How Property Management Automation Solves Pain Points

Running a property management company comes with a set of challenges that are both pretty standard and also highly specific to the industry. This puts many of those in our field into an interesting position when it comes to finding solutions.

Having worked with many different property management companies throughout the United States, we've put together a list of some of the universal pain points our clients come to us with—and how we help them fix those issues to experience the success they deserve.

Read on for common property management pain points—and how property management automation can solve them!

1. 'We don't have enough visibility to know if we’re making smart financial decisions.'

Where should you be focusing hires, what department is overstaffed, and which accounts are taking up so much time that you're losing money on them? It can be hard to tell when you don't have enhanced reporting to rely on.

Advanced reporting will give you the insight you need to make smart decisions as a company, such as the count of monthly tickets per department, who was completing them, and the average time it takes to garner a ticket response and provide a solution—even organized by owner.

This reporting is simple to set up and comes from the data from your property management automations. Just set up some dashboards (we can also do this for you), and you'll have a complete picture of your numbers with the click of a mouse.

2. 'We are overpaying for tools, but we don’t know how to consolidate.'

Having too many one-off solutions is going to cause unnecessary bloat, and disconnected systems contribute to a lack of visibility. Consolidating into powerhouse ecosystems saves time and money. Fewer bills to pay and price increases to navigate makes it easier for financial forecasting as well.

The HubSpot ecosystem houses so many apps and programs into one platform that our clients are able to cut a ton of one-off services and consolidate into one interconnected solution that simplifies their operations.

3. 'Owner churn is high because....'

The first thing automation will help you do is answer the reason for the churn with enhanced reporting.

• Use ticket response times departmentally to find a correlation with your client exit interviews.
• Use automated customer satisfaction surveys upon ticket completion.
• Use NPS surveys to monitor overall client sentiment.

Customer churn can usually be solved, and automation makes it easy to find the heart of the problem.

4. 'We don't have a system to qualify leads.'

Property management automations make machine-learning lead scoring an easy-to-adopt practice, so you know which leads should be called today—and which ones need to simmer a little longer. 

You'll also be able to see your pipeline at a glance so you can predict what is coming down the funnel.

HubSpot's lead scoring and sales tools make it easy for your BizDev team to succeed, and they also provide actionable data to help that team grow and improve based on proven methods.

5. 'There are inconsistencies in each employee and department's workflow. We're disorganized without a performance standard.'

It is easy for workflows to go off the tracks when there is nothing keeping them on. Property management automation is like bowling bumpers: it keeps your ball in the lane so you can get a higher score. When automating property management, your team has to adopt a workflow; in exchange, automation takes on some of the workload.

When you implement automation, your team will all be trained to the same standards with everything documented to make it easier for new hires to get up to speed. You'll spend less time 'herding cats' and more time analyzing data and making smart adjustments to improve operational efficiency.

6. 'Our administrative tasks are out of hand.'

It happens so often: we'll think there is an issue with our business based on a gut feeling and then take action to correct that issue—without really knowing based on data whether the issue exists.

This can lead to a lot of unnecessary tasks and workflows meant to ease the anxiety of the business owner and make them feel more in control when, in the end, you're just creating extra admin work for your employees.

When you can make decisions based on data, it will become clear where interventions are needed in the first place. Take collections, for example. Having your collections department make more contact attempts certainly feels good—but what if you had data that told you those extra two calls only increased payments by 1% while taking your team an extra 10 hours to make?

At this point, it costs more to make the calls than you are recovering. Of course, automation can make the calls, but the point is, 'feels good' doesn't always translate to 'better for your bottom line.'

We'd love to show you our advanced reporting features that come part in parcel with our property management automation solutions. Schedule a meeting with us to see how we can help solve your pain points.