Nowadays, we know Property Managers are consistently looking for ways to overcome the challenges they are facing in their day-to-day operations in the Field Service Management Industry and to grow their business. Despite their efforts, many Field Service Business Owners are finding it difficult to grow their business mainly due to the lack of scalability and control.
Even though they are using the available FSM Systems and Software to grow their business during these challenging times, they experience themselves slowing down due to the complexity of using multiple tools and resources.
The Business World and all the Industries are more evolving than ever before due to the acceleration in Technology Advancement and Property Managers are realising that with the support of the right tool and use of technology they too can operate effectively and efficiently while saving time and cost.
However, the question arises – Which Technology Solution is the best one to use? If you explore the Global FSM Software Market, you will find many Software Solutions to choose from, but in reality, most of this software is not fully updated or productive to cover the entire Property Management Life Cycle.
In fact, many of the available Software Solutions that Property Managers use for their day-to-day operations still require other alternative tools to help them manage either Finance, Administration or along similar lines.
According to the iProperty Management Industry Statistics, here are a few key findings;
- Around 47.8% of Property Managers prioritise Growth
- 45.1% have the desire to Improve Efficiency
- 22.6% of them prioritise Communication
The Challenges Faced by Property Managers in the FSM Industry
#1: The Inability to Focus on Important KPIs
As Property Manager, you are responsible for a wide range of business models and processes. From Finance to Maintenance and more, you are required to manage the business while keeping records of everything that you accomplish.
Managers may incur costs if they choose to use highly priced Finance Management Software while also using another Software Solution to track their workflow. Learning multiple tools to control your workflow will eventually keep you and your employees busy.
Separating each task in the business can seem like a great idea at the start, however, it can be very inconvenient and also cause extreme difficulties in accurately tracking the business KPIs and keeping track of the growth of the business.
KPIs are important for Property Managers for various reasons including:
- To Track Performance and Progress
- For Accountability
- To get Real-Time Data to make key decisions
- To help analyze the business operations to find market opportunities and how it can affect the overall business.
Property Managers must ensure that some of the KPIs are prioritised to grow the business. Here are 8 important KPIs:
- Occupancy Rates
- Acquisition Costs
- Renewal of Revenue (ROR)
- Maintenance and Repair Fees
- Property Turnovers
- The Average Days to Lease
- Net Income
- Revenue Growth
#2: Finding it difficult to view the bigger picture of the FSM Scope from a Global Perspective
At the end of the month, you will need to evaluate your Field Technician’s Performances, Communication Skills, Approaches, Invoices, Billings, and Completed Transactions to monitor your business growth. These evaluations can take a couple of hours of your time if you are not using the right system to work smarter.
In many ways, going through every file, registered paperwork, and invoices filed can be inefficient for your business. By using multiple resources, tools and offline solutions you are wasting a lot of time and effort, making it difficult for you to monitor and evaluate your technician’s performance without micromanaging them. Rather than speaking to each technician and customer for their feedback and reviews, you can use the right system to get real-time updates while overlooking the rest of the process.
#3: Not being accustomed to the tools leads to lacking productivity in the business
We have all experienced the change in the Field Service Management sector in the past years, even before the COVID-19 outbreak, the industry was evolving with technology and tools. This caused an insignificant change in the natural workflow order, and when the industries were affected by the impacts of COVID-19 the tools that were used to complete workflows were not accommodating the demands in the market. PProviding plenty of training sessions for employees to learn various tools has resulted in businesses being unproductive while attempting to meet the requirements and needs of their customers.
Property managers who use multiple tools to connect with customers to increase customer satisfaction must recognize that this is no longer an effective solution. Rather, Property Managers can control their workflow and adapt to an ever-changing industry by using a single platform with integrated cross platforms.
#4: Creating restrictions in the workflow
When Property Managers work with an increased workload, they tend to separate their workflows, creating many departments. These internal departments must work together to ensure a seamless workflow, however, most of the time, the lack of collaboration and transparency between these departments causes poor communication and an incompatible system. This leads to an ineffective work system, causing each department to inevitably create restrictions and potential compliance gaps.
This can be simply avoided if Property Managers are using and maintaining one system to collaborate between all departments.
#5: Formal invoices
The common process to get/give payment approvals is not efficient in any way. However, this can be an additional task for them especially when Property Occupants (customer) has quotation queries.
Many managers chose to work in a simple process or even opt to provide verbal approvals to skip the time-consuming process. However, this can lead to fraud and auditing differences.
#6: The lack of security and privacy
When Property Managers talk about Transparency in all their tasks and communication methods, they are also considering the factors such as security and privacy. Data Breaches are a common worry for all Property Managers in the industry.
Many Property Managers who are using multiple portals to control workflow management often find themselves with doubt about security and privacy when it comes to invoices, payments and data collection. As a Property Manager, it is part of the job to regularly collect sensitive information from customers and it is used in several Property Management Software systems.
Access to confidential data and credentials is what leads to data breaches. This is how data breaches can occur in Property Management:
- Phishing (Cyber Crime)
- Automated Trial & Other Financial Error could happen with the credit card credentials that are available.
- A compromised service by malware designs- This leads to stolen credentials.
This is a challenge that stops many Property Managers from using Technology Systems and Solutions and using paperwork methods to ensure security and privacy. However, this is not the case with many FSM Software solutions.
Building an Effective Strategy
Before you can get into building an Effective Strategy, you need to understand that as a Property Manager you have key responsibilities to focus on. These include:
- Managing Property Occupants.
- Managing the Maintenance of the Property.
- Managing the overall Finances.
- Managing Technicians and Sub-Contractor.
In addition to that, Property Managers must learn to control costs without compromising service excellence. Even though a lot of challenges are out of their control, they need to find the right solutions to gain control in the Field Service Management Sector and implement them in the right direction.
Considering the challenges in the FSM Market, you can choose to work with an all-in-one platform that provides you with Efficiency, Transparency, Security, and Compliance.
i4T Global is here to help!
i4T Global is a Customer Experience (CX) Product Eco-System with a 360 Degree Approach designed and developed to assist multi-stakeholders of the Facilities, Field Service and Property Management Sector. Namely,
- i4T Maintenance (B2B) – For Property Managers
- i4T Business (B2C) – For Field Technicians
- i4T Tradies (B2C) – For Property Occupants
The i4T Global Product Suite is designed, developed and refined to provide Property Managers, Technicians, and Property Occupants to manage workflow effectively and transparently. To avoid extremely time-consuming challenges such as keeping others adequately informed, i4T Global platforms ease the challenges in a challenging job role with transformational technology and upgrade them according to the Industry Trends.
i4TGlobal help to track the progress of Work Orders and stay on top of what your teams are up to, with real-time updates right from the field.
Feel free to contact us!
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With our cutting-edge technology and in-depth knowledge of how the Field Service Management sector operates, the i4TGlobal Team loves to share industry insights to help streamline your business processes and generate new leads. We are driven by innovation and are passionate about delivering solutions that are transparent, compliant, efficient and safe for all stakeholders and across all touch points.
