It’s 6:00pm (if you’re lucky) – are you headed home exhausted?

If you’re a professional in CRE property management, the answer is likely “yes.” You’re probably staying late to put out yet another fire (metaphorically speaking.)

Property managers deal with a lot during their day, with responsibilities to create a better tenant experience, maintain equipment, manage risk and teams. It’s a stressful job with a lot of moving pieces.

Thankfully, technology is helping property managers reach new levels of efficiency and control over an often-chaotic kingdom. These tools can make each day a little bit easier.

Here are seven ways to go home a little happier with the help of commercial real estate property management software.

1) Clone yourself (with software)

OK, while cloning technology isn’t exactly an option, wouldn’t it be nice? You can’t be everywhere at once in your properties. The right software will effectively monitor all the business priorities property managers are tasked with overseeing, daily.

It works in the background, constantly monitoring building operations and alerting the property manager when an operational or service delivery target is missed, or other issues need to be escalated. Work order software makes it easy to manage janitorial and engineering work, preventing important work from falling through the cracks or going unresolved.

2) Know the status of tenant satisfaction

At any given time, it’s important to know how satisfied tenants are across your properties. After all, happy tenants are the lifeblood of your business – key to building loyalty and improving retention.

Property management software can automate the collection of feedback after a work order is completed, asking the tenant to immediately give feedback on the work.

This allows property managers to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s going on in their buildings, how satisfied tenants are at any given time with the work that’s being done, and raising a flag when issues arise.

3) Make sure engineers are equipped

Today, the information your engineers have at their disposal can be as important to their success as the right screwdriver. When one of your engineers starts his day, he asks “what should I work on first today?”

By ensuring that your teams have a clear view of what’s most important, which work orders should be prioritized, and what information they need to satisfy a tenant’s issue – you’ll go home happier, knowing the most important jobs were done, first.

The right software can work in tandem with your tenants’ service requests, giving maintenance teams a living, breathing, to-do list on their mobile device, all aligned to your property goals.

4) Take care of preventive maintenance – and make it easy

Preventive maintenance is essential to increasing the longevity of equipment and property, and protecting the safety of tenants and staff. But these kinds of tasks are often difficult to keep track of and prioritize when there are so many other things for property managers and engineers to focus on.

Advanced CRE organizations use preventive maintenance software today to streamline the process of planning, scheduling, and completing preventive tasks, avoiding the risk of these critical tasks going unnoticed – until it’s too late. Their teams are fully equipped to capture, automate, and report on all maintenance-related activities.

Tech makes this a proactive, not reactive job.

5) Communicate better with tenants

Your tenants now expect the convenience that comes with technology. The world’s information is available to them in the palm of their hands on a mobile device or laptop with access to Google. Property managers must communicate better with tenants, giving them the information they need, when they need it, and on-demand.

With the right software, managers have the opportunity to create a property website and tenant portal that significantly improves the tenant experience. Tenants can receive emergency messages or broadcasted announcements directly to their mobile device.

This convenience provides an easy way for tenants to submit issues, receive confirmation of their requests, view the history of service requests and easily access key information such as tenant handbooks or reserving building resources.

6) Manage operational risk, before it becomes a problem

Property managers can reduce the frequency of major incidents by focusing on two key areas of risk: COI and incident response.

• Are you still collecting and tracking Certificate of Insurance documents and compliance manually? If so, you’re exposing yourself and your insurer to potential liability. Software can move all COI tracking into a single, online database, and automate the process of notification, collecting and updating these assets. Property managers can be notified proactively about expiration notifications, and see at a glance the COI of every tenant and vendor on their properties to reduce potential for incurred losses and increased insurance premiums.
• When incidents do happen, organizations are leveraging software to capture important details, follow the right procedure, and maintain accurate records for risk assessment and liability protection. When mobile is used, incident data can be captured from anywhere in your building, and media such as photos can be included with incident details reducing the number of incidents resulting in a loss.

7) Give yourself the right level of visibility

Property managers need visibility into the overall performance of their property – not only to deal with problems that arise, but also to report to building owners the effectiveness of their teams.

Advances in technology mean that complex building operations can be aggregated into one software tool that allows for powerful reporting and insights.

• Benchmark yourself against service delivery targets
• Understand the current performance of your teams
• Document tenant satisfaction (and prove how you’re doing)
• Track labor hours
• Understand root-cause analysis of problems and noncompliance
• Identify peak performers throughout your organization

This level of insight simply cannot be measured manually.

For property managers, the most important tool in the toolkit is information. Best-in-class commercial property management teams are automating operations, and engaging their tenants more effectively – after all, by doing so, they’re ending each day a little happier.

Is your property management under control? Take this free quiz, and find out.