How Get More Money In Your Pocket As A Serious Property Managers In Chicago

"Houston, we have a problem…"

- Someone From N.A.S.A.

When was the last time you had to keep track of your business using something like a notepad?

Could you imagine being the property manager that had to process hundreds of work orders by hand each day?

I didn't know him, but I hope he or she is doing alright.

Yup, You Know It - There's An Old Way

Can you believe that a day might come when the pen is completely irrelevant?

The old way of managing work with a pen and paper used to work before computers.

But we are living in a new world today and property managers simply cannot compete trying to manage their business on paper.

So what's the alternative as a property manager?

The new way of managing your property management firm is simple and efficient.

What is this new way?

You Guessed It! - The New Way

What is this new way?

It's a ticketing system…

And you know what the best part is?

Most solutions available today are free of charge for property managers.

But this new way doesn't come without its problems.

Because every solution comes with its own set of problems.

Adding tech to your property management firm is much like taking care of a dog.

If you're going to get a dog, then you better be ready to take care of it.

"And if you're going to add some high tech tool to your property management firm, then you better be prepared to manage it."

Most out of the box ticketing systems will work just fine for property managers.

If you wanted to speed up the process, just go to Upwork.com and hire a contractor in Jira, HubSpot, or whatever you are using to manage work and have them create the ticketing systems for you.

Fair Warning

Before you hire anyone to build the ticketing system for you, make sure you have all the processes for your proeprty management business documented as flow charts.

Flowcharts like the ones you can make on Lucidchart.com for free, help developers quickly understand the business process step by step so that they can model it exactly like that.

"Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." - Melvin E. Conway

But maybe the standard solution doesn't fit your needs…

Then you can easily implement what you need by taking your current flow of work and just adding each step as a process in the ticketing system.

One thing I've noticed with property managers and business owners in general is the need to "justify their work".

Not even just business owners but people in general.

And rightfully so. If we didn't sell ourselves and our people on why our work is important then it wouldn't be long before we were out of work.

What's the issue then? Customizing your ticketing system to meet your needs as a property manager is great until your business evolves and those changes become more and more complex.

And that's exactly what we're here to talk about.

Here are a few things I've learned from building out and managing ticketing systems for property managers and business owners.

Shiny Toys Can't Fix Broken Systems

Too often I see teams putting in hours to add new features to their ticketing system only to have the process take longer.

For property managers, this can be something like trying to automate the categorization of your work orders.

You think it'll speed up your business, and sure, you might accomplish that.

And a 1% improvement to the work order process is better than no improvements.

Right?

Stay with me. We're getting to the point.

Promise.

What if you could improve your work order process 10x with 1/10 of the effort?

What would you do with that extra throughput?

The way to do that is to take a step back and think about your property management firm's operations from a new angle.

As your business grows, so will your processes. A $100k business is different than a $1M business.

To put it another way, what you did to get your property management business to where it is today is not what you need to do to get your business to where you want it.

And the goal is the keep growing right? Because more growth means more returns.

This isn't a business class so we'll keep the goal of your business at that.

Let's now bring our friendly conversation full circle.

Instead of trying to automate parts of your work order process to get small returns, ask yourself the following question:

"What can I change to my process to improve the time it takes to complete work orders?"

Automating processes in your property management business isn't free, and it takes time to write programs to do just that.

By taking the time to think about your process and what the work order process needs to be to get where you want to go, you can find ways to improve your time to close work orders by 100% easily.

How do I know? I know because I have seen this happen again and again throughout my time as a business operations specialist.

Stretch Out Junior, We're About To Do A Thought Exercise

Are you ready for a thought exercise?

Suppose you started your and it's just you.

You are a serious guy.

And serious guys mean business…

So you decide to name your business Property Management Corp because I guess you're the first the person to hit the United States after getting off the Mayflower ship.

What would your work order process look like?

The Solopreneur's Work Order Fulfillment Process

1. I get a request from a resident stating that their fridge isn't working.

2. I call the resident and get more information on the request.

3. I submit a ticket and fill out all the details.

4. I get to work on the ticket.

5. I keep the investor in communication about the work being done.

6. I figure out if it's more efficient to get the work done by a vendor or contractor.

7. I let the investor know about the cost and request approval.

8. If approved, I finish the work.

9. I write notes on the work being done

10. I close out the ticket.

And bring the freedom loving entrepreneur you are, you have managed to grow your property management business to a team of 5 people.

⁃ You

⁃ A property manager

⁃ A maintenance technician

⁃ A customer support representative

⁃ A computer whiz (maybe me?)

Ah, and here we arrive at the problem.

With a team of 5 people, does it still make sense to do all the work yourself?

Im sure your team would love to get paid to sit around, but I have a feeling you might not feel the same way.

Would writing a program to automate the categorization of your work orders change the fact that you're still doing all the work?

Hint: No

What does your new work order process look like then?

The New Work Order Process

1. A resident submits a ticket using the ticketing system.

2. The customer support rep contacts the resident to get more information.

3. The property manager reviews the notes that the customer support rep left on the ticket and contacts the investor regarding the work.

4. The maintenance technician gets the plan to complete the work order ready while the team waits for the investors approval.

5. If approved, the maintenance team executes the work order.

6. Then the property management team contacts the resident and investor to let them know the work has been complete.

7. Ticket is closed.

Are you still following? Good.

With this new process, you can now find yourself handling more work orders and getting them done faster than you ever could alone.

And the best part?

It took absolutely zero automation.

Eliyahu Goldratt, the author of The Goal puts it perfectly when he says a business is a money making machine.

That's why I like to take a step back to view the business as a machine that makes money. By doing so, you can avoid solving smaller problems and do the work that delivers 80% of the value.

Are you still following along with the blog? If you are then you have earned yourself a bonus.

Here's how you might 100x the work order fulfillment process…

The Machine-Assisted Work Order Fulfillment Process

1. Keep doing the manual work order billing process.

2. For each ticket, track clean and detailed data. This can be data like the cost, the cost including my time, the bill of materials, vendors used, and whatever else I decide will be useful information down the line if you decide to create a database of vendors, projects, and work orders.

3. Write down the criteria for what would make a quote accurate. This can be a list of ranges for certain projects.

4. Create a decision tree using "If" and "Else" to predicting how likely a quote for a certain work order project is to be at a good price compared to alternatives as a score on .00 to 1.

5. Stand The Project Up Using ChatGPT or any free ML model software. You can easily get this done using Jupyter Notebook and Python.

6. For every score where the model scores a work order project with a rating below 0.80, or 80%, send the work order ticket over to management to quickly resolve the issue so we can turn a profit on the work order still.

7. Begin The Work Order Fulfillment Process

Are You Looking To Get More Done With AI?

My name is Emin Okic, and I help Property Managers and business owners get more money by improving operations and decreasing expenses.

If you want to find new ways to grow your business without spending thousands of dollars then shoot me a message today and let's talk.

It's at no charge to you because I simply just want to help.

Promise.

Cheers,

Emin "Computers Can't Fix People Problems" Okic