beyond rent

Topic:

Beyond Rent: Exploring Property Management
Improving Operations Through Automation Software

Description:

Transitioning from a manual software process to an automated process can be challenging. However, when automation software is implemented correctly, it creates a better experience for both residents and the property management team by enabling staff to focus on increasing retention rates and improving ROI.

Mo Hussein of Balanced Asset Solutions joins the podcast to discuss how to effectively scale your business through the use of technology; the challenges of establishing processes and procedures, and standardizing them within the company; and the importance of creating change at the executive level so staff can fully adopt and leverage new technology.

Mo also identifies three key areas impacted by automation software—the leasing process, maintenance management, and accounting procedures. Further, he discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) products—such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA)—can streamline routine tasks. Finally, Mo explains the importance of partnering with an automation software provider that has experience in operations, technology, accounting, and compliance.

You can learn more about Mo Hussein on LinkedIn, and Balanced Asset Solutions on the company’s website.

Visit RentManager.com/Podcast to submit an idea for an upcoming episode of Beyond Rent and discover more about the program.

Learn more about Rent Manager’s industry-leading accounting, reporting, maintenance, and communication features at RentManager.com, or connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

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Transcript

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[MUSIC]

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Welcome to Beyond Rent, the Property Management podcast brought to you by Rent Manager.

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Each episode, we sit down with an expert to talk industry updates, tech solutions, and top tips for those in the Property Management space.

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And now, let's get to the conversation and go Beyond Rent.

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[MUSIC]

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to Beyond Rent. Today, we are talking about improving operations through automation.

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Tell us more and we have Mo from balanced asset solutions joining us. Mo, welcome to Beyond Rent.

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>> Angel, happy to be here.

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>> Yeah, I'm really excited about this. The word automation, we use it a lot. A lot of people will consider like a buzz word, but it is a real impact on business when you do it right, when you do it the right way, and when you have the right, I guess mindset of how you apply it.

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So I'm excited for our conversation today. But let's get to know you a little bit better. Go and introduce yourself. Let us know what you're all about.

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>> Yeah, definitely. My name is Amamah Medmo Hussain. I am the founder and the principal here at balanced asset solutions.

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We are a CPA and technology advisory firm specifically dedicated to the real estate market.

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So we work with property managers, fund managers, asset managers, and being able to leverage technology and hopefully automate as much as they can of their processes and streamline kind of their operations.

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I adhere to Gap Accounting and Department of Rural Estate kind of best practices, and ultimately maximizing the value that they get out of their subscription and the software programs that you are using like Rem Manager.

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>> That's great. And how long have you been doing it?

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>> Yeah, great. So I started this practice about seven years ago. Prior, I worked at some of these prominent software companies. And for the most part, most of us in the organization are either folks that came directly from these software companies or worked directly in industry as property asset or CFOs within property and asset management companies.

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>> Yeah, so lots of good experience over there on your team, right? So that's good because that's really what you want when you're talking to someone that's going to help you with these types of services. There's be a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge, a lot of industry knowledge to make sure that you're getting good advice.

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>> That's right. That's right. That's right. One of the unique things that we've seen in this industry is if you look at just like the evolution of software development, you know, we look 15, 20 years back into the world.

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>> Back into other, we're really not many solutions that were in the market, specifically web-based solutions. You know, there are a lot of on-premise and legacy type of software programs.

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You know, we've seen definitely in the past two decades kind of an acceleration of what we call all inclusive type of platforms that are able to manage, you know, everything from like leasing and accounting and maintenance management all within kind of a web-based intuitive kind of UI.

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And we're seeing, you know, all types of different point solutions as well that are coming out and folks and companies like Ray Manor's that are going to a great job of kind of stitching together these different products that can integrate with your kind of core offering.

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And so it's been definitely an interesting development to see. And, you know, of course, you know, the notion and kind of the promise of AI and automation has been, you know, very, very prevalent, especially, you know, as we've kind of come out of this pandemic.

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>> Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where we'll take the conversation, right? Just kind of talk about automation and where we're headed with it and how to use it. But a lot of what we want to talk about today is like, how do we actually use it today as well, right?

