Automated Property Management Increases Occupancy, Maximizes Returns & Enhances Customer Experience

4th November 2017

Property sales and leasing is an increasingly lucrative, albeit challenging business the world over. Whether you are a large property development firm or a small brokerage house, selling, leasing and managing your commercial, industrial or residential property needs to be done in an efficient manner to maximize yield and returns, while differentiating your business through an exemplary tenant experience. This is dependent on effectively executing and managing the various transactions and processes that fall within the property management scope – broadly covering selling and leasing operations, property marketing, customer service and facility management, tenant portal and social interactions and legal management.

The Challenge
Balancing costs with returns, complex processes, low customer experience
From effective marketing of the property to filtering an overwhelming number of enquiries, tracking rent or asset payments, managing the upkeep and maintenance of the properties, handling evictions and legal issues, as well as striking the ideal cost-yield balance, property management can be an overwhelming task for property managers and owners alike.
To add to that, intense competition in the industry, and a more aware and demanding customer means greater attention needs to be paid to the service aspects of the post-rental lifecycle of the property to ensure a seamless, transparent and healthy customer experience.

The key pain points for the industry can be identified as:

• Property marketing with a keen focus on digital marketing and social
• Integrating your sales operations with regional/local portals for listing
• Managing and filtering large numbers of enquiries and to have an efficient lead management mechanism
• Simplifying processes across sales and operations to ensure a seamless enquiry to tenant cycle
• Ease of access for the tenant to engage with the facility management team and efficient and effective delivery of maintenance services
• Integrated view of the customer covering financials, sales, marketing, legal and customer service
• Granular reporting and dashboards – tenant-wise, unit-wise, building-wise metrics.

The Solution
Property 365 connects the dots in the property management ecosystem
Technology is the answer to sustain, differentiate and grow consistently in notoriously cyclical real estate markets. It is important that realtors can capitalize on strong growth periods across global real estate markets, and mitigate risks and sustain business in downward cycles. A best-of-breed property management software based on advanced technology platforms can ease the woes of real estate and property management firms by tracking and executing all the functions associated with managing their properties.

Property 365 is a Microsoft Dynamics-based end-to-end solution for the real estate industry to manage property marketing, sales, leads, rental, operations, financials and facility management. The solution helps property managers and owners deliver a customer centric approach, streamlining entire property enquiry to post sale/lease cycle, and even extends functionality to deliver facility management services.

But what differentiates Microsoft Dynamics from the rest of the run-of-the-mill platforms? Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a powerful cloud-based technology platform that integrates ERP and CRM capabilities, infusing them with true advanced AI capabilities. The strength of Dynamics 365 lies in its extensibility in terms of portals as well as professional-grade business intelligence, marketing, and service features. As a next-gen intelligent business app, Dynamics 365 is built on a highly scalable and flexible “app-centric” model that allows organizations to choose specific functionalities as required for their business, while enabling app additions as needed at a later stage.

 Drawing on these capabilities, the Property 365 platform connects the various pegs within the property management ecosystem. It helps improve brand image, enhances efficiency and ensures effective collaboration between departments, while delivering a quality experience for the tenant across all interactions.

TOP BENEFITS: Why Property 365?
Property 365 brings all the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics to the property market. How exactly does that help businesses? The combination of ERP and CRM allows businesses to get a 360-degree overview of what is going on with the customer, from transaction to engagement. The easier it is to view and analyze the transactional data from the front office to the back office, the easier it is to have a competitive advantage in today’s market.  Another benefit is enhanced productivity. Because Microsoft Dynamics 365 integrates fully with Office 365, staff remain productive using familiar productivity tools like Outlook and Excel (Office 365) over a modern platform not restricted by legacy technology. Further, by building intelligence into their business processes, using tools like Cortana Intelligence, Power BI and Azure IoT modules, organizations can harness data to improve decision-making and take intelligent action, while adding very high processing speeds.

Additionally, Microsoft Dynamics 365 includes capabilities to help businesses that perform field service, leverage its IoT functionalities as well as enables a personalized experience through relevant customer insights.

To ensure profitability, seamless operations and optimum growth, a bird’s eye view is necessary for any business. Property 365’s interactive and real-time dashboards help provide an overview of the real estate portfolio and assist strategic decision-making. Additionally, dedicated modules enhance efficiency, for example, the service module helps address customer complaints and maintenance issues quickly while the sales and marketing module assists with communication with customers, whether to market a property portfolio or liaise for sales and leasing contracts.

