Do more in less time: How consolidating your Proptech can lead to improved NOI and happier residents

Streamlined Operations

A survey released from the National Apartment Association’s Apartmentalize 2022 conference found over 60% of property managers cite creating efficient day-to-day operations as one of their top three challenges.

Consolidating Proptech solutions allows property owners and managers to centralize and streamline tedious operational processes. By integrating Proptech into a unified system, property staff can automate and optimize day-to-day tasks including managing and assigning maintenance requests, keeping track of rent payments and other fees, and reduce other time-consuming tasks leaving more opportunity for revenue-building activities. This streamlines workflows, reduces manual errors, and improves overall operational efficiency, resulting in cost savings and increased NOI.

Cost Savings

Consolidating Proptech solutions can lead to significant cost savings for property owners. By eliminating duplicate platforms or redundant systems, property managers can reduce licensing fees, maintenance costs, and training expenses associated with managing multiple separate tools. Additionally, integrated Proptech solutions can enable better energy management insights, predictive maintenance, and efficient resource allocation, resulting in reduced utility expenses and operational costs. These cost savings directly contribute to improved NOI.

Improved Resident Experience

There is nothing more frustrating than having a phone cluttered with several apps for different purposes or remembering passwords to different websites just to pay rent, communicate with leasing staff or unlock areas of the property. Centralized platforms can offer features such as all-in-one online portals or mobile apps that enhance convenience and accessibility for residents. They can easily submit maintenance requests, access important documents, make online payments, communicate with property staff, and reserve or access property amenities all in one place.

In today’s fast-paced world that demands convenience, this improved resident experience can lead to higher satisfaction, increased retention rates, and positive reviews and referrals. Residents are even willing to pay more rent for Proptech. In a 2023 study analyzing what renters desire, over 1 in 2 respondents reported they would be willing to pay 1-10% more for property technology and nearly 3 in 10 would pay at least 11% more.

Enhanced Data Insights

Data is everything—it can uncover the trends in the ways renters live, move through the building, use amenities, and so much more. But beyond that, it can help us predict trends and create solutions before a problem even exists.

When Proptech solutions are connected and consolidated, data from different sources can be collected and analyzed in one place, rather than taking time to track down different metrics from each source. By leveraging data analytics and Proptech, property owners and managers can make more informed decisions, identify areas for improvement, and proactively address resident needs. For example, Proptech can track how often residents use a certain door and how often it is repaired or serviced. Once a pattern is determined, it can recommend routine maintenance before the door needs repair so that residents are never inconvenienced. These data-driven insights contribute to better resident and staff experience, improved revenue generation, and increased NOI.

Scalability and flexibility

Finally, consolidating Proptech allows property owners and managers to scale and tailor their solutions to their unique needs. As these needs change and grow, a unified Proptech platform can also change and grow. This scalability reduces the need for manual workarounds or adopting new systems, saving time and effort. Additionally, property owners can benefit from the flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions and industry trends, allowing them to stay ahead of the curve and deliver value to residents as their needs and desires change.

While integrating Proptech into multifamily residences is an excellent way to increase NOI and resident satisfaction, streamline operations, and enhance data insights, it can be easy to become overwhelmed with complex systems, data security concerns, and futureproofing for legacy systems. Before integrating Proptech into your multifamily residence, ensure that you have a plan in place that identifies and addresses each of your unique needs and considerations.

Integration Complexity

Consolidating Proptech solutions often involves integrating various platforms, systems, and data sources. This integration process can be complex and requires careful planning to ensure seamless data flow and interoperability between different tools. Incompatible systems, data format inconsistencies, and data migration issues may arise. Additionally, if your property already has disjointed Proptech solutions in place, it can be difficult to align each one, especially if they are not easily consolidated into one system, without disturbing staff workflow or resident experience.

These significant changes to existing workflows, processes, and technology platforms can bring several complications. Resistance to change from staff members, lack of training, and a reluctance to adopt new technologies can pose challenges and create more issues with day-to-day operations. Effective changeover strategies, clear communication, and adequate training are essential to address these challenges and ensure smooth adoption by both staff and residents. After all, if your staff are reluctant to change or unable to use the system effectively, this may trickle down to residents and create more problems on the renters’ side.

Data Security and Privacy

Data security and privacy is a hot topic as we continue to hear stories of data leaks and compromises in the technology industry. Consolidating Proptech solutions for data insights involves using a third party to collect and centralize data from various sources, which may raise concerns. Data can be compromised if it is not handled correctly by trusted partners. Property owners and managers must ensure that proper security measures, encryption protocols, and access controls are in place to protect sensitive resident information.

Vendor Selection and Legacy System Compatibility

Since Proptech is growing in popularity in the multifamily industry, new companies, vendors and solutions are always popping up. Choosing the right set of suppliers can be a time-consuming task when you must consider the different features, reliability, scalability, interoperability, and security, to name a few.

While identifying a singular company that offers everything your property needs can be challenging, using multiple vendors can create issues with integration or interoperability. It’s important to select partners that not only have strong solutions, but also open ecosystems. This allows a property to leverage that solution while feeling comfortable about that ability to take advantage of the ecoystem partner solutions and avoid being locked into a single vendor.

Futureproofing and legacy system compatibility is another consideration when it comes to choosing a vendor or solution. As the economy limits what property owners can do with their budget, many will prefer solutions that can be updated over time instead of replaced with the latest models. Therefore, it’s important to choose a solution that can not only be updated but also be compatible with newer solutions added over time. Integrating and consolidating these legacy systems can pose challenges due to outdated technology, lack of APIs, or limited vendor support. This may require additional investment or customized solutions to ensure compatibility.

Cost Considerations

While consolidating Proptech solutions can lead to cost savings in the long run, there can be upfront costs associated with implementation, customization, and training. Property owners and managers need to carefully evaluate the return on investment and consider budgetary constraints when undertaking a consolidation project. And with the looming threat of economic downturn, it can feel intimidating investing in a new project at the risk of the cost outweighing the benefits.

Consolidating Proptech solutions offers numerous benefits for multifamily property owners and managers. It can help streamline operations, reduce costs, improve the resident experience, provide enhanced data insights, and offers scalability and flexibility. However, it's important to be aware of the challenges that come with integration, data security and privacy, vendor selection, legacy system compatibility, and cost considerations. By carefully planning and addressing these challenges, property owners can successfully consolidate Proptech solutions and benefit from improved NOI and happier residents.

Taking a consolidated approach to your Proptech offering can be challenging. We're here to help you get it right—the first time. Contact us and one of our dedicated Proptech consultants will be in touch to understand your unique needs, walk you through the architecture and implementation process, and be with you every step of the way on your consolidated Proptech journey.

Looking for literature, training, videos and more?

Let us help.