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Because a lot of automation is here now. It isn't a future idea. It is a now idea. But let's talk about the challenge of not using automation, right?

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So the opposite of automation would be I would assume something like manual processes and we're not even really talking about pen and paper. We're still talking about software typically, but you can use software in very manual way.

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So what are some of the challenges that you see that are prevalent when someone is focused more on a manual and less automated process?

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>> Yeah, great question. So we see kind of two cohorts of users and folks in the property management space in general and how they utilize software. So you have companies that are fairly, fairly young that came that, you know, started the business maybe in the last like five, six years or so, which is really, you know, at the precipice of all these different web based platforms that offer a lot of automation and a lot of customization and kind of, you know,

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function out of that helps streamline your operations. And then we have folks that have been in the industry for a decade, two decades, three decades that came from a time when, you know, pen and paper and hand ledgers were actually being used.

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And we see kind of that ladder cohort usually have a significant challenge on being able to kind of adopt and leverage some of the modern software that we're using today at the end of the day.

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You know, software is just a tool. It's a hammer, right? The effectiveness is really something that you'll experience based on how that tool was able to be utilized. And so one of the biggest challenges that we see that organizations face with, as you mentioned, you know, technology and automation does exist today and a lot of folks are using pieces of technology where maybe they're not getting full value out of it and are still doing things kind of manually outside the system. Maybe they have a property management system that automates their leasing process.

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But today, they're still doing it manually. And maybe they took that first step of automating and using docu sign, but they're still doing a manual paper application, where maybe they have a manual kind of outreach process and a follow-up process rather than using like some system generated automated kind of follow ups. And so, the main challenge that we see is in kind of, you know, building out processes and procedures and standardizing those within the organization and having kind of strict adherence to it and having kind of a feedback.

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Loop to understand, you know, the challenges that the staff in the organization may be running into that's preventing them from fully adopting or, you know, fully leveraging kind of that that tool set.

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And so, and this is in general a challenge when it comes to technology, we are our creatures of habit in general. And so, being able to kind of break that habit takes consistent and cognizant and intentional effort to be able to kind of change.

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And this is something each organization even ours that was born in kind of the 21st century that we have whenever we're trying to adopt a new piece of technology requires kind of executive executive sponsorship or leadership sponsorship from the top down and in being able to leverage and leverage technology and change the way you're doing things so that you're able to leverage the technology that you're, you know, you're licensing today, you know, moving to a piece of technology, but bringing over your manual process.

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Is a, is a deterrent in being able to fully take advantage of the value of those pieces of technology and so one thing that we continuously kind of implore clients to do whenever you're starting to implement or use new piece of technology is hey, you need to take a step back take a look at your internal processes, redefine them, maybe reassess the way you do things and challenge kind of why you do things the way you do them today.

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So that you can kind of tweak and pivot and be able to accommodate kind of being able to leverage that piece of technology and wrap it around kind of your business process to help kind of further automated stream on and you ultimately allow you to be able to scale.

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Yeah, in that word scale is really important because most people are trying to scale their business in some way shape or form and they're going to want to use technology to do it right because you can effectively scale just by keep adding human resources right yes you will need more humans right we need people to run our businesses.

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But there has to be as much technology or even more technology put in place and you dropped a lot of really really good nuggets of information there ideas the example of referring to technology and software is a hammer is really great because this idea that it's a tool and a tool is only really valuable in the hand of someone that knows how to use it right you have to have a somebody that's mastered the craft or the art of the business to use it.

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So if you have somebody that's in carpentry and they have a hammer right it's years of experience that allow them to use that hammer in a way that is effective and produces a good result and really software is no different right so I love that that piece there and you you use the word effort and you talked about leadership and sponsoring it and so forth but this idea of effort a lot of people thing is just going to be easy right I'm going to buy software I'm going to implement new technology and then it'll solve all my problems I can automate everything and I'll just be able to do it.

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I've made everything and I'll just be able to walk away it's not that easy right there is some effort that you have to put in this as well right right now that's that's that's a very good point and it's something it's something that you know require like that effort that what I'm referring to is kind of that change management and that reinforcement of that change right at the end of the day you know organizations that are properly utilizing technology and are efficiently scaling and automating and streamlining their processes have kind of a lot of things that are really good for you.