TOP BENEFITS of Property 365 include:

• It is an end-to-end solution for the real estate and property management lifecycle, from leads all the way to maintenance
• Assists property owners and management companies in managing their day to day enquiries, follow-ups, customer preferences, updating property information and streamlining the sales processes
• Helps keep track by providing an overview of the property portfolio & transactions
• Can be localized for global real estate markets
• Helps to meet regulatory requirements
• Easy integration with property portals through APIs
• Marketing automation to drive leads up the sales funnel in a controlled manner
• Mobility-friendly, it enables any-time access to information on mobile devices
• Its dynamic and advanced modules help property owners and management companies stay head of competition
• Built on a globally recognized and supported solution from Microsoft Dynamics 365
• All modules are geared towards providing an improved and consistent experience.

Property 365 features and modules are hinged on a real-time, proactive, predictive approach to property management
Property Management has come a long way over the last 10 years, moving away from the staff-intensive, reactive model of yesteryears. Where an army of people was required to handle the various aspects of sales, marketing, accounting, customer relations and data management, Property 365 harnesses technology to integrate all these functionalities into one simple dashboard. Thus, complex tasks of deciding which property might need a maintenance upgrade, or which property is due for a lease renewal or a rent increase gets highly automated and predictive with Property 365. This frees up time and resources to focus more on customer service, revenue generation and business growth rather than manual administration of real estate operations.

Key Features of the solution include:

• LEAD & ENQUIRY MANAGEMENT FOR SALES AND RENTALS                              One of the most critical stages of revenue generation is lead capture. Property 365 automates the entire lead management lifecycle, from capturing prospect information to qualifying leads into opportunities, recording property preferences and even shortlisting suitable units. By avoiding wastage of time and resources, Property 365 dramatically reduces the response time, making lead/enquiry management more efficient.
• OFFER MANAGEMENT
  Property 365 assists property managers and owners to expedite the offer creation process for sales or rentals by integrating the various information channels, from property search and selection to price lists, predefined payment plan templates or payment terms/installments. The solution also has a dedicated module for the multi layered approval process and a checklist functionality for post offer execution and conversion to an agreement.
• SALES & RENTAL TRANSACTIONS
  Streamlining the Sales/Rental process, Property 365 takes a confirmed offer through the agreement/contract, by recording all current and future details pertaining to the transaction, from contract signatures to expected handover dates, revenue management and documentation. This feature is also equipped to manage joint ownerships.
• POST SALES/RENTAL TRANSACTION
  Diverging from a traditional style of sales/rental management, Property 365 offers features to manage changes to a sales agreement as well as renewals of rental contracts. So, upgrades or downgrades of a sale/rental, swap of a property unit, other amendments in the contract, as well as cancellation and reissuing of a new contract get highly automated.

• RECEIVABLE AND PAYABLE MANAGEMENTF
  For a business, tracking receivables and payables is one of the most significant aspects of booking revenue. Property 365 automates the entire process of receivables from identifying due payments/PDC’s to sending out alerts to capturing PDC bounce/resubmission as well as collecting and recording payment details. The payables cycle is also managed efficiently, helping generate an automated cash flow forecast to assist with future planning.

• PORTAL CAPABILITIES
  Businesses can enhance their web experience, engage with communities, manage their portal content, as well as empower their channel partners harnessing the portal capabilities of Dynamics 365. The integrated bundle of web portal solutions along with qualified expertise in web engagement and CMS frameworks delivers sophisticated content management, opportunity management, knowledge and case management and other self-service capabilities to businesses using Dynamics 365.

• Marketing Automation
  The real estate industry has two features that make marketing automation very important, a relatively long sales cycle and a huge number of enquiries. This means that realtors need to find a way to separate the grain from the chaff, and ensure that leads are nurtured and matured over a period of time. Microsoft Dynamics 365 has marketing automation tools that can help you drive digital leads up the funnel until you handover to a field sales agent for further engagement.

THE WAY AHEAD
For modern day businesses, the data that is vital to an organization’s success is not only available along its own platforms, but more importantly, comes from third party information streams, the web, IoT devices or social networks. Adequately capturing, storing and making sense of all this data thus becomes critical for businesses to secure a competitive edge.
The ever-evolving real estate industry is hinged on delivering superior value-addition to customers while maximizing returns. Property 365 brings advanced AI capabilities to mainstream business applications, and helps intelligent decision-making become the norm for businesses.