Are you keeping your CRE operating costs as low as possible? Or, do they seem to creep up each year?
Reducing your operating costs is one of the best ways you can improve the profitability of your building. But, decreasing your expenses can seem impossible. Everything you do to run your property and keep tenants happy drives up your operating costs. But, you can’t stop the necessary tasks. Otherwise, you’d end up with a rundown building with few tenants.
So, how can you reduce operating costs – while maintaining your property and satisfying tenants?
By using building operations software that streamlines your team’s workflows, mitigates risk, and extends the lifespan of your most valuable equipment. This reduces operating costs – without compromising quality.
Wondering how building operations software can help you reduce operating costs? Read on to find out.
Increase Tenant Satisfaction with Work Order Management
One area in which building operations software can help you reduce operating costs is with work order management.
Tenants submit work orders through different channels, which makes it easy to let one slip through the cracks. So, you don’t address their work order – decreasing tenant satisfaction.
And, when you assign work orders in the order they come in, you could force tenants with serious issues to wait until small issues are fixed – leading to unhappy tenants
The easiest way to manage work orders and keep operating expenses low is with work order management software. With this software, work orders are all in one place – ensuring you never miss one and, it creates automatically prioritized lists, so you can see what you need to address first.
By streamlining work order management, building operations software reduces operating vacancy costs by improving tenant satisfaction and retention.
Work order management software also collects tenant feedback. So, you know if you’re meeting expectations or if you need to improve to increase tenant satisfaction and retention.
Avoid Costly Equipment Breakdowns with Preventive Maintenance
Building operations software can also help you reduce preventive maintenance expenses.
Preventive maintenance can help you extend the lifetime of equipment by up to 10x. But, it can be hard to follow manual processes as your team juggles other priorities across your property.
Without this routine care, your assets will break down faster. And, you’ll need to replace equipment more often – driving up operating expenses.
An easier way to stay on top of it is to use preventive maintenance software.
This software makes it easy to create a maintenance schedule by automating equipment cataloging. So, you can quickly create a schedule that makes it easy to conduct maintenance. Plus, you can fine-tune your schedule with data collected during preventive maintenance. That way, you have the right schedule to maximize equipment life.
And, with this software, you can manage maintenance from anywhere with mobile access (that works even in areas without internet). So, your team doesn’t have to go back to the office to log info – saving time and ensuring no info gets lost.
With building operations software, you can reduce equipment expenses by extending equipment lifetime and preventing costly failures. Plus, it reduces administrative costs by making preventive maintenance faster.
Standardize Property Conditions with Inspections
Property inspection is another area in which building operations software can help reduce expenses.
Regular property inspections are crucial to keeping assets in good shape. But, without inspections software, it’s difficult to know if these inspections are done in a way that preserves the value of your property.
You likely collect building data with paper forms and digital notes. This disorganized collection makes it difficult to know about property conditions. So, you can’t make informed decisions on how to maximize building revenue and decrease expenses.
However, property inspection software makes it easy to ensure your team conducts thorough inspections with templates that allow you to create inspection forms in minutes.
With this software, you can also set inspection targets and automatically send reminders to help your team hit their targets. That way your team can conduct inspections without much oversight from you.
Plus, inspection software can analyze data and automatically generate reports showing trends, future problem areas, and more. All of which help you get ahead of costly problems.
Building operations software can reduce expenses by making inspections easy. So, you can find any problems and address them before you need to spend money on costly replacements. And, it makes inspections less time-consuming – saving you on administrative operating expenses.
Mitigate Compliance Risk with Insurance Solutions
Building operations software can also help you reduce insurance expenses.
Tracking compliance can be tedious and time-consuming. So, it’s no wonder most CRE firms have a compliance rating under 50% – which increases the risk of a multi-million-dollar claim.
However, it can seem almost impossible to keep track of COIs and all related requirements, because you have to do this work manually. Manual data entry is time-consuming and prone to errors – which could leave you vulnerable to a costly claim.
A better way to manage compliance is with insurance software. With this software, you can automate certificate tracking and allow insurance agents to upload documents themselves.
Insurance software can also increase your visibility with a dashboard that lets you see your property’s compliance at a glance – making it easy to be fully compliant at all times.
And, insurance software can include expert guidance. These experts work directly with vendors to manage compliance, staying on top of changing rules and requirements to help you stay compliant.
Building operations software can help you reduce insurance operating expenses by ensuring you’re always compliant – helping you avoid costly claims that eat away at your revenue. And, automating the insurance process also reduces administrative costs.
Secure Vendors at Competitive Prices with RFP Automation
Building operations software can also help you lower costs with RFP automation.
The bid process is highly manual, taking days or weeks. So, you’re stuck sourcing vendors – instead of doing everything else needed at your property.
And, finding the right vendor price adds more work. Vendor sourcing methods like previously used vendors or recommendations from others make it likely you’ll pay more than necessary for vendors – increasing your operating costs.
However, the competitive bid process can be quick and simple with RFP automation software. With this software, you can create a request in minutes from a premade template. Plus, it includes a vendor database to help you find new qualified vendors. With reviews, service history, and more, you can thoroughly vet each vendor in minutes.
Once you’ve found vendors, the software automates communication and automatically generates side by side comparisons of vendors. This makes it easy to see which vendor is right for your property – and get the best price.
Building operations software can help reduce vendor expenses by making it easy to find new vendors with lower prices. And, it saves you hours of administrative work, which also reduces operating expenses.
Wrapping It Up
When facing pressure to keep operating expenses lean while meeting rising tenant expectations, it’s essential to keep your operating costs as low as possible.
Building operations software can help you reduce operating expenses – without sacrificing quality or the tenant experience.
This software can help you reduce administrative costs by streamlining your property team’s workflows. It can also help you save money on equipment, mitigate risk, and find great vendors at lower prices.
That way, you can have low operating costs while exceeding tenant expectations – increasing tenant retention and building revenue.
Looking for a building operation platform that can help you reduce operating expenses? Consider using Prism. As a modular platform, Prism has solutions for work orders, preventive maintenance, inspections, insurance, RFP automation, and more.
Prism helps CRE property teams keep operating expenses low while giving them tools to increase revenue and deliver a better tenant experience. To learn what Prism can do for you, watch our on-demand webinar Introducing Prism: The Modern Software Platform for CRE Building Operations.
