GatesHudson dramatically increases property management efficiency metrics 5X with NetVendor Maintenance tools
GatesHudson Dramatically Increases Property Management Efficiency Metrics 5X With NetVendor Maintenance Tools
5X
metrics improvements
Better
reports and insights
80%+
team adoption
Company Details:
Unit Management Size: 23,400 units
Area: Washington, DC, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland
Employees: 500
Established: 1978
What they love about NetVendor Maintenance:
• Easy-to-use apps and tools
• Strong reporting and analytics/insights
• Proactive support and communication
GatesHudson has never lost a property.
Over 44 + years managing hundreds of 100-750 unit properties across the DC, MD, West Virginia and Virginia area, they've built a decades deep reputation on effective, proactive performance — no owner has walked away from a GatesHudson relationship.
They're well known for helping turn around distressed properties, with strong, experienced teams and rock-solid performance for owners and tenants alike.
Their performance standards are very high, for themselves, their teams, and their tools.
Efficient and effective tools and processes matter.
NETVENDOR MAINTENANCE WORKS EVERYWHERE TEAMS NEED IT
The Challenge:
Underpowered property management system (PMS) tools, underwhelming data and insights.
The stock maintenance management tools that came with GatesHudson's PMS software were falling short. They needed better on-site performance — easier to use, online everywhere — and better data and insights reporting.
"The problem was that they needed a constant connection; you'd do an inspection, then lose all the work you just did because it couldn't work offline," says Jonathan Shymonik, GatesHudson's Senior Maintenance Director of Operation.
Clunky reporting tools were also hard to read, poorly formatted and unreliable. Increasingly, the stock PMS tools were dragging down efficiency across their efforts.
The Solution:
Better interfaces, better reports, increased efficiency.
To replace those underpowered tools, they shortlisted NetVendor Maintenance and a larger competitor. NetVendor immediately impressed GatesHudson: "their people were great, the tools were smart — perfectly sized for us — and the reports were just amazing," notes Jonathan.
The GatesHudson team was particularly impressed with the ease-of-use in both the mobile app for work order tracking and inspections, and the real-time reporting tools.
NETVENDOR MAINTENANCE TOOLS WORK BETTER FOR GATESHUDSON
NetVendor's been like night and day compared to how we were doing things.
- GatesHudson's Senior Maintenance Director of OperationS
"Our guys LOVE the app; so easy to use. Plus, it works offline. Before, we'd do an inspection, then lose all the data since the other app would glitch connecting," says Jonathan.
"Now, they can complete inspections, take photos, manage tickets from the NetVendor app, anywhere and everywhere," he notes. He adds since everyone's working on the same system, NetVendor Maintenance gives them flexibility moving teams between properties as needed.
On the back-office side, Jonathan raves about collaboration with NetVendor. "From the toolset to the people, NetVendor is perfectly sized for us," he raves.
From seamless integration and onboarding through to deep ongoing support, "their people are just remarkable; always responsive."
He notes that the analytics and reporting tools give his team great insight on their operations throughput.
During integration, NetVendor's teams custom built some tools to solve a specific GatesHudson need. "They always take our ideas and share their product roadmaps with us; we know what they're working on which is great to see," he says.
"You're looking at a company in NetVendor that's going to be there for you — they do what they have to do every time to make it work. It's a huge help for us staying ahead of what we need to," Jonathan concludes.
Easily a 5X improvement on efficiency meterics vs our previous tools.
The Results
We get ROI because we're just working a lot more efficiently.
5X
metrics improvements
In every measure, NetVendor Maintenance is more efficient vs. stock tools, from inspections through to ticket processing. "Easily a 5X improvement over the previous tools — and night and day vs. the old paper days." He notes the cost vs. the "free" tools is more than made up with the gained efficiencies.
Better
Reports and Insights
"I cannot say enough about the reports; great insights, fantastic formats, so easy to read," notes Jonathan. Beyond the property data, NetVendor also gives him great insight on individual performers; teams doing great, and teams needing extra attention.
80%+
Enthusiastic team adoption
GatesHudson teams have embraced the tools, even training each other on it. Teams love how "everything just works," with nothing lost even when offline. There was even an impromptu "Snow Removal Ticket" competition last winter, with teams using the tool to show off their work.
Jonathan reports that 80%+ of GatesHudson teams use the app, with usage growing.
NetVendor's size and personal touch is vital to us; they're growing like us, and we feel like they 'get' us as a partner, not just a command/reply vendor.
- GatesHudson's Senior Maintenance Director of OperationS
Learn more about NetVendor Maintenance tools for team efficiency, or schedule a demo.
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schedule a demo
Learn more about GatesHudson.Download PDF
Related Articles
ServusConnect is Now NetVendor Maintenance
A NEW NAME
ServusConnect is now
ServusConnect has a new name: NetVendor Maintenance
We are proud to announce that ServusConnect is now NetVendor Maintenance. ServusConnect joined the NetVendor family in 2022, and now we’re unifying our services under one name.
You’ll see the new NetVendor Maintenance name within the app, but the product will continue to provide you with all the features you’ve come to rely on for optimizing multifamily maintenance, including:
- service requests/work orders
- digital make ready boards
- digital inspections
- maintenance analytics
And, we’re not changing the user interface. NetVendor Maintenance will remain easy-to-use for property managers and maintenance technicians.
Questions about the ServusConnect name change?
If you have questions about ServusConnect being renamed NetVendor Maintenance, email us at support@servusconnect.com. We’re happy to answer any questions you have and to help you find new ways to optimize your multifamily maintenance operations.
If you’re not already a NetVendor Maintenance customer, learn more about how our multifamily property maintenance software works and how it can help you.
NetVendor can also help you reduce vendor risk
NetVendor Maintenance is just one way we help you manage your properties more efficiently. For more than a decade, NetVendor has been helping property management companies reduce vendor risk and save hours every week. We ensure your vendors meet your compliance / credentialing / insurance requirements — at no cost to you. We also make it easy for you to find vendors who perform the services you need.
With NetVendor, you get an easy-to-use software solution plus the expertise of licensed insurance professionals who review certificates of insurance. We integrate with your property management software and can easily set different requirements for different vendor types to help you manage risk. We also perform background checks and TIN checks, and we keep track of 1099 data for you.
