Performance and ROI from Better Software

August 02, 2023

What do Property Management Staff Want in their Work Software?

Have you been considering when to upgrade to better property management software?

It’s the timing of that change that’s a little tricky.

But procrastination can have dangerous consequences. Letting it weigh on your mind every day and seeing continuous staff frustration means you must commit to the date of change or upgrade. Marking it on the calendar is the first step.

Complaints from your staff, low-quality business information, and workflow bottlenecks are important signals. It’s wise to take in all the benefits of change vs the grief from staff. These are signals to change. Look at them as green lights that tell you to go ahead.

Studies: Digital Tools Bring Substantial Business Value

According to a Deloitte/Google survey, 80% of 2000 US small businesses are not taking full advantage of digital tools. And Deloitte’s analysis within their report, Connected Small Businesses in the United States found that these digitally advanced firms:

earned twice the revenue
4X the revenue growth
6X the employment growth rate
2X the employee engagement
improved employment satisfaction (70% of respondents)
improved data collection to illuminate customer trends for better-informed business decisions

The Deloitte study also found that some (40%) of small business owners firmly believed digital tools were irrelevant for their business. But we all know business is digital now, so that view is a big threat to their company’s future well being. Even mid-sized businesses such as property management companies are threatened by inadequate, difficult-to-use software.

Consider too, the performance value of the very best digital tools, which might be double those improvements above for small businesses.

Time to Enable High Performance

It’s wonderful to have great employees but is poor software the way you want to reward them? Ease of learning, intuitive dashboards, responsive customer support, helpful onboarding, and user training ratchet up performance.

To create better performance, your staff needs a usable, all-in-one platform that removes work friction and gives them mastery of solutions.

What Do Property Management Staff Complain About?

Staff complain mostly about these issues:

interface too complex requiring expertise they don’t have
takes too long for them to learn the system
annoying bugs due to components not being updated
system doesn’t provide automation of high-volume or repetitive tasks
low-quality reports that aren’t all that helpful businesswise
amateurish accounting capabilities

From a dashboard that doesn’t feel intuitive to accounting errors and low-quality reports to software bugs and limitations, the user experience is suffering.

What Staff Want and Need

Let’s cut to the essentials right away then with a listing of the features your property management team really want in their property management system:

1. An all-in-one platform that doesn’t require troublesome integration of other software that has bugs, isn’t updated, isn’t secure, or doesn’t really get the job done (e.g., general SMB accounting software).
2. A well-organized and customizable dashboard that provides an at-a-glance overview of key metrics and tasks, such as property occupancy rates, maintenance requests, pending payments, and upcoming deadlines.
3. Easy-to-navigate interface with a clear and consistent menu structure. A logical layout offers effortless access to various modules and functionalities and reduces the time spent searching for specific features.
4. Property listing tools to add, edit, manage and market vacant listings efficiently. This includes features like bulk upload for multiple properties, image uploads, and well-devised text fields for inputting essential property details.
5. Automated communication features, such as email or SMS notifications, to keep property management staff and tenants informed about critical updates, payment reminders, and maintenance schedules which reduces the need for manual follow-ups.
6. A dedicated module to track and manage maintenance requests. A simplified maintenance management system should enable staff to assign tasks to maintenance personnel or contractors, set priority levels, and receive real-time updates on the status of ongoing work projects.
7. Robust accounting system to correctly enter transaction details, automate rent collection, generate invoices, and monitor expenses with reporting capabilities about financial performance and cash flow.
8. A self-service tenant portal that allows tenants to pay rent online, submit maintenance requests, and access lease agreements.
9. Powerful, cloud-based document repository for storing and organizing essential leases, applications, properties, tenant info, inspection and maintenance records.
10. Built-in performance analytics and reporting tools which provide actionable insights into property performance, tenant turnover rates, revenue trends, and other key metrics to enable data-driven decisions and identify areas for improvement.

When managers change their focus to give employees the tools and resources they need, they see their performance, attitude, and commitment grow.

A New Focus on what Staff Need to Excel

Sometimes business solutions are very easy. In this case, a superb, modern, integrated software platform such as ManageCasa is the solution. ManageCasa’s customers enjoy using our platform’s staff-friendly features. They simplify their work, help inform their work decisions, and enable or automate transactions and facilitate communications for excellent outcomes, every day.

Learn more about ManageCasa now and try a FREE 14 day trial to truly appreciate a user-friendly property management software.