish Renter Experience Council
- Virtual Assistant
- SMS/Email Integration
- Omni Channel Marketing
- Cloud Migration
- Timely dashboards. Make data readily available / visible in near real time
- Data security
- PMS System Optimization
- Return to office
- Conversational AI
- Natural language processing
Not surprisingly, we have noticed a huge uptick in multifamily property management companies needing expanded access and visibility into their own data. These projects are commonly being fast tracked into development during the roadmap definition stage. They are lower cost, higher value return type initiatives. These reporting, dashboard and analytics type projects are reasonably quick projects and can help surface invaluable information that can directly lead to increased revenue, cost reductions as well as inform to best inform what other projects should be prioritized. Some common business critical reporting data gaps we help address include “Are we overpaying for our properties?”, “How do I stay on top of all of my leasing events?”, “How can our facilities improve employee performance, satisfaction, and retention?”, “How do I better anticipate equipment that might fail?” .
Solvenna can supply you with a seasoned team of consultants and industry expert engineers that can help you identify, prioritize and tackle your hardest technology problems. We want to save you time and stress from having to worry about technology challenges so that you can spend more time closing deals, making money and thinking of new ways technology can be used to simplify your day-to-to instead of hinder it.
Stop playing I.T. whack-a-mole; start playing chess.