When you choose NetVendor to manage vendor credentialing, you empower your teams to focus on income-producing tasks rather than chasing down vendor paperwork. Learn more about how NetVendor works by visiting our vendor compliance and management page.
Multifamily Property Management Challenges in 2023 and How to Overcome Them
Summary: How to cope with multifamily maintenance challenges in 2023
Property management companies (PMCs) are facing two major multifamily maintenance challenges: high employee turnover and a shortage of maintenance technicians, and both issues come with costs that can add up quickly.
There are several ways PMCs can address these challenges:
- Improve the employee experience by giving employees room to advance in your organization, giving them the right tools — including hammers, nails, and software — and asking for and acting on feedback.
- Saving techs time is often a worthwhile investment. New digital gauges can save techs five minutes a day, which adds up to about 20 hours over the course of a year. Digitizing maintenance requests and make-readies can save five to 10 minutes per request or more than 20 hours a month for a 300-unit community.
- Be generous and flexible with tools, logo apparel, scheduling, and more.
- Get creative about recruiting and training. Consider apprenticeships; keep your subcontractors engaged and happy; accelerate your interview processes, and update your technology so younger workers want to join your team.
- Gather and use multifamily maintenance data so you can see which techs are highly productive and which techs may need training, support, or motivation.
- Embrace tele-maintenance. When you enable maintenance techs to help residents via video chat, you can keep more techs in the workforce longer, hire techs in other locations, and attract and retain younger techs — all while increasing resident satisfaction.
High employee turnover and a shortage of maintenance technicians. Do either of these challenges sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone. During many educational sessions at the recent National Apartment Association Apartmentalize 2023 Conference in Atlanta, panelists and attendees talked about these challenges. The good news is there are solutions.
Here, we pass on valuable tips that property management experts shared during the conference. Use this info to help retain employees, cope with the ongoing maintenance tech shortage — and possibly prevent a few headaches and sleepless nights, too.
And if you're looking for software that can improve your multifamily maintenance operations — by improving efficiency, resident satisfaction, and more — take a moment to learn more about NetVendor Maintenance (formerly ServusConnect).
The multifamily maintenance challenge: retaining property management employees
Employee turnover has been high in the U.S. job market for years, and it’s costing companies like yours more money than you may realize. Gallup estimates “the cost to replace an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee's annual salary — and that's a conservative estimate.”
To make this concrete, assume you have 100 total employees and pay an average salary of $50,000. You could be spending between $660,000 and $2.6 million on turnover costs a year.
One of the most effective ways to reduce turnover is to improve the employee experience, according to Heather Jones, President and Founder at GROW and Wesley Aleshire, Vice President of Learning and Development at South Oxford Management. The employee experience encompasses everything from hiring to career development to exit interviews, so there’s a wide range of tactics you can try. Here are three to act on now.
How to improve the employee experience
- Give people room to advance and a clear path to follow. That means ensuring your employees have the time and opportunity to learn new skills so they can grow professionally. If your employees are bogged down with manual tasks, look for ways to automate or offload that work so employees can build skills that will add value back to your business. For example, consider a vendor compliance solution to save your team hours every week.
- Give people the right tools, be those hammers and gauges or software. Younger workers in particular value technology, and they may get tired of dealing with paper-based processes that could easily be digitized. Digitizing maintenance is one way to modernize. You can say goodbye to paper work orders and hello to more efficiency and more tech-savvy workers.
- Ask for and act on feedback. Employees want to know you care about their experience and will adapt to them. If they see you ask for feedback but never act on it, they may stop offering suggestions and start looking for another job. So, be sure to communicate frequently about how you're incorporating their ideas into your business.
The multifamily maintenance challenge: keeping up with property maintenance when you’re short-staffed
If retaining employees feels like climbing a mountain, finding enough maintenance technicians feels like climbing Mount Everest. And it’s not a temporary problem that’s likely to ease up soon.
In fact, over the last decade, the average age of a multifamily maintenance tech has gone up by seven years to 47, according to Kamil Kanopka, Senior Regional Maintenance Director at Liberty Military Housing. Most techs retire around age 55 to 60, so the shortage of skilled maintenance pros is likely to continue and may even get worse if younger workers don’t enter the field.
For many years, a four-year college degree was considered the only real path to a good job, so there’s essentially an entire generation of people missing from the maintenance tech workforce. That attitude is shifting, but slowly.
So what can you do? Here are four considerations.
Saving property maintenance techs time is a worthwhile investment
How much should you pay to save one tech five minutes a day? According to Mark Cukro, President at Plus One Consulting, Inc., answer this question by first thinking about the value of that tech’s time. If the tech makes $20 an hour, then five minutes a day is worth about $400 a year.
In multifamily property management, technicians often don’t have all the tools they need, which reduces productivity, Cukro says. Don’t be afraid to invest in tools to save techs time. For example, a set of digital gauges that costs $400 might seem expensive at first, but if those gauges save the tech five minutes a day, they’ve paid for themselves within a year. And good gauges typically last many years.
You can also save time through organization:
- Ensure your supplies are organized so techs don’t have to hunt through a messy closet to find what they need.
- Create go-packs of supplies for specific tasks, such as a “turn bucket” with everything needed for a make-ready.
- Consolidate tasks by asking managers and the maintenance supervisor to deliver notices and conduct monthly inspections at the same time. Then, they can plan repairs and upgrades together.
And don’t overlook how much time your maintenance techs spend dealing with paper work orders or traveling to the office to pick up those work orders. Digital property maintenance software can eliminate unnecessary paperwork and save your techs five to 10 minutes per request. That can add up to 20 to 30 hours a month on the typical apartment community that can be used for tasks that are far more important than dealing with paperwork.
Be generous and flexible
In addition to buying tools like gauges for techs to use, some property management companies (PMCs) are buying tools and giving them to techs, and some are even giving their techs new boots on a regular basis, all to improve safety and employee loyalty.
“There’s a company with a list of techs waiting to work for it because that company buys the techs tools, and the tech vests in those tools over time,” said Cukro.
In addition to offering tools and tool vesting, consider:
- Offering later shifts, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., for techs who aren’t morning people. You’ll attract more employees, reduce overtime, and address more tasks on the same day, says Jacob Guynn, Regional Maintenance Director at Hunt Companies.
