When it comes to technology and how it’s impacting property management, a survey of IREM members in the United States and Canada indicates that much has changed over the last year – and much has remained the same.
IREM’s technology survey, first conducted in 2019 and repeated in 2020, asked members to rank their top challenges from a list of more than 20 concerns. Number one on the list in 2019 was document management. A year later, amid COVID-19, document management remained firmly entrenched in the top spot.
As employees ventured into their pandemic-shuttered offices to deliver or retrieve paper reports, grab a lease out of a filing cabinet, or print out a document to be signed, the pandemic revealed that the infrastructure to digitize and manage documents was sorely lacking. Overnight, document management went from being important to urgent. And property management companies were not the only ones in this situation. A benchmark report by Mail Manager across a wide range of industries in the UK and the US shows that only one in five organizations currently have a document management solution in place.
Beyond document management, what else did the survey reveal about challenges IREM members are facing? As the table below shows, conducting mobile property inspections, capturing and managing data, managing operating expenses, and compliance management round out the top five issues in 2020 – closely paralleling results from the 2019 survey.
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What are the top 5 challenges you are facing now?
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2020
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2019
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Managing documents
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1
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1
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Conducting mobile property inspections
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2
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4
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Capturing and managing data
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3
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2
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Managing operating expenses
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4
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3
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Managing compliance
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5
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11
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Optimizing rent and other income/revenue management
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6
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14
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Managing energy usage and costs
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7
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5
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Accepting online rent and other payments
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8
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9
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Work order processing
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9
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10
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Performing financial analysis
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10
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12
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Data security
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11
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15
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Facilitating communications
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12
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8
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Reporting to owners
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13
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7
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Providing building security
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14
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18
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Providing maintenance service
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15
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13
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Conducting market research
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16
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16
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Providing service to tenants
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17
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6
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Providing service to owners/clients
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18
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17
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Lead tracking
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19
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20
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Package management
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20
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19
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For those companies that have implemented recent technology solutions, it has not always been smooth sailing. The major hurdle they’ve had to overcome is system integration, just as it was in 2019. When asked what could make the biggest difference to property management in the next three to five years, one survey respondent said, “Better integrated systems. The key will be smaller companies with products that integrate, not one large user solution.” Other members spoke of their desire for fully integrated property management systems so they can get away from multiple sites with multiple log-ins. Better integration also would enable them to reduce – or better yet, fully eliminate – use of spreadsheets that are prone to error and are labor intensive.
As one of the respondents put it, there is a craving for “Technology that gives property management all the information pertaining to their portfolio at their fingertips, and connects with real-time data. Leases, income, expenses, assets, asset performance, smart dashboard – and allows all of the planning to be done in one single tool.”
So, if the key challenges facing property management remain largely the same – the need for document management and improved system integration – what has changed? The answer is obvious: COVID-19, which has had a momentous impact on the work of property management and forced management companies to quickly embrace new technologies.
When IREM distributed the 2020 survey, the pandemic was six-months in, and a seismic shift in the nature of work already had occurred. No surprise then that many survey respondents, answering an open-ended question about technology adoption over the next few years, used the word “virtual.” They cited virtual showings, virtual leasing, virtual training, virtual meetings, virtual communications with all stakeholders from tenants to vendors to employees. Or as one member put it: “Everything being done online and nothing in person.”
Other disruptions caused by COVID-19 also surfaced in the survey. As the table below shows, members anticipate that companies will increase their technology spending this year and that remote work won’t go away, but will be continued in some form even as the pandemic recedes. They also anticipate that their tenants and residents will become more demanding; they’ll be looking for newer technologies in their residential communities and, once they return, to the offices in which they work.
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Do you anticipate that . . .
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Yes
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No
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Don't Know
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Your company will increase technology spending over the coming year due to COVID-19?
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56.18%
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19.09%
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24.73%
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Your company will continue remote work in some form post-COVID?
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60.82%
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22.74%
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16.44%
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Tenants and residents will require newer technologies (e.g., touchless devices) post-COVID?
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60.49%
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12.07%
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27.43%
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The IREM technology survey was conducted under the guidance of the IREM Technology Advisory Board. Its purpose was to assess where members saw themselves and their companies in terms of technology adoption and satisfaction; identify major pain points they are experiencing that could find solutions in technology; and identify the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on technology adoption, usage, and investment.