3 Reasons You Need To Have Standardized Processes for Your Property Management Business

A business process is the series of steps that you take to achieve your business goals. Think of the everyday tasks you usually perform, including creating leases, contacting contractors to repair your properties, marketing your vacant homes, etc. You may not be conscious of taking some of these steps while running your property management company, but they exist. And you need to refresh them regularly, even if it means investing in new property management tools to achieve that.

Identifying Current Issues With Your Processes

The first step is to determine if your processes need work. The criteria for doing this include if:

• You cannot define what your processes are
• Your employees don’t understand why they are working and how their activities help you achieve your business objectives
• You have no idea of what your business goals are and the steps you need to reach them
• There is no documentation showing your business processes
• Everyone in the company keeps on encountering bottlenecks when performing their business tasks
• Your customers keep on complaining about the way you do business
• Your property management business is spending too much money on activities, yet there is no accountability

Improving Your Business Processes

Once you know you have problems, you can deal with them. You can improve business processes in various ways. Some of these ways include:

• Brainstorming to come up with a comprehensive list of your property management business processes
• Analyzing, redesigning, and standardizing your business processes to enhance efficiency
• Communicating the change to every business stakeholder
• Documentation of business processes for referencing purposes
• Automation of specific tasks to eliminate redundancy and repetition

It may seem like a lot of work to refresh your business process, but don’t underestimate the importance of doing so.

Below are some of the reasons why you should improve your business processes while managing your rental properties:

Provides Consistency from One Property to the Next

As a property investor, you probably manage anywhere from 26 to 500 units to take care of. But it doesn’t matter how many properties you manage. You need to provide consistent service.

The last thing you want is for some property owners or renters to feel that you play favorites. They will take offense with that and may look elsewhere for management or rental services.

Studies show that one in every three employees feels that their onboarding process is inconsistent, informal, or reactive. So, if you were to hire employees to work with you on your investment property, your hiring and training process must be consistent. It is the only way to ensure that the people you work with provide consistent customer experience across the board. That’s because they would have met the same qualification criteria.

For that reason, you need to refresh your business processes. And when you do, you need to document clear guidelines that will dictate your actions when managing each rental property.

Enables Property Owners to Outsource Operations without Sacrificing Quality

Cutting down costs is the number one reason why many businesses tend to outsource some of their tasks. Do consider it seriously even as you invest in property management tools. Some of the tasks you could outsource are graphic design, blogging, photo editing, routine maintenance, etc.

However, hiring freelancers or contractors is not always smooth sailing. Since these kinds of employees are not permanent, you can only offer them so much training. In the end, they need to figure out some things on their own.

But if people don’t know what you expect of them, they are likely to mess up. That is where standardized business processes come in handy.

By documenting and sharing your business processes, you ensure that people know what to do. Incorporating these processes within your contracts will safeguard the quality of work done on behalf of your property management business. So, you will provide excellent services no matter who is doing the work.

Saves Valuable Time on Daily Tasks

Another reason why you should improve your business processes is that it would save valuable time.

Did you know that 45% of the tasks you currently pay someone to do can be automated? Well, the first step to automating your tasks is to understand what they are. Then you should document all your business processes.

Documenting your business processes means someone can refer to them quickly when a problem arises. It also means you can incorporate these processes within the right property management tools to automate them. And if these processes are standardized, people can use them to solve problems similarly, regardless of which rental property is experiencing them.

Once tasks are automated, you won’t have to perform them all the time. That reduces your workload and frees you up to concentrate on your core business operations. You will be able to make more money that way.

Just because you don’t know what your business processes are doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You, therefore, need to identify what yours are, whether they need work, and how you can improve them. Then you can begin to refresh them to enhance your property management business operations.

Would you like to learn more about improving your business processes? Contact us today to learn more.