No matter what area of property management you’re in, you’ll likely spend a lot of time on repetitive tasks. How much of your day do you spend writing, checking, and sending paperwork to clients or tenants? How many times do you have to chase up payments from people? The answer is way too much.
But a property management app streamlines your workflow, freeing you up to focus on your more high-value tasks instead. With a mobile app, you can get rid of unnecessary paperwork, improve communications with your clients or employees and make sure you get paid on time.
A well-designed property management app makes your job easier and makes your staff more efficient. But the benefits don’t stop there. Because whether you’re dealing with buyers, sellers or tenants, a well-designed property app improves everyone’s experience. Making for happier clients, more referrals and better business performance.
In this article, we break down some of the key ways mobile applications can improve your property management process. Read on to find out.
1. Get Paid On Time
How much time do you spend chasing up missing payments from business clients? This isn’t just time-consuming, it often puts a strain on your client relationships too. But what if you could get paid on time in a way that actually improves your clients’ experience?
A property management app lets you do just this. You can manage your portfolio, monitor incoming maintenance requests and, most importantly, keep track of incoming payments on a client-by-client basis.
We worked with Ashcourt Student Accommodation to develop property management app Swipe Living. The app provides a detailed database of every client and their payment history as well as any outstanding rent that’s due. This gives you a real-time insight into your property management process.
On the other side, a well-designed property app for clients means more control for your clients too. With mobile, they get a much clearer overview of their finances. They can see the details of any rent changes or charges straight away.
But this also offers up a huge opportunity for you. Because a client facing property app opens a direct channel of communication with your clients. Through this, you can make use of push notifications to remind clients of upcoming rent dates, or friendly, automated messages to let them know straight away if they’ve missed rent or if their payment fails.
This way, having a property management app makes you more proactive, helping you to get paid on time in a way that actually benefits your client and doesn’t threaten your relationship with them.
2. Provide a Better Client Experience
But mobile doesn’t just help you manage your payments. It also lets you improve your tenants’ experience by being much, much more proactive. Today’s buyers and renters demand immediacy. Did you know that 66% already expect real-time responses from you? And looking forward, this is only going to become more common.
We also worked with Ashcourt Student Accommodation on a tenant app Student Swipe which puts students in control of their housing. Giving them more transparency, more control and a better overall experience.
Mobile means that from the very beginning of the process, you and your tenants or clients are always on the same page. But the benefits don’t stop there. After moving in, mobile will continue to enhance your tenant experience. Your clients will be able to easily file maintenance reports from on-the-go. As well as track the progress of any issues in real-time.
All this communication and all these reports with clients are instantly saved to a central system. Which is invaluable for tracking and settling any disputes in the future.
This increased control enhances your tenant experience, making them much more likely to either renew their contract or refer you in the future. And while mobile may be a competitive advantage right now, it will very quickly become a key part of your clients’ decision process. Because when it comes down to either you or a competitor, mobile could be the deciding factor. The control it gives your clients could make the difference. If you don’t act now, you will fall behind.
Read our case study on streamlining student accommodation.
3. Achieve a Paperless Process
So, we’ve seen how mobile helps you manage your payments and provide a better client experience. But there’s still one area where mobile can make a huge difference to your business.
How much of your time do you spend searching for, writing, and chasing up documents? For many businesses, property management processes are a hybrid of paper and digital which presents several big challenges:
- Real estate agents often have to carry around large amounts of marketing materials or paper contracts with them
- It’s much harder for employees to collaborate with one another when they’re always on the go
- Transferring documents internally takes too long. And there’s a poor record of where documents have been and who’s been using them
- As they’re transferred between teams, documents are often prone to going missing or being duplicated which leads to miscommunication
Did any of these hit too close to home? Don’t worry! Because a property management app eliminates every one of these problems. For example, we worked with Chancellors Estate Agents (one of the UK’s leading independent estate agencies) to digitally transform their terms agreement process with a streamlined real estate app.
By using mobile, we sped up Chancellors’ client sign-off time, making their staff more efficient and freeing them up to focus on higher-value tasks. We also digitised their marketing materials, giving their staff access to a library of promotional documents which they can access from wherever they are.
This paperless process streamlines your internal communications, encouraging better collaboration and empowering your staff. All while providing a detailed digital history of every single document. For a workforce that’s often on-the-go, a property management app is an essential tool.
Interested in a Property Management App?
Mobile is a game-changer for the property management sector. It’s already streamlining the processes of many landlords and real estate agents. But it’s also quickly becoming a key part of your prospective tenants’ decision process. So, if you don’t invest in mobile today, you will get left behind.
Are you keen to enhance the experience of your tenants, clients and employees? Or are you looking for a way to catch up with changing expectations? We’ve helped clients use mobile to do just this. Like property management app Student Swipe or Scape Living.
We’d love to hear from you. Give us a call on 01737 457 788 or contact us today.