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IS YOUR PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE GROWING YOUR BUSINESS (OR HOLDING YOU BACK)? Mark Bush, Vice President - Business Development
Ask anyone in property management if they use property management software, and they will all answer “yes.” However, ask what they use it for, and you will likely get more varied answers, often regarding which software they use; in some instances, that property management software is used by the property management company and not at all by the property managers that work for them. I was recently at the REMI Conference in Toronto, where a property manager for a large Toronto company confided in me that he generates purchase orders by hand. This was a bit of a shock – especially in our modern age and for a manager of a larger operation that was not a small, mom-and-pop shop. I wondered how this could be, and my conclusion was that the required tools to effectively manage condominium buildings are fragmented across many platforms. Not only that, but the decision as to which issues require software tools often lies with the property management company, not with the property manager.
It is common, then, that property management companies invest first in a management system that can automate (if not somewhat) the processing of financial transactions while ignoring or undervaluing software that improves client satisfaction or adds greater efficiencies to a property manager’s job. So, is your software holding your company back? Ask yourself if your software is: • A place that stores documents versus a place for sharing information. • A repository of data versus information to support decision-making. • Reactive versus proactive. • Manual versus automated. • Only for the management company as opposed to something that provides client self-service. • One which you have outgrown rather than a property management software that grows with you. If you agree to one or more of the above, the answer is “yes.”