- Showing how to move up within your organization by defining career paths and giving techs the opportunity to learn new skills. Some techs may want to learn how to install flooring or do remediation work. Others may want to learn how to use data so they can move into a management role. A digital maintenance solution makes it easy to gather data and turn it into actionable insights.
Get creative about recruiting and training
Apprenticeships, which blend education and paid on-the-job training, can increase the number of new techs coming to work for you and improve loyalty, say Debbie Phillips, President of The Quadrillion, and Irene Munn, Principal at The Munn Group. Apprenticeships appeal to young workers, veterans, and career changers because apprentices earn while they learn.
To give your apprenticeship program the best chance of success:
- Make it appealing to students by ensuring it’s registered. That way, students earn a nationally recognized credential through the apprenticeship.
- Identify a champion in your organization, preferably a member of the C-suite, who can promote the program and fund it.
- Research government funding programs. You may be able to get tax credits, and students may be able to save on tuition, depending on which state you’re in.
- Prepare to show the parents of young workers the value of your apprenticeship program. It’s relatively easy to convince students that an apprenticeship is worthwhile, but parents are sometimes skeptical, especially those who believe a four-year degree is the best path to a career. The Department of Labor’s Apprenticeship USA site provides information you can share with parents, including this PDF fact sheet. One stat to highlight: 93% of apprentices who complete a Registered Apprenticeship retain employment, with an average annual salary of $77,000.
In addition to apprenticeships:
- Keep your subcontractors engaged and busy so they keep working for you, says Martin McNeill, Vice President, Facilities at WinnResidential Military Housing Services. (If you need help managing vendor compliance or credentialing, check out NetVendor.)
- Interview applicants the same day they apply, suggests Guynn. You might have to reschedule other tasks or meetings, but interviewing rapidly will save you time in the long run. The faster you hire the tech, the sooner you can get back to your other work.
- Digitize, digitize, digitize. Younger maintenance techs have grown up using their phones for nearly everything and would rather work for a company with up-to-date technology than one that expects them to sift through unnecessary and inefficient paperwork.
Gather and use multifamily maintenance data
In multifamily maintenance, most key performance indicators are financial rather than behavioral, says Cukro, but behaviors drive maintenance performance.
Imagine seeing data on how long each tech takes to accept and complete tasks alongside tenant feedback. You could easily identify which techs do high-quality work quickly and which techs need additional training, support, or motivation. Then, you can pinpoint exactly what to do to make your operation more efficient.
Gathering tech-specific data — or any data for that matter — from a stack of paper work orders is a struggle, but a digital multifamily maintenance solution makes it easy to gather data and save your techs and yourself time.
Embrace tele-maintenance
You might be surprised just how many of your residents would be open to trying tele-maintenance — that is, getting help from a maintenance tech by video chat or phone call.
In fact, Heidi Turner, Principal at Blanton Turner in Seattle, ran a survey and found that 83% of her residents were willing to try it. At first, she was surprised, but she later realized that “people are watching YouTube DIY videos anyway, so they’re already trying to fix it themselves because they want it done fast.”
Tele-maintenance can help you:
- Keep more maintenance techs in the workforce longer. Some techs who are getting ready to retire may be willing to keep working if they can do so remotely.
- Hire techs in another location, where they may be more plentiful or require lower pay, to handle some calls.
- Attract and retain younger techs who may already be doing a less-formal version of tele-maintenance for family and friends.
Just be sure to communicate clearly and frequently with residents that if they don’t want to participate in tele-maintenance, you’re still happy to send a tech in person, says Turner.
If you are interested in seeing NetVendor Maintenance's TeleMaintenance beta in action, schedule a demo.
Learn more about how we can help
We can help you overcome these challenges by saving your employees time. NetVendor Compliance takes care of vendor compliance and credentialing for you, saving your team from hours of tedious work that they could spend on higher-value tasks and professional development. NetVendor Maintenance (formerly ServusConnect) digitizes your property maintenance, saving your maintenance techs time every day and giving you actionable insights
Want to see either solution in action? Schedule a demo today.
Better Multifamily Inspections: How to Go Digital
It seems that every Multifamily operator is going through a “paperless” initiative, or at least has one planned. One of the paper-based processes that is high on the list for early conversion is the periodic inspections that pretty much every Apartment Manager performs. Property, Unit, Safety, Grounds, Pool, Move-in, and Move-Out inspections are a few of the more common ones.
There are many benefits beyond just being environmentally conscious. Better/easier reporting, inspection-to-inspection trends, linking photos/videos to findings, auto-creating to work orders, etc. are a few great benefits…these are all the reasons you are here! But, many best-intentioned digital inspection initiatives fall flat because they try to replicate in digital form what is happening on paper without considering all the possibilities that can optimize and deliver tremendous value to your inspection program.
Here are six questions to help you create effective digital inspection templates and optimize your initiative:
1. What are you solving for: Accountability or Issue Identification?
Determining this is a critical first step. If you are trying to solve for accountability, then you might have a very detailed list of questions that you want the inspector to provide input for. You may also want to add a digital signature to the inspection that the inspector or resident has to sign upon completion. Though thorough, a downside to this type of inspection is that it is likely tedious & lengthy to perform and ultimately could hurt the adoption of your digital inspection initiative.
If your primary focus is issue identification, then a punch-list/bullet-point format might be a better fit. The difference here is many questions to scroll through and screen taps to acknowledge you review each item, versus a short, quick inspection that just lists the issues that are identified during, say, a pre-move-out walk.
2. Who is performing the inspection?
If the inspector is knowledgeable, they are more likely to opt for an inspection that is set up for speed. Even complex paper forms become easy to fly through once the inspector gets familiar with the layout, but a similarly formatted digital version will likely end up with a lot of scrolling & button clicks. This will be extremely frustrating to an experienced inspector who must walk several buildings or units in a finite amount of time.
Conversely, for a novice inspector, say, a resident performing a move-out inspection, it will be more important to list absolutely everything spelled out that they need to review, (sorta like a pre-flight checklist for a pilot). In this case, a physical button press on each question/field to serve as an acknowledgment that the inspector reviewed each item could be warranted. Similarly, a signature at the end of the inspection could serve a similar function.
