Embracing Digital Property Management 

Embracing Digital Property Management  By Rochelle Trup

Whilst the availability of accessible and affordable property technology products soars in an increasingly paperless world, the need for improving processes couldn’t be greater. Stakeholders in the property world are moving on from traditional methods, the transition includes moving away from Excel sheets and home-built DIY management processes to cloud-based software that is up to 2020 standards. 

In order to improve efficiency within housing management, the uphill daily battle against outdated processes must be eradicated. The implementation of software is a great way to improve productivity and service delivery. 

Digital transformation can seem overwhelming, but the good news is that new software can be very cost effective in relation to the value gained. Property management software will enable you to move away from inefficient and time-consuming methods and towards more automated and streamlined processes. 

Time saving is key

Process automation will save you time. Some software is intelligent enough to work while you are away from your desk. Software should always work around you and your organisation, rather than the other way around. 

Automated messages and actions allow the system to work hard in the background, whilst housing managers are able to concentrate valuable time on other tasks that need more ‘human’ input, such as liaising with stakeholders and managing disputes.

The emphasis is on prioritising workloads so that the mundane red tape and record keeping can be taken care of by the technology, for example tenants logging repairs, or contractors registering electronic invoices. 

Administration processes become efficient with good practice when implemented at each step of the tenancy journey. This is further developed by a wide range of features available, from mail merge templates to digital signatures, automatic onboarding to viewing management. 

Bringing sanity to chaos

Financials become centralised when property management softwares are integrated with financial platforms, such as Xero and QuickBooks. Having watertight financials is of paramount importance and the integrations enable housing managers to maintain good cash flow and encourage timely payments of rent with the adoption of automatic system reminders for tenants. 

The ability to log tasks associated with each individual property is also an important tool. Tasks can be created, shared amongst colleagues or even be converted to work orders for private or public contractors to complete. All of this can be tracked via an in-house calendar or sync’d to individual Outlook calendars. These are just a few of the benefits of using an end to end proptech software. The proptech sector is fast growing and improving at an even faster rate, making landlords and property managers lives much more manageable across the globe.

Rochelle Trup is the co-founder of Arthur Online https://www.arthuronline.co.uk/

About Rochelle Trup
Rochelle started her career in finance before moving on to investing in rental properties.  As her portfolio grew, self-managing became increasingly difficult and time consuming, especially as she was still working full-time. With technological advances and greater connectivity, Rochelle assumed there would be software available that would allow her to manage her properties online. After a fruitless search, Rochelle realised that there was a definite gap in the market – if she needed the support, surely other property managers would appreciate it too? Together with her two co-founders, also property investors, Rochelle set about creating a cloud-based platform which would include everything they would need to easily and effectively manage their portfolios from anywhere in the world and efficiently liaise with tenants, contractors, property owners or letting agents.
Since launching in 2015, Arthur has helped thousands of property managers handle their portfolios in the cheapest, most efficient way possible by using the full potential of new technology and cloud computing.  Arthur won PropTech Company of the Year at the 2018 News on the Block Awards and Online Product of the Year in the 2019 National Landlord Investment Awards. Arthur is fully integrated with market leading software including RightMove, Zoopla, Xero, Quickbooks and Advanced Tenant Referencing.