Calling all building owners and property managers – are you really “in control” of what happens in your property?

Often, the most critical parts of building operations, from tenant service requests to important communications, are managed in a reactive or ad-hoc way.

But management, by definition, is about control.

Consider the following tips to move from total chaos to total control:

TENANT SATISFACTION –

How do you gauge tenant satisfaction? Rather than sending out infrequent surveys, consider collecting feedback on a more consistent basis – such as following each work order – to understand the state of your tenant’s satisfaction with service quality at any point in time. When tenants are dissatisfied, you’re able to take action immediately, before small problems become big ones.

COMMUNICATING WITH TENANTS –

When you need to get an important message to tenants, do you rely on individual emails, or tape up an announcement in the elevator? Hope is not a strategy. Rather than emailing individual tenants manually, consider equipping your staff with the ability to broadcast pre-defined, templated messages quickly and easily, to the right groups across multiple channels (including SMS). Memos in an elevator are inefficient, unreliable, and ineffective.

WORK ORDERS –

You’re constantly putting out fires, but today’s tenants have higher expectations. When there is a request from a tenant, relying on email / phone is OK, and certainly better than waiting for them to find you in the hallway, but these requests can get lost or forgotten. It’s difficult to manually route requests to the right staff members fast enough, and checking in with engineers at the end of the day leaves room for errors. This is not the most efficient way of collecting, assigning, and managing work orders in order to keep tenants satisfied.

With better work order management software, your tenants would have an easier way of creating a request that alerts your staff — immediately. By fully automating service request submission and routing/assignment, you’ll have a finger on the pulse of your building’s entire work order status at any time. Plus, ahead of that tenant meeting, instead of asking your staff what’s going on with specific accounts, you’ll always be prepared with a history of work orders, satisfaction ratings, and any other outstanding issues.

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE –

We all know that our days rarely go as planned but it is important to have a system in place to make sure critical PM tasks are being completed in a timely manner. Don’t rely on pen and paper day-to-day tasks.

“Preventive Maintenance is Intelligent Maintenance,” according to a study by Jones Lang LaSalle. “An organization that implements and adheres to a structured PM Program will experience a 545% return over time.”

Give your engineers the schedule they need to complete required PM tasks before equipment breaks or a tenant is impacted. Then, give them equipment information and completion checklists from the convenience of the smartphone in their pocket to make them far more efficient

There is a lot to be said for a unified platform that automates task prioritization based on team service delivery goals, captures actionable performance data, and takes away the risk of misplacing important documents (we are only human!)

BUILDING TRENDS –

Knowing what’s happening across your properties is an important part of your role. When you’re sharing building trends with your boss, pulling from multiple sources and compiling information manually is time-consuming and prone to error.

Check out how technology is helping property managers like you improve control over their domains in this helpful ebook  “7 Ways Technology Is Helping Property Managers Gain Control Over Chaos.”

OUT OF CONTROL?

Building Engines can help. Our web and mobile Property Management Software connects all of the people, processes and tasks involved in operating a building or portfolio and automates the workflow and information capture for all activities related to Tenant Service, Asset & Equipment Maintenance, Operational Risk Management & Communications. To chat with a member of the Building Engines team, click here.