3. Are photos & notes required or optional?
One of the amazing benefits of a digital inspection is being able to take photos or other meta-data (notes, etc) and have them embedded in the answers to questions. Due-diligence inspections where apartment owners or investors need to not only know there is an issue, but to see photos in the report, is a great example of where this capability is a must-have.
What about notes? When an issue is identified, is the inspector expected to dictate or type more details about that issue and have them included in the report? Maybe a dropdown with pre-formatted answers is a better approach if the expected answers are uniform. Are these photos and notes required on every question or only specific ones? Maybe they are optional if the answer to an inspection question is “Good”, versus required when the answer is “Needs Attention”?
Overall, the reason for the inspection also factors greatly into determining whether to build a requirement condition into your inspection questions for photos & notes.
4. Is Plotting the Location of Issues Important?
A cool feature in some inspection tools is the ability to embed a site map or unit floor plan into the inspection question. This is helpful if the person identifying issues is different than the person performing repairs and having an annotated map to pass to the vendor with exact locations of findings can help ensure the repairs are affected on the vendor’s first visit.
A great example of this is on a new construction unit walk for new construction where the annotated floorplan report needs to be handed off to a trade/vendor to fix any identified issues. Another example would be a semi-annual property walk performed by a regional property manager where they can annotate a site map of items or areas that need repair.
This functionality may be a valuable element on some inspections, but cumbersome on others, for instance, on a checklist inspection with a long list of items to review.
5. What happens to the Findings after an inspection is performed?
For the purposes of this conversation, we're defining “findings” as the exceptions, issues, or problems that are identified during the inspection.
Findings from your various inspection templates will likely be handled differently. For some, you may not care so much about findings because they are going into a compliance report that gets put into a file. For other templates associated with safety or risk, your findings likely need to get addressed, for instance, a work order might need to get created and routed to the maintenance team or a contractor to affect repairs.
Understanding the output and what needs to happen after the inspection is critical in getting it set up correctly the first time.
6. What Type of Reporting is Needed Post-Inspection? What about Dashboarding?
The last major area of consideration is reporting. A good rule of thumb here is to think about who needs to look at the results and how they want to see them. Is a link/URL to the inspection findings webpage sufficient, or does a full PDF report with all questions & photos included need to be dropped in a shared file somewhere? Maybe just an exception report is warranted?
Dashboarding is also a consideration, even it is not something you’d require out of the gate. Some inspection templates might warrant the creation of a roll-up dashboard where a Regional Maintenance Manager can monitor the results of a recurring safety & condition inspection that their Maintenance Supervisors are responsible for performing monthly. Or, you may have an owner/portfolio-specific inspection or are flagging Legal Risk issues and want that in roll-up dashboard that Leadership can monitor in a company-wide view.
Keep in mind that some of this is likely going to be a “walk-jog-run” process. The “walk” is determining the format of the report and iterating on that; the “jog” might be resolutions tracking & monitoring from your inspections; “run” is likely roll-up dashboards of your Leadership Teams.
Yes, it sounds like a lot, but anyone who has spent time developing and applying a digital inspection program for their Multifamily Maintenance Operations knows a little forward planning makes a huge difference in the overall success of the program!
How Can NetVendor’s ServusConnect Digital Maintenance Help?
NetVendor is an experienced software PropTech provider to the Multifamily industry, providing vendor credentialing & compliance and digital maintenance software. Our on-staff subject matter experts have decades of experience helping our clients take their maintenance, inspections, and make-ready workflows digital.
For more information, please visit www.netvendor.com or email us at connect@netvendor.com.
New Feature: ServusInspections
Never lose track of details or paperwork again.
Introducing Digital Inspections. Ditch paper and perform simple and easy-to-use multifamily property maintenance inspections with ServusInspections by ServusConnect!
What ServusInspections Includes:
1. Fly through paper-free inspections
Empower your team to get more out of their inspections with an easy-to-use digital interface. Quickly document everything with just a few taps.
2. Use flexible and custom templates
Our team will help you digitize whatever paper forms you use today with customizable inspection templates that can include comments, photos, multiple-choice options, and much more.
3. Work offline and track your progress!
With ServusInspections, there’s no need for constant Wi-Fi connection in those hard-to-reach places. Iterate on your drafts offline until done and rest assured your inspection work is saved if you get called away to an emergency.
4. Enjoy an easy-to-use mobile app
Best-in-class app features that let you do things such as mark locations on a floorplan, add photos and easily create notes. Eliminate confusion and needless typing to describe where problems are found. Just tap on the floorplan and go!
Press Release: NetVendor Acquires ServusConnect
NetVendor Acquires ServusConnect
TUALATIN, OR and RALEIGH, NC – NetVendor, a leading provider of vendor management and compliance monitoring software to property managers in the United States, has acquired ServusConnect, a provider of maintenance operations and analytics software to multifamily property managers.
ServusConnect supports multifamily property managers through its digital maintenance operation solution which provides tools for work order management, mobile maintenance applications, digital inspections, make-ready functionality, resident engagement, and comprehensive managerial analytics. ServusConnect was founded in 2014 with the intention of improving collaboration between property managers and service professionals through easy onboarding and workflow simplicity.
“By bringing together these two innovative companies, we have created a truly unique offering for property operations in the real estate market,” said Dave Cooper, CEO of NetVendor. “We are significantly elevating the value benefit for clients and the market by providing property managers a simple, integrated solution for optimizing vendor relationships, managing and tracking operations, maximizing resident satisfaction, and analyzing and improving performance.”
“By bringing together these two innovative companies, we have created a truly unique offering for property operations in the real estate market.”
Dave Cooper, CEO of NetVendor
In addition to deepening NetVendor’s presence in the multifamily property management market, the acquisition of ServusConnect enhances NetVendor’s product roadmap. The combined NetVendor and ServusConnect solutions create a powerful and unique platform which enables property managers to find, qualify, manage, and analyze their third-party vendors and contractors.
“We are beyond excited about this transaction, how it will benefit our clients and partners, and the ways it will further fulfill our vision to make all things maintenance operations as simple and easy as possible for multifamily clients,” said Jamie Wohlschlegel, Founder and CEO of ServusConnect.
“We are beyond excited about this transaction, how it will benefit our clients and partners.”
