Q. How do I use technology to generate more business/client/traffic leads for my company or property/facility?

A. Notice, the word ‘leads’? Leads because they are opportunities for business. In this simple blog post, there is no way to tell you how to improve your business itself without knowing a whole lot more information about your business. Leads are simply people making your phone ring, so to speak. In other words, if there are 10 people in your market looking for a business to hire, or an office space to lease, you MUST be sure you get to see those people and at least expose your business to them.

There is no difference in our work to lease or sell a property. If there are 10 opportunities to lease your space or your apartments, or your service centers or storefronts, don’t you push to be sure you see every single deal? The same holds true with your business. Just pretend you are a building owner and your business is a building. Why not push as hard for your business to feed it leads as you do your leasing or investment sales listings?

Here is a simple test: Search for your company or your building in Google Search. Did you find your company or your building? Remember, pretend you are the customer you want to attract. Now that you see what comes up, you need to work to see your business or property come up in that search! Once you see yourself come up in a Google Search, you have accomplished the goal.

Those techniques and tools are a must today if you are going to give your business a chance. In this blog post we share 1 single concept that reveals the most basic fundamental concept you MUST understand and have in place to give your business a chance to see those “new business deals” for your firm or property. If you are a start-up or an existing business, this blog post is of the utmost importance to understand.

Here is the key concept to comprehend………..drum roll, please.

Key Concept

You must have at least one or more versions of your business name, reserved as a domain name.

If you are a new business or an existing business, a new property or an existing property, get the best domain name that describes what you do or the full name of your property. If you can get a keyword in your legal name, that helps tell what you do, that is even better. If your business is a destination or is geographically significant, add the location to your name or geonaming, (made up word) which means, add your location to your domain name or putting your location in your social media names and microsites.

It is difficult to put all of your services into a domain name without it being long. For instance, Property Management, Facility Management or Property and Facility Management, coupled with other services typically provided: leasing, investment sales, project management, consulting, etc., is much too long. I suggest you get your main name reserved, as well as micro-sites in many different configurations. Here are some illustrative examples:

Chicago Property and Facility Management Services, Inc. (super long, but it does say what you do and where you are!) Today, keywords and name searches are really important, especially for mobile use.

http://www.chicagopropertyfacilitymanagementservices.com (Main domain)
http://www.chicagopmfmservices.com (Micro-site)
http://www.chgopmfm.com (Micro-site)

http://www.chicagofacilitymanagement.com

http://www.chicagopropertymanagement.com

http://www.chicagopm.com

http://www.chicagofm.com

http://www.chicagopmfm.com

http://www.chicagoleasing.com

http://www.cpmfms.com

On top of that, you can add the .net, .org, .us, or whatever other category of domain name is applicable to your country or type of business. If your main domain is too long, simply use a shorter version of your name and just forward the other domains to your main site through your domain hosting service. If you use a domain registration service such as GoDaddy, this is super simple and takes a few moments to set up. Now when someone searches for you, no matter what they use, they will find you. Also, the micro-sites are a great way to see what is working in your marketing and promotions. If you know that you always use http://www.chicagoleasing.com for ALL of your “hire us for our leasing” promotions, that traffic is directly attributable to your leasing efforts and is now tracked through that domain.

This is a concept and not an exact blueprint for every business, but in concept, do not limit yourself to one single domain name. Many domain names cost pennies to own and they belong to you once reserved. With the internet exploding and growing, reserve these names now for future use; but always point them to your main site. If you have a long established name, it is also a great way to liven things up in your marketing; add other names that point to your firm. How about http://www.thebestpropertymanagerinchicago.com? or http://www.greatestleasingbroker.com, depending on your business service or http://www.bestplumberinchicago.com, http://www.bestjanitorialinchicago.com, etc. Today with tools like NameCheckList, it is so simple and NameCheckList does all of the heavy lifting for you! There is no excuse any longer as you can now see a complete picture of the name availability of your domain, across multiple opportunties. There is no excuse for any business today, not to be online.

If you do not have the $11.00 to scrape together to reserve the domain name, at least do a Google Place page, Twitter site and Facebook Fan Page, or even Squidoo lens, which are all FREE. Every business should at least have a single page on the internet in some fashion. Reserving your domain name is really step one to embracing the technology available and insuring your company and/or your facility or property has a presence on the internet.

When it comes to your business or name, now is the time to set that up. This is not only your main domain, but your social media names as well. Our industry is so very behind the times, along with our properties. Each property or facility we manage should have their names and a location online to be found. The commercial real estate industry is in its infancy with the internet; so it is not too late. The point is to get your Facebook Fan Page (not Facebook account), Twitter Site, Google Places and domain set up now. Even if you do not have time to use it, at least get your names reserved for future use. Make a pact with your company to include a budget for each property in 2011 called Technology. Include an annual budget for a property website and domain registration. The budget should be at least $5.00 per month! Yes, you heard correct. I am talking about pennies here, just for a single page that gives the basic information. It truly is your job and responsibility to insure your clients and/or your company are not being left behind because you did not reserve the domain name for their company, property or facility.