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These have kind of an intrinsic kind of commitment from both the leadership as well as well as the actual like the staff members that are you know in the trenches working directly with tenants and vendors and things that that sort and so it's important that you know the organization

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leadership exemplifies you know that adoption and that openness to not only change but technology leveraging kind of technology and so you know a great example is that one thing that I want to touch upon is also you know the other

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challenge that we see with organizations is kind of the trust with technology right there's a there's kind of a notion of of kind of trust and transparency and kind of control over process and so you know great

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example is you know we had a client that was migrating over from a legacy property management system and wanted to move to a web base and the leadership was very used to kind of signing manual checks every time that a vendor or an owner gets distribution of funds.

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Now you know the reason the reason that you know this own particular owner wanted to be able to see each individual check is to have kind of that that that transparency and understanding kind of cash flow is actually going through their AP right.

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Previously they would just get manual in voices and then you know the AP clerk would would tie that into their property management system and then and they would send they would put the actual like you know stack a checks on the individuals desk to be able to sign and so moving over to kind of a

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kind of a web based property management system we were able to build an actual workflow and approval workflow and that gave him the confidence and the visibility into the actual invoices and the expenses that are going through the business and so.

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And that gave him the confidence that like okay you know and now I can actually see each and invoice that's coming in I can approve it and then now we can actually further automate the way that payments go out and they can leverage things like EFT and ACH payments to be able to automate how those payments get get dispersed.

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Yeah and those are like really important stories that tell because that is that level of trust and that level of control and you can say well that's a very controlling mindset but that's way they were doing business it's a way they always done business it's how they had that checks and balances and they needed to see and understand how the technology allowed them to still have those checks and balances without the paper trail right without the physical paper trail that there's a technology paper trail that you can then follow and actually

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monitor things better faster right at a lower cost so all of these things really add up to big gains once somebody can really trust that the technology is going to do the things they want to do.

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And that's the central tenant of automation right you know automation occurs when you minimize and get rid of all the actual blockers and the things that hinder a process from being able to move through very quickly and so.

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That was a great example of a you know client I was struggling with you know being able to turn around invoices which was impacting you know the relationships that they have with their vendors because if it takes longer for their vendors to be paid there's a level of kind of trust there and an impact that happens with that and because that because that's the process they're going through before there's a lot of runoff invoices and just individual checks that are being written.

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And now they have an actual cohesive system that has that full visibility and that transparency and automation to be able to come streamlined at a p process yeah that's a great example so let's talk about different areas of the business where automation has an impact and and obviously you probably could say every area of the business right you can automate something but there are certain ones that kind of stand out to you different.

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I guess core elements or core processes within the property management industry that you think are most important to talk about when it comes to automation.

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Yeah I know great question Joe so I would say probably three big pillars are you know leasing and when I say leasing I mean the tenant life cycle from the prospect all the way to when they're being converted to a tenant and even when that tenant moves out in that unit gets turned over.

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Then we have maintenance management which is work orders and you know even regular inspections and things of that sort and then thirdly is the accounting piece so that has to deal with you know receiving rents ar you know things like charging late fees online payments AP management management fees and things of that sort so we'll start off with the leasing process as far as like automation and what exists today in the market you know there are software programs out there.

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That allow for you to be able to automatically list all your vacancies on the ILS sites so this includes you know Zilla truly a hop pads parmits for rent all those sites and you can do that directly from your property management solution.

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This is something you know maybe 15 years ago for small 15 years ago there was an as many L ILS sites traditionally people were using you know Craigslist to be able to rent but now you have all these ILS sites that allow for you and property management software that allow you to be able to syndicate to all these different sites.

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You can you can digitize your rental application so you don't have to actually have a physical application.

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This not only allows for you to be able to easily be able to process application and automate further automate even the screening process but but also decrease any potential issues associated with paper in the office that has sensitive information like tenets security

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and then tenets security prospect security deposits right and I'm for referred for stories situations where you know tenet or prospect was a you know was somebody that was a subject of a you know fraud and identity theft and potentially this would have been an outlet.