Jamie Wohlschlegel, Founder and CEO of ServusConnect
About ServusConnect
Founded in 2014, ServusConnect is a provider of Software-as-a-Service-based maintenance operations solutions to the property management industry. ServusConnect helps property managers streamline their maintenance workflows and enables better collaboration between property managers, service professionals, and residents. For more information, visit netvendor.com.
About NetVendor
Founded in 2011, NetVendor is a provider of Software-as-a-Service-based credentialing and compliance solutions to help property management companies track and monitor their vendor networks. By streamlining critical vendor management workflows, NetVendor helps property managers save time, reduce risk, and more effectively manage geographically dispersed vendor networks across multifamily, commercial, student housing, affordable housing, senior living and HOA properties. For more information, visit netvendor.com.
Want to learn more about vendor compliance management?
5 surprises I uncovered moving from property management to vendor services
Written by Natalie Schultz
After 7 years in the property management industry, I have moved over to the other side, or rather, I’ve become a vendor serving the very clientele I used to be. I now serve as a Business Development Representative at ServusConnect, a fully digital maintenance and service software that integrates with major PMS systems and helps multi-family maintenance operations perform at their best.
And I absolutely love it! I’ve learned so much in the past few weeks as I dove into the features and functionality of this super cool software and discovered things I didn’t know I could have even used as a property manager at my previous company! That’s why I wanted to put together this list of 5 things I wish I’d known about property maintenance software when I worked as a property manager.
1. Digital Maintenance can be flexible and customizable
Before, I thought that digital maintenance apps meant that we had to change how we operated our maintenance department and retrain our people in order to start using new software. I was wrong! With digital solutions like ServusConnect, property managers can easily create workflows that work with their current process and the vendors and office team are kept in the loop from start to finish! This goes for service requests, inspections, make-readys and so much more!
2. Resident Communication could have been so much better!
Has everyone else noticed the higher standards and higher expectations from residents in the past few years? Since 2020, remote work has clearly skyrocketed, meaning that your home is more important than ever. This also means that Wi-Fi, AC, water, and all the other day to day items must be running smoothly 24/7. With rents increasing and residents taking their homes more seriously than ever, there is a significantly higher standard when it comes to communication, engagement and feedback during and after a work order is completed.
Since joining ServusConnect, I am blown away by the level of engagement that their app offers to residents, with easy email and text communication to residents during each project, along with a simple way to review the service request (provided they say they are happy with the completion!). These incredible features have DOUBLED some of their customers’ online reviews and could greatly improve a property.
3. You CAN have all the data you need at your fingertips!
When it comes to the maintenance data you pull from your PMS system, we all know the frustration of getting slow data or misinformation based on a complex paper trail from vendors and others during a work order. This lack of property information left me in a tough situation, making uninformed and slow decisions without the right details at my fingertips.
I had no idea how amazing business analytics and reporting could be!!! By integrating your PMS system with ServusConnect, you can now get thousands of cool insights! Not only can you drill into the details around each technician and vendor, you can see their performance, resident feedback, speed to completion and so much more! (You can directly message residents, ensure the quality of work being done is satisfactory; the amount of resident engagement features ServusConnect has is HUGE!)
4. The right digital solution can eliminate paperwork!
Ugh, inspection paperwork, am I right?? I’ve found that most people we speak to don’t realize that ServusConnect also offers full digital inspection software! This means that not only do you get the basic inspection checklists and the app you need to properly eliminate paperwork, but you also can now do full digital annual inspections, move in and move outs, common area, and safety, plus so much more! I can’t believe how many trees we save every year for our clients (86 trees and nearly a million pieces of paper were saved last year!)
5. Onboarding maintenance software takes weeks, not months!
Scared of software rollouts? I was too! Our team was always hesitant when it came to any new software rollout, worried that service team adoption would be abysmal, and sure that the software company would fail at properly training our people or only focus on the leadership, leaving vendors and field service providers in the dark.
With ServusConnect, their onboarding and training process is the opposite! Within a few weeks, we see companies not only onboard entire properties, but also train up the entire team as well as offer regular office hours to ensure any questions are answered and any new technicians are quickly set up with the mobile app and train by the ServusConnect team. It’s amazing and easy!!
Let’s talk!
I’m still new to the multi-family maintenance technology space, but I am so excited to begin sharing my experiences with my fellow property teams. I hope that what I’ve learned will help demystify maintenance technology for you as well!
Schedule a Demo here
Apartmentalize 2022 In Review: What Multifamily Thought Leaders Are Saying About Maintenance Operations
Attracting and retaining property management talent, particularly maintenance and service technicians, has always been a challenge. But, in today’s world – particularly in the midst of the Great Resignation – it’s become an even bigger hurdle for management companies. Turnover is at an all-time high, not to mention the overall shortage of maintenance talent in general.
These exact problems were at the forefront of discussions at NAA’s Apartmentalize 2022 event. Below are the main highlights from multifamily thought leaders about maintenance operations, how to overcome current setbacks and what can be done to prepare for the future.
1. The Amount Of Maintenance Professionals Is Dwindling
“The potential impact of the talent shortage means increased time to fill positions, cost of filling positions, salary expectations, expectations regarding working environment and turnover,” said Wendy Werner-Draper, Regional Vice President at Arbor Properties. At ServusConnect, we see the direct impact of this talent shortage on our customers’ ability to complete work orders, which is why they are so readily increasing the use of automation.
During The Seven Deadly Sins of Maintenance panel where leaders were discussing these concerns, Chris Caramanica, Director of Facilities, Maintenance at WinnCompanies stated that “by 2035, 30% of the current maintenance workforce will be gone.” Not only does the multifamily industry continue to find it difficult to find maintenance talent, the pool from which they have to choose from is getting and will continue to get smaller.
“By 2035, 30% of the current maintenance workforce will be gone.” – Chris Caramanica, Director of Facilities, Maintenance at WinnCompanies
Multifamily communities need to come up with a solution, and quickly! Having worked with property maintenance teams directly for a decade, we know it’s going to require much more emphasis on retention programs and creative solutions to attracting maintenance talent, but it can be done.
2. Maintenance Technician Turnover Continues To Climb
According to the most recent data posted by NAA, the overall employee turnover rate for multifamily properties is 32.7%. For onsite maintenance staff, the turnover rate is even higher at 39.2%!