Take this PM/FM Poll in trendycharts.com. trendycharts is the place to find out what other PM/FM think, so take the poll.

If you need help with this concept for your properties or firm, please send me an email or call me and I am happy to help. My personal agenda is to remind our industry to obtain a good domain name or social media name for their business or property and facility. It is a necessary business decision you must make today.

We have been very fortunate to be able to meet each other as a result of LinkedIn and our group, PFMI. I personally thank LinkedIn for the wonderful job it has done with their website to date. I am writing this post as there is a chance things may “CHANGE”.

That is such a dirty word and nobody wants to hear of that!! CHANGE that hurts the group closeness is my only concern. With that being said, I am concerned that we may lose touch with our group members if what I am hearing is true. This is a plea to all of our PFMI members to please add your contact information to our PFMI beta Directory now. Why? Because if LinkedIn changes their entire system, we will all lose touch with each other! Simple, add your name so we can keep in touch should LinkedIn really change and push some of us away. Here is my reason for writing this and please comment if you have other information. Why?…….

Many LinkedIn Groups have had CHANGES made to their UI (User Interface) that have negatively impacted their connection to their group members and their discussions. The changes will just suddenly appear for PFMI one day and we will not know when it will happen! There is no warning. It can happen today or maybe not happen at all.
The CHANGES make the LinkedIn, we all know and love today, a different product all together. Discussions and News are now combined. The issue is that it combines the personal content from each of us with the RSS Feed articles and hyperlinks. To me it is like oil and water as far as what you see. The RSS Feeds are basically all of the News related to our industry flowing into what we all have perceived as powerful personal communication, or a safe harbor from that exact content. Our PFMI content is solid, personal, real words written by all of us. It is not hyperlinks to blogs and outside websites or media content site feeds. When the change happens we can test things and try to eliminate all News feeds if need be.

Yes, we do like to see News as well, but on our own terms. Right now it feels like we are being tricked a little bit by the RSS Feeds, which look like Discussion Posts. That is the total opposite of what LinkedIn really is. LinkedIn is a direct connect to each other. Clean and clear of clutter and sound bites. In fact, the most aggravating part of LinkedIn has always been the spam, ironically. It was like an angry crowd throwing tomatoes at you when you would try to clutter up discussions. Group managers went to painstaking lengths to fight off the clutter and sound bites or hyperlinks. Now it has literally been mixed in with our precious conversations and valuable knowledge sharing. Real-life people and content is mixed in with Business Week, Feedburner, et al.

It is akin to a bowl of mixed nuts. There are those nuts you just want a big bowl of, but you leave the peanuts behind as all you want are pistachios and cashews. Yes, there are times you will eat a peanut, but you just want a bowl of cashews! To me LinkedIn was a bowl of cashews and now it is trying to be a bowl of mixed nuts.

The other change is that when you go to enter a discussion, it gives you the same 2 box Discussion area, plus a hyperlink area and a “Twitter” share button which lets you simultaneously blast your title of your Discussion through Twitter. Some of us use Twitter, yes, but not all of us!! I have heard that LinkedIn and Twitter may be doing a joint venture on this or maybe the two companies are now owned by the same people now, hence the push for Twitter in more components of LinkedIn. That is a huge change for many of us, but one you do not mind.

I have the new UI in one of my other groups now. There is definitely a new feel and look that is not as easy on the eyes nor is it as enjoyable to visit. Also, since many of us are time strapped business people, we just do not have enough time to try to maneuver through the difference between our awesome content and the RSS feeds. Today there is currently a nice and tranquil calm to LinkedIn. It is slow and easy on the eyes and the list format of the discussion is easy to follow and does not have that frenetic feel. The new UI is like an MSN browser page but less user-friendly and the current LinkedIn is like the Google Search page, clean and easy to navigate.

The Search capability of the Discussions has changed or they have deleted our old content. For now, I am not sure what has happened with our old Discussions. For instance, if you are in the “air filter” business or the “LED lighting” business you currently can search those keywords to see the discussions that appeal to you, etc.

For instance, I know for a fact that Mack Barnhardt has been active in my RoofTop Gardening Group and I thought he had discussed roof vents, air filters and odors in the group. When I search that, I get nothing. All of Mack’s awesome discussions are gone. Now this is new to me, so I may be wrong.

The discussion lists are mainly the RSS feeds from our News Feed and not just Discussions as we were accustomed to. When you click on a Discussion it can take you out of LinkedIn. It can be slow at times, as it opens a new window which may be confusing for many people. Many people feel like they know they are inside LinkedIn, but now you may not know you are leaving LinkedIn when you click on a Discussion. That is a direct result of combining the News Feeds with the Discussions. I am hopeful that will be phased out.