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Automating kind of that rental application process being able to automate the actual lease execution process this is something that was extremely prevalent especially during the covid era where you know folks were not in office and you know and a lot of tenets would look at units digitally and they can use matter poured these other pieces of software to see a visualization video of what the actual unit will look like where it sits on a particular property and then be able to submit an application and then and also execute the lease online without even.

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Actually technically having to view the actual property physically.

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And once they move in we have you know things like tenet portals that are available that allow for them to be able to make online payments submit maintenance request right is submit a maintenance request for the level of automation is being able to digitize those maintenance requests and and assign them to to vendors or even internal office staff and be able to communicate directly with the tenant on the status of that maintenance request that gives a tenant transparency.

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And it gives a tenant also the ability into kind of the status of the actual the work order itself and that negates the necessity for them to have to call in follow up and ask about when somebody's going to be visiting follow up on their particular work order once that gets executed if it's using a third party vendor being able to leverage technology to be able to pay that vendor B a C F T or or credit and then and then we have a unit turnovers and inspections.

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So it's with that being able to digitize those using technology and then and then we have lastly kind of the accounting so areas and accounting that can where automation can be leverages is number one is the a our process being able to take payments from a tenant you know I've always been the mindset and I believe most business owners are is that you should have never prevent.

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You know somebody from being able to make a payment you should give any in all options so you know these online portals allow for you to be able to for tennis to be able to pay you using a ch debit credit.

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You know some owners are a little bit a little bit funny about kind of allowing tenants to be able to use a credit card to make a payment but there's you know service providers like yourselves in remanders that allow for online payments and at the end of the day the owner and the property manager company is going to see the funds hit their account the same way they would if they did a direct deposit but given that flexibility to your tenant to be able to.

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Make online payments using credit card gives them and usually there'll be a fee associated with it but they get the they get the benefit of being able to get points and things of that sort that's honestly how I pay my rent can use that for a vacation at the end of the year.

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So that's the a our process automating on the AP process you have you know online invoices and portals for vendors where they can submit their either sign work orders they can also submit their payables and pay and get paid online via a t a ch this.

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All else for them to also be able to get paid that much faster versus having to wait for physical check in the amount of time it takes for that to clear and then you have you know some some advanced automation features of automation kind of techniques that we can talk about in a bit but you know things like being able to have stream like kind of your bank reconciliation process and reporting automation and what that's also is also areas that exists software today.

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Yeah I'm glad you brought that down into kind of those three different areas and those are three really big important areas of our business.

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Leasing maintenance and then accounting right in that in every one of those areas there's almost endless places where automation can step in it can provide value it can provide better experiences in one of the things that I think is really interesting that's happened over the last couple years is historically when I thought about automation I typically thought.

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Like you talk about online payments for residents or submitting maintenance requests like that oftentimes I thought about the resident experience and in a lot of times in our industry we would really focus on that we talk more about the ten of the resident and kind of what what's happening there and how we need to technology to support that.

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But it actually makes it a better staff experience to you know yes you're running your business better more efficiently yes the ten of the resident is having a better experience but you're your staff your employees are having a.

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Better experience to and I think that really came to light again you kind of talked about covid a little bit like post covid hiring and retaining your staff was a big challenge so you really needed to focus in on what you could do to make it a good experience for them and providing tools and resources to make their job better was a great way to do it.

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Right right now that's that's that's that's very true and you know specifically in this industry you know a lot of folks that work in this industry are also kind of renters as well and so like you know if they come if they come from a if they're renting from a management company that offers a lot of these automation tools and software products and whatnot and then you go and you're working for an employer that does a lot of these things kind of manually and because these things are done extremely manually requires an actual onsite in actual in person presence within an office.