The turnover rate for onsite maintenance staff is 39.2%
During the Apartmentalize session, The Seven Deadly Sins of Maintenance, Caramanica stated “55% of property management staff turnover can be attributed to maintenance staff.”
It’s no secret that communities are struggling to hang onto maintenance talent. And increased compensation can only go so far. Multifamily communities need to implement new strategies that will attract and retain maintenance talent before they find themselves so short-staffed that it begins to affect resident experience.
3. Multifamily Communities Are Supplementing Higher Compensation To Attract And Retain Maintenance Technicians
Luckily, there are solutions to high turnover and talent shortages! So, what can multifamily communities do to attract and retain talented maintenance technicians?
The multifamily maintenance thought leaders at Apartmentalize provided insight into what is working at their communities:
- Team Building Activities: Team activities, particularly those that go beyond a happy hour, which could be a bowling night, field day, recreational workshop, etc.
- Streamlining Communications: With both onsite staff and residents so that technicians know exactly where they need to be and when in order to reduce the amount of friction and remain efficient with their productivity.
- Resident Feedback: At properties without comprehensive maintenance software, residents are often kept in the dark and not communicated with effectively, if at all, after a work order is completed. Maintenance Supervisors and Technicians need this feedback in order to improve their workflow and operations so they are aware of how to satisfy their residents.
- Spot Bonuses: Many property management companies offer sign-on bonuses to maintenance staff, but spot bonuses – or compensation offered to those who have remained employed and are still with the company – are growing in popularity to show appreciation for those already employed.
- Training Programs: Training programs are a way for property management companies to show their employees that they are invested in them and their ongoing education, which is a powerful incentive to attract and retain maintenance staff.
4. Technology Is The New Catalyst For Driving Revenue
“Technology has become the new catalyst to driving revenue for properties.” Stacy Wells, SVP, Strategic Operations at Fairfield Residential, sums up an important theme that has been growing in the multifamily industry in the past few years.
While the concept of technology may not be new, nor does it solve all problems, the importance of leveraging technology and automation to supplement multifamily operations and residents’ experience bears repeating. And it can be particularly successful when it comes to simplifying the job for maintenance teams!
“Technology has become the new catalyst to driving revenue for properties.” – Stacy Wells, SVP, Strategic Operations at Fairfield Residential
Technology should make a job easier, right? But sometimes that’s not always the case. Property managers need to make sure that the technology designed to make a maintenance team’s job easier actually does so! Work order apps, service/maintenance request software and property maintenance systems should have easy onboarding, intuitive interfaces, and insightful data that can actually be acted upon to mitigate future risks and receive resident feedback.
With technology designed to solve the real problems that maintenance teams face, it truly can work as the new catalyst for driving revenue via preventative maintenance, resident retention and reduction in operational overhead and employee turnover.
Invest In Your Maintenance Operations With ServusConnect
ServusConnect is a complete digital solution for multifamily software that solves the biggest pain points of property management teams today. ServusConnect digitizes every aspect of property maintenance from work orders, make-readys, inspections, resident communication, business analytics, and reporting.
The simple onboarding process and intuitive interface get maintenance teams up and running in just hours. ServusConnect prioritizes resident feedback after a work order is complete and makes that feedback readily accessible to everyone so that maintenance teams know exactly how to satisfy residents. Maintenance techs can communicate directly with residents throughout the work order lifecycle and vice versa. Residents can even see a real-time update on the progress of their work order request! Finally, ServusConnect provides insightful data to maintenance teams about building specifics and performance.
Altogether, ServusConnect simplifies maintenance operations and allows maintenance techs to do their jobs with ease. Investing in your maintenance team fosters higher retention rates, job performance, workplace satisfaction and resident experience.
Schedule a demo with the ServusConnect team today to get started!
A Look Back at 2021 - Improvements, Updates and New Features
Every year seems to have been a whirlwind from a product/software development perspective and 2021 is no exception. Before we talk about some of the larger features & functionality we’ve built into the ServusConnect platform this year, it might be good to share a little on our philosophy when it comes to dev and where we spend our time.
The Main Course is Great, But Leave Room for Dessert
Software is never “done” – there is always room for improvement. Like any software company, our development team likes to have things pretty planned out, but not so planned out that we can’t execute on good ideas from our clients & prospects. So what does that mean? Here is an example:
A couple of months ago a client came to us and said, “I really like your Resident ServusMessaging feature, but we also need an easy way to send SMS/text messages to our service team members.”
This was an interesting idea, so we talked to some other clients and asked questions like, “do you have this need?”, “how often would you use it?”, etc. Based on this input, we decided this was a “dessert entrée” we needed to create and were able to add this functionality to ServusMessaging in a really short timeframe. We LOVE feedback and new ideas and consider it a value-add to our clients to reserve time to act on the really impactful ones!
On that note, here are a few of the things we’ve brought to market this year:
1. Property Management Software Platform Integrations
ServusConnect is purpose-built to make it easy for multifamily operators and their maintenance teams to optimize the full lifecycle of their maintenance operations, from Resident Service Requests to Make-Ready, to Preventive Maintenance, Inspections, Technician Mobility, Reporting and more. Our clients come to us when they realize the built-in functionality in their property management software is not enough. That said, the PMS is integral to property operations and our seamless integration with these platforms is critical to our success.
This year, in addition to our existing integration with MRI Software Residential Management & Affordable Housing, we were extremely pleased to announce integrations with Yardi Voyager & Realpage OneSite.
Both of these represent hundreds of development man-hours, along with on-property client testing to ensure a seamless user experience for our users. We couldn’t be more pleased with the results and look forward to adding a couple more PMS integrations in 2022!
LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR INTEGRATIONS >
2. Operational Improvements
One of our goals for ServusConnect is that our users (Maintenance Supervisor, Property Manager, Maintenance Technician, Service Vendor) are to be able to understand what is happening and what needs to be done in 30 seconds or less. 2021 brought several enhancements to the platform to enhance that goal:
OnHold
OnHoldMany industries have been hit hard by supply chain & labor shortages in 2021 and Multifamily is no exception. Earlier in the year, we started to see an increase in the number of service requests (SR’s) that were going on hold and started to get requests from clients on not only improving visibility to these requests but also to facilitate communication with Residents letting them know why their requests were taking longer than expected.