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That's also something that's you know the industry and folks in this industry are just constantly kind of struggling and kind of a battling with is like okay hey you know we want to have and we want to have folks and staff that are in the office but I think it's important also realize that you know we're all human people have families have other obligations and things of that sort and so if you can get the same amount of level productivity within the organization and ultimately you know increase in margin of profitability then you know why not entertain having a you know

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a fairly remote workforce except those that may be necessary or even a very light amount of time or maybe once or twice a week necessary to go into the office and we're seeing you know even the largest organizations like like Google that are flexible in that regard all the way down to you know the small mom and pop kind of shops and and and companies that that offer that flexibility and if you don't then it's you know you're going to have a challenge with employee retention right because you know the company down the street from you does offer that flexibility and that ability for the company to be able to do that.

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And that ability for those folks to be able to work remotely.

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Yeah absolutely and you spoke about that experience of renting somewhere that has automation tools or online portal and then maybe working somewhere that doesn't and it really made me think of this just this level of expectation that exists out there now more than ever and it's only going to increase that there are technology pieces in place for different things and I often think about the similarities in renting a home whether

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in a apartment or single family home or whatever it may look like the similar similarities there compared to maybe renting a hotel for a few nights right never ever would you go on site to look at a hotel room before you rented it right you're going to go online you're going to find one you're going to find a brand you trust or location that meets your requirements and you're going to just book it and it's not going to be a big deal air B and B all of it works the same way

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now I understand that a few nights in a hotel is a lot different than a maybe a year or a few years in a in an apartment or home but we're moving that direction and the expectation is there and really society has accepted it that this is how we conduct business at this point

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so if you're not doing these things you really actually a step behind from what the expectation is right right right right right and I think the also the other significance is just

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is is is the the ability that having these automated systems and having kind of these technology centric processes that allow for you to be able to kind of scale in terms of being able to do for your staff to be able to do more I think one thing that we always implore our clients is like you know focus on

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you know getting rid of the kind of the red tape in the bottle next in your operations and leverage technology for that the ROI that you get by streamlining those things will compound over time but additionally it will allow your staff to be able to focus on the things that have the biggest impact to the business and so

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you know there's a there's this concept of like administrative right it's like every every every property manager needs to lease units you need to turn over units you need to get the same financials maybe there's a little bit different between one company and another

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but these aren't unique things that are to your business and not unique things that you value props that you offer to your to your clients which are your tenants and your owners and so focus on on on

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exemplifying in great customer experience to both your owners and your tenants that will increase your attention increase the word of mouth and focus on kind of growing your business in areas that actually will allow for you to be able to kind of differentiate versus you know the tasks processes and the things that any other company would need to do anyway.

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Yeah that's a solid point the reality is everyone's collecting rent everyone is managing maintenance requests those are standards is a foundational if you're going to be different than your competitor it's not going to be because you know how to collect rent right that's not place to focus.

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Correct correct correct let's talk about I guess a little bit of like taking it to the next level I think is how you referenced it earlier with this idea of AI and robotic process automation right so everyone's heard of AI I think there's been a lot more talk and a lot more buzz about AI with chat GPT and in other products like that really coming to the forefront recently but I don't think a lot of us know a lot about robotic process automation so

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walk us through both of those how they're connected how they're different. Yeah great great question so RPA stands for robotic process automation the central tenant is essentially a you know a software product or a bot if you will that essentially

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to simulate what a user would be going through this is mainly meant to automate things like menial type of tasks and were specifically repetitive tasks that are done consistently and don't require much human input.

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So a great example is like the bank reconciliation process so what that would usually until is that the see a full of the controller somebody in a county would need to get initially the bank statement how that how they get that bank statement they usually would have to either go to the bank accounts website log in.

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Download the bank statement then pull up the bank statement and then go into the property management accounting software product go click on bank accounts click on the bank account click reconcil and then look at the deposits that are on the bank statement cross reference here which is on the accounting system check off each of the deposits then look at the payable all the checks check off all the checks that have been there for any transactions that are missing that are on the bank statement create those and then close off the month

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and finish the bank reconciliation and attach that as part of the packet of financials and so that that that process of you know logging into the bank account entering your credentials downloading the statement logging into the property management system going to the bank reconciliation screen selecting the bank account and ticking off the items that are on your deposits and also your checks that is a redundant process and something that needs to be done on every single bank account needs to be done every single month.