Our improved On-Hold (OH) functionality enables users to quickly indicate why an SR is getting placed OH, an expiration date for auto-OH removal, a customizable SMS/text message to the Resident to keep them in the loop and an improved Dashboard widget. This has been one of the most highly-utilized features we built this year!
ServusMobile
ServusConnect has always been “mobile-first” for Maintenance Technicians but lacked a suitable mobile solution for Property Manager & Maintenance Supervisor role users.
ServusMobile was a major release in early 2021 that brought all of the capabilities available on ServusConnect-web into a Native Mobile App available on the App Stores. This allowed Maintenance Supervisors to perform all of the command, control & oversight functions directly from their mobile device.
“Claim” Feature
ServusMobile also has positively impacted ServusProfessional (SP) users., ie Maintenance Technicians. Our original, and still very popular ServusTechnician App, lacked the functionality for a Maintenance Tech to view and potentially “claim” a service request (SR) that wasn’t already assigned to them. It also lacked the ability to “create” a new SR directly from the app.
This may sound like a big gap, but it’s actually perfect for 80-85% of Maintenance Technicians – “keeping it simple & focused” is the greatest feature of the ServusTechnician app user experience. That said, there is a subset of the Maintenance Technician persona that have elevated responsibilities and/or are more trusted to act with autonomy in their job.
ServusMobile enables us to provide an enhanced Maintenance Technician user experience for this persona, allowing them to view any available SR on their property(s) and claim/re-assign them to themselves. ServusMobile also give them the ability to create new SR’s on the fly, say, when they run into a resident in the hallway who has an issue.
Scheduled SR Reminders
Similar to the usage of our “On-Hold” functionality, we’re seeing an increase in service request scheduling. Based on feedback from several clients, we introduced a scheduling reminder that goes out via push notification to the Maintenance Tech when that SR nears its scheduled time.
PS – we’ve got more scheduling-related enhancements coming in 2022, so stay tuned!
Broadcast Messaging
When we released ServusMessaging back in 2020, we had no idea how it would morph and evolve.
As a refresher, this feature provides an easy way for management staff, moreover, the maintenance management staff to send one-way broadcast messages to one or many residents via SMS/Text and/or email. Common use-cases included notices of pest-control activities, weather-related updates, notifications related to property improvement projects, even distribution of community newsletters.
As more and more of our clients started to use it, they found other great use-cases ServusMessaging. We’ve got a lot more coming in 2022, including templates and surveys, but here are some of the exciting enhancements we delivered this year:
Prospect Messaging
For clients on MRI Software who also use MRI’s Prospect Connect product, ServusMessaging will now display prospects from the last 30 days such that the management staff can send them broadcast messages related to unit availability, pricing updates, specials, etc.
Employee Messaging
Managers can now send broadcast SMS/text messages to any other ServusConnect user that is registered on the property. This is great for distributed service teams that work across multiple small properties where the management team wants to get the word out quickly.
Resident Survey Tracking to Google
Resident surveys have been part of ServusConnect’s core offering for several years now. It has been a much-beloved feature as it greatly improves resident satisfaction and tends to have a positive impact on the property’s online reputation.
To review, when a SR is completed, the resident is sent a survey via SMS/text asking them to rate their experience. If they rate it poorly, the feedback is logged against the SR in question and the management team is notified so they can address any issues. Conversely, if they have a great experience, we give them the opportunity to click through to the property’s Google Place ID (or elsewhere) to leave a 5-star review.
We measure & log nearly every part of this process, presenting the data in a rollup dashboard called Resident Feedback. Until recently, we had no data on the number of Residents clicking on the link to leave a 5-star review on Google. This changed at the end of November. Now we log who clicks on the Google review link. This sounds like an insignificant change, but this data is highly sought after from Multifamily Marketing Teams as they work to improve online reputation management and influence better online reviews.
LEARN MORE ABOUT SERVUSMESSAGING >
3. Digital Inspections
3. Digital InspectionsEarly in 2021 our product team started development on our new Digital Inspections Platform, ServusInspections. This is really exciting because we’ve been looking to fill this gap in our product offering for several years now…here is a little back-story:
Back in 2019, we pursued partnerships with other digital inspection software companies to fill this gap. Client reviews were mixed as each platform we evaluated lacked key functionality & interoperability that we felt must exist in the relationship between inspection findings, service requests, resolutions, data repositories, and overall reporting.
That was the eureka moment when we determined we needed to build inspections to our spec versus trying to jam two products together that did not share overall product vision, design & framework. In 2020 we started to design it and thanks to the leadership & vision our new CTO, ServusInspections (SI) has started to take shape earlier this year.
Although SI is not considered generally available just yet, it’s live and in production for several of our existing clients, so we’re getting tons of great feedback that our dev team is incorporating into the product. We’ll have lots more to share about inspections in early 2022!
4. Reporting Improvements
Our reporting platform, ServusInsights, continues to be a major selling feature of ServusConnect by delivering unparalleled visibility into Maintenance Operations, not just at the property level, but across portfolios. We continue to invest in improving our dashboards and 2021 saw a few pretty cool innovations that we can highlight:
Onboarding dashboards – this is a really helpful portfolio-level dashboard because it helps monitor onboarding success as we train & launch new users/properties onto ServusConnect.
Make-Ready Quality Scoring – this useful algorithm was suggested to us by a client and we’ve since added it to all our client’s dashboard. This score measures the quality of the make-ready process by assessing SR volume on newly moved-in units and makes it easy for management to assess the performance of their make-ready teams.
Regional Dashboards – our regional/portfolio dashboards continue to evolve in a positive direction based on client feedback and 2021 was no exception. The best description of these dashboards came to us from a client who described them as, “the dashboard of truth”!
Resident Feedback – we touched on a recent improvement in Google rating click-through tracking earlier in this blog and have now added this metric to the Resident Feedback dashboard.
GET OUR SERVUSINSIGHTS BROCHURE >
New Features: ServusMessages Expanded!
We know how important it is to get the word out to employees, contractors, and residents at a moment’s notice. That’s why we’re so excited to announce our new ServusMessage updates!
How to Use ServusMessages
STEP 1
Select Recipients
Easily search and select anyone on your team, vendor list, resident directory, or any other ServusConnect contact to add them to a message.
STEP 2
Write Your Message
Write your notification, alert or message and even choose a time and date for the message to be sent out to everyone on your recipient list.
STEP 3
Send the Message
Send your message, along with any important attachments, pictures, and other calls to action to everyone at your scheduled time.
STEP 4
Team Gets Notified
Your team, vendors, residents, and other contacts can receive an alert on their phone to ensure that the message is read quickly.
To learn more about ServusConnect Messages, contact our team today!
Sessions, Singing & Swag: Takeaways from Ascend 2021
Did you make it to Ascend 2021?
Here are some of our takeaways…
The ServusConnect team had so much fun hanging with our MRI colleagues during Ascend 2021! Here are a few quick tidbits of what we learned during the conference.
1. “Great experiences are driven by interactions” – MRI Team
1. “Great experiences are driven by interactions” – MRI TeamWe couldn’t agree more! At ServusConnect we believe in great communication, not only for resident engagement through automated messaging and notifications but also for employees by streamlining property maintenance.
2. “Mobile is the future!”
2. “Mobile is the future!”Yes! This is our mantra at ServusConnect! From residents who can engage with property managers via text, to service providers who can take care of work orders from their phone, we believe in the power of mobile.
3. “Great analytics is the key to success”
Our analytics and reporting tool, ServusInsights, is empowering property managers, maintenance teams and executives to get a holistic view of their portfolio. Now they can see what’s happening with properties, predict upcoming issues, and make better business decisions.
4. Our CEO can SIIIIIINNNGGG!
Train performed, and that was amazing. But even more amazing…our fearless leader, Jamie Wohlschlegel, took a moment to sing a bit of “Let Her Cry” by Hootie & the Blowfish for us.
5. Conferences have swag, and we got some extra!
5. Conferences have swag, and we got some extra!Schedule a Demo & Get Free Swag!
Our team snuck around the conference and shamelessly collected candy and swag to make “exclusive” Post-Event Swag Boxes (that even include a free customized Yeti!).
We’ve got a few left, and we’ll send you one if you schedule a virtual demo with our team before November 30!
New and Improved Servus Request On-Hold Features
SERVUS REQUEST “ON-HOLD” WAS A HIT…
so we made it even better.
In early 2020, ServusConnect launched several COVID-related features to assist with protecting the health and safety of Property Management Teams (including Service Technicians and Vendors) as well as Residents. Building on the success of the Servus Request On-Hold feature, ServusConnect is releasing a major update to further enhance this feature.
Dashboard Widget
Dashboard WidgetEasily keep track of all the On-Hold Servus Requests in our brand-new dashboard widget.
Expiration & Reroute Selection
Set an optional expiration date for when the Servus Request should be automatically removed from On-Hold.
You can also reroute the Servus Request to a different Service Professional if needed.
Resident Notifications
Select a pre-canned (or custom) message to the Resident to give them an update on the status of the Servus Request.
Reasons & Tags
Select a reason for placing the Servus Request On-Hold and Auto-Tag Requests for easy organization.
Improving resident engagement in 2022?
Schedule a consultation with our team to plan out how to make resident engagement amazing in the months and years to come.
5 Takeaways from Apartmentalize 2021
The ServusConnect team had a blast meeting many of you face-to-face (finally!) at Apartmentalize in Chicago last week! Here is what we took away from the conference sessions and meetups.
1. Virtual Maintenance Management is Ramping Up
1. Virtual Maintenance Management is Ramping UpThe “Virtually Unstoppable – Managing Properties from Anywhere” session provided a glimpse into the future of Maintenance Management by outlining some innovative approaches to keep maintenance moving during COVID and how some of these techniques & technologies are here to stay.
We’re on board with this sentiment and have been working on some exciting innovations around Resident Maintenance DIY. Let us know if you want a peak!
2. Hiring & Retaining Maintenance Team Members Will Continue to be Difficult
2. Hiring & Retaining Maintenance Team Members Will Continue to be DifficultMaintenance team member turnover is said to be in the +40% range this year and every operator we spoke to at the conference is feeling this statistic.
Ease of training is going to continue to be critical for this team member persona, including the mobile app you give them to track & manage their service requests. The good news is that the ServusConnect Team is pretty good at that!
3. Our Analytics & Plan View Inspections Were a Hit!
At Apartmentalize, everyone wanted to talk about ServusInsights, which provides game-changing insights & reporting into maintenance operations.
We also launched our Plan View Inspection tool, which allows you to see & annotate unit floorplans and property maps, make notes in each room, with specific instructions, upload pictures, and more.
4. Most Innovative Product at the Expo
While there’s no shortage of “furnace filter changing” policies & practices, it has always been a pain to manage & track replacements!
We were blown away by the furnace filter subscription service, Second Nature, and their new foldable furnace filters. Small enough to ship directly to residents and includes instructions!
5. It’s really good to be F2F again!
5. It’s really good to be F2F again!Everyone was excited to have in-person chats and we realized how much we’ve missed that priceless face-to-face conversation with our partners, customers, and colleagues. We’re definitely looking forward to our next opportunity to do it again!
Let’s Talk Property Maintenance
In case we missed you at Apartmentalize, scheduling a call with our team is easy! Just click below to get started.
Feature Release: Property Resident Report
We’re not on summer vacation yet! Our team here at ServusConnect has been hard at work, bringing you new features, just like you asked!
This week, we’re excited to bring you our newest feature: Property Resident Report.
With ServusConnect’s new Property Resident Report, you can easily access an up-to-date list of your resident contact information for your entire property.
See Errors
Now you can view any errors in your database, such as invalid phone numbers or missing email addresses.
View Opt-Outs
You can also see which residents may have opted-out of text messages and are missing new alerts.
Stay Updated
Now you can optimize your communication strategy and ensure that all residents are staying updated with alerts and notifications.
So, How Does It Work?
Step 1:
Simply choose the property you want to include and select “Export Resident Report.”
Step 2:
Once you’ve done Step 1, you’ll get a CSV file with all the information you need.
Step 3:
Now you can easily filter for missing emails and phone numbers and residents who have opted out of messages.
If you're not already using ServusConnect and want to learn more about this and our other fantastic features, schedule a demo today.