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And it's not something that really requires much human subjectivity in being able to do that works that's a great example of something of like robotic process automation that can be leverage and we built some bots that help with that kind of that type of a process.

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Now one thing that I do want to mention is a lot of folks will talk about kind of automation and AI and even RPA but I think what's important is to kind of take a step back and understand kind of where your business is today and usually there's a lot of like low hanging fruit and areas within the organization where there are manual things being done and where you know there are other processes that can be digitized and streamlined with technology before you start looking at some of these advanced kind of like shreds and

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the advanced kind of strategies and tactics I would say you know when you're looking at kind of streamline your business you want to take kind of a crawl walk run effort you know initially you want to have everything digitized and on technology.

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Then you want to kind of streamline your standard operating procedures get rid of red tape and unnecessary steps as that the walk phase and then you want to do some like you know extreme kind of automation and advanced automation leveraging things like RPA products and stuff like that and that's kind of that's at the advanced acting and by then when you get to that when you get to that stage.

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You know you'll be able to manage you know a lot more units and your staff will be able to do a lot more work and the output and the impact of the work that do is a lot more significant.

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Then you know an organization where some of these things are still being done somewhat manually so.

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Thanks for walking us through that so if someone calls your team and they're like hey I need a bot to do bank racks your first response will be well tell me more about your business.

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What are you doing manually right now why do you think a bot for bank rack is really the next thing that you should be doing because they're probably skipping multiple steps and multiple things that they could be doing better already now and they're trying to get to the finish line.

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Right right right and that's a great example at great point we had a client that recently reached out to us for similar similar ask and and usually what we like to start off with is kind of a detailed business process and audit so one thing and in that process.

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We actually sit down and go through a hey document their entire leasing cycle may actually even do like a like a secret shop or like applicant to understand kind of what that experience look like what is the response time looks like.

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You know are there things that can be streamlined in their actual in their actual like leasing process will which will ensure that they have a faster higher conversion rate which decreases the amount of vacancies that they have.

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And and and then we look at their kind of their accounting processes as well and then and then we'll take a look at kind of the bank reconciliation process you know the bank reconciliation process and automating that may you know may be fruitful and save them you know maybe 15 to 20 hours on a monthly basis.

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And we can translate what that looks like on an actual dollar basis based on you know, guistimated estimated figures on what like staff members that are doing that type of worker usually paid.

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However, when we actually take a step back and do kind of that detailed business process analysis in particular customer that I mentioned you what we actually uncovered was that you know they actually have.

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You know a 15% drop off of canceled applicants right and their vacancy rate was riding at somewhere about 86%.

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Healthy company should have a vacancy rate that's closer to about 94% this line had thousands of units by us closing that gap we would actually increase the amount of revenue that the businesses making by an additional half a million dollars on an annual basis and so.

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And we actually did go through an example of an applicant and to kind of a secret shopper if you will what we saw is that there were particular requirements that they had as a different from their competition and not completely necessary.

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There were particular steps that were unnecessary compared to other you know that some of their competitors and how the industry the kind of best practices on running their actual like application process and so by addressing that we were actually able to increase kind of their bottom line and decrease their vacancy increase the management fees that they're making and that is far more impactful than being able to kind of streamline this bank reconciliation process which of course we still kind of tackle but kind of what I'm trying to get at is you know understanding kind of the impact and.

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And kind of the impact and significance of a problem or challenge or something you're trying to automate or streamline is very important and putting some kind of a quantified value on it is critical now to give you kind of perspective of how you should be prioritized and kind of stack breaking what you should be pursuing.

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That is such a great example and something I've noticed and this isn't unique to our industry I've noticed this in other industries that a lot of people that are in operations or business management or even ownership.

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And sometimes they will network and they will hear of these ideas and they will assume that they need to go do the same thing that someone else did right though they're here that somebody heard had success and I'm like I'm going to go implement the same thing the same software the same process without evaluating if it's a good fit for them right so while somebody may hear this and think man this RPA thing sounds really exciting it might be good for them to do it some point but they really need to evaluate and they need to have somebody that's a trusted advisor to help kind of navigate all of that understand how they actually.

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Understand how they actually rank against their competitors because if you're comparing yourself to others when you're not at the same stage in your business that's not healthy right right right I think that's very that's a very good point Joe and you know every organization is not the same you know looking at another organization and what they're doing and trying to emulate and kind of adopt the same technology they're using is not going to necessarily married and result in the same type of impact your organization so I think I think what's very important is understanding kind of where your business is at today.

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Taking a very critical kind of I and assessment and leveraging even like you know consultants and other folks that are in the industry to give you kind of that unbiased third party perspective.

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You know I think one thing that a lot of us are guilty of just being business owners is that we assume we know everything that's happening internally and exactly the processes we're kind of going through and you need to be surprised in how many instances when we go through and do these business audits and we're sharing our findings with the owner that they're consistently saying oh we do that we do that I had no idea and it's and it's because I'm not going to do that.

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And it's because you know the time was in spent and trying to listen and understand kind of to a deep level on exactly how their staff is operating in the steps that they take.

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And had they known about these things maybe they would have mitigated and kind of streamline some of these things and assume that these things are not necessary but you know their staff are following kind of you know how they were trained in what they're kind of going.

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What they're how they're going about kind of their day to day and so it's and like you mentioned you know a great example is even just using these bank reconciliation bots you know a good example is we had a client that recently.

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Had approached us and wanted to use the bank reconciliation bond that we had built for our PA and they started you know we had we had licensed that out to them and they started utilizing it but they were running into a bunch of errors and what the result was is that you know they were.

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And they were a client that was getting subsidy payments you know for their some of their tenants specifically the the half payments in the section a payments and the way that though they were their staff was entering into the accounting system was not the way you were showing up on the actual bank statement.

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And so because of that difference the block of being confused on how to match up a deposit in the system with the deposit in their accounting with the deposit that's on their bank statement.

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And that's something that would have been surfaced up if a detailed kind of business review would have been done and understanding how they actually go through their actual a our process and how those transactions are entered to ensure that there is adherence and commonality between what is showing up the accounting system versus what's showing up on their bank statement and so you know while another client did not have that issue that was utilizing the same exact bot was running into this these errors this client was and it's because of how they were going about that a our accounting process and so that's kind of a great example.

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You know assuming that hey just because I bought this piece of technology and it's going to make our lives quote unquote easier there's no reason and then be frustrated while when it's not working.

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Absolutely well no two businesses are the same and that's why running businesses so interesting and so challenging at the same time and that's why we need people walk alongside of us and help us understand maybe our blind spots or the areas that we can improve that we really just don't even know exists.

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So with that we are kind of coming to the end here Mo.

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If people want a trusted advisor if they want that audit if they want to kind of walk through that in their own business.

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How can our listeners reach out to your team to learn more.

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Sure great question so you can find us online at www.balancedassetsolutions.com

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We are a partner with a right manager and a bunch of other software companies I think I think you know the one thing that I would implore if you're looking for kind of a consultant is you know finding somebody that has kind of deep operational expertise and understanding of kind of the industry as well as the technology that's out there.

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I think there's a you know in the marketplace you'll see folks that have maybe deep accounting experience but they don't have crazy deep experience in the actual tech maybe they have deep operational experience but they don't have deep experience in operation.

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Deep experience in operations or maybe they have deep experience in tech but not so much in the industry operations and so finding kind of that you know unique organization have experience in both operations technology and the accounting side and understanding compliance is very difficult to find and that's something that we kind of uniquely kind of brand ourselves with so you find us at www.balancedassetolutions.com

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Accent will make sure we drop that link into the show notes as well well this has been great really interesting conversation I love talking about automation and technology that's one of my favorite topics so I appreciate you and I also appreciate our audience for listening into another episode and until next time keep going beyond rent.

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Thanks for joining us for this episode of Beyond Rent.

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If you enjoyed this podcast spread the word on social media and with your peers in the industry to be notified when more episodes are released subscribe using your favorite podcast player.

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Beyond rent is brought to you by rent manager property management software learn more about rent manager's industry leading software solutions at rentmanager.com

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Until next time keep going beyond rent.

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