I think the “human condition” appeal of the current LinkedIn is the high tech/high touch feel that you get by having personal written word communication with rock solid, credible content and less graphics and distractions. Your eye keeps you on the words. With the new LinkedIn UI it is a bit distracting as there are a series of boxes for every single Discussion and you change pages quite frequently. Again, that may also change as this is a beta test, we hope. With the current LinkedIn UI, you feel close to those you are communicating with and there is an intimacy and feeling that nothing is between you and those conversations or sources of content. They are honest and real.

Many of all of our discussions are meaty and have great content as they are like mini-blogs from people. Now the new feel is shorter bursts and boxes, like a Twitter/Facebook hybrid. I can see what they want to do, but it needs more work. It is just too much real estate for one single Discussion.

Because each Discussion takes up too much real estate (no pun intended) you get anxious and want to move on and out. There is just too much face to each Discussion, ie. tons of redundant pictures of everyone. The Discussion is broken up in 3 sections. Title, Shortened content, extract of shortened content, more pictures, Facebook/Twitter menu bar, large menu box with your face on it (not needed) and less white space overall, per each Discussion! The current LinkedIn does not show the pictures as much and surround each Discussion with pictures. The current pictures are off to the side and not in the middle of the content, which is distracting. Most people do not want to see their face that much!
As a group owner, the last thing you want to see is your picture a million times. You want to see content from the members! When you comment it should just be a button not another picture of your face reminding yourself how hard you work to keep your conversations going (smaller groups).

If they just go back to Start a Discussion and not bring up “Your Face” and a box, remove the carousel thing or make it optional, remove the News and Discussion combination concept, remove the 3rd “excerpt” box, remove all of the pictures of those who responded under each Discussion, remove the extra set of boxes under the Discussion comment list which again, shows “Your Face”, maybe that will be a new and improved LinkedIn.

I am writing this insanely long piece as a plea to all of you to add your contact information to our PFMI beta Directory. I am doing it here because once they switch our group over to the “New LinkedIn” I am afraid we may lose touch or connection with each other. If that is ok, with you, great, please do it now. I guess I feel so many of you are like friends now and I personally would like to keep in touch, even if LinkedIn changes.

If time permits, please list your information at PFMI beta Directory so we can regroup and follow each other after LinkedIn changes. I really want you to give me your honest feedback after LinkedIn changes so I know how you really feel about it. I am hoping I am wrong here and that you all love the new look and feel and will continue to keep in touch. We all really love the LinkedIn we are using now and I am hoping and praying that by my long post here and other feedback, that LinkedIn may give PFMI a reprieve and not upgrade our group yet. It may be possible for LinkedIn to give us an optional UI format per group. In other words, have a high tech group and a low tech group, for instance. So many of our users have been pressured into using LinkedIn in the first place, we do not want to scare them away. Many are other business generations that do not take kindly to portals like LinkedIn. If you throw this new UI at them, I am afraid they will tire of it quickly and do an “I told you so” and bail out. If that occurs LinkedIn may just be another website or portal that had its day in the sun, but has gone by way of the Netscapes of the world.

July 1st,
is the
trendycharts.com
beta launch!

Stephan Wehner and I have created our first, team, web application. The entire process was developed as an intentional test of our ability to work as a team and collaborate and execute 1 single application in very short order.

We decided that if we were going to work together on the various Manager Labs projects, we needed to test the waters first. We both agreed that there was no other way to do it but to do a test of our team capabilities and our ability to “get the job done”. We are both very excited about tomorrow and are eager for visitor feedback on this project.

The story of trendycharts is simple and is based on the constant need I have observed for folks in the CRE and PM/FM industry to always want to know how many others are doing what and what were they using and who were they using and what do our clients, customers, tenants, colleagues, vendors, committees, boards, think of us? What does the outside world observe and can we influence how they perceive our company or marketing or curb appeal? This is the first Public beta for Manager Labs, so for us, this is big deal in that respect, however, it is not our main application. When contemplating what our mini-project would be, we figured that “the need to know” in our industry was critical now. If you are not checking the pulse of your clients, customers, tenants, vendors, there is no way you can know your future. We felt this mini-project would help us, as well as the entire industry. That is how the trend aspect came to me as well. If I know what you think today, can I influence that thinking? We knew there were many excellent poll and survey sites out there, but none of the sites we were aware of did recurring or interval polls and surveys. What is most interesting about trendycharts.com is how we will be able to monitor and watch for trends and see those trends change. Everybody know the pain of change. We hate change. It is so painful for us as PM/FM people to make a move until there is a trend towards it. Nobody wants to be 1st! This is how trendycharts.com was conceived. From concept we took it from there. I applaud Stephan and technical genius. I can also say I truly enjoyed the project and we hope all of you enjoy it too.

Please help share our excitement by answering a few polls and giving us your feedback. Thanks to all of you who have supported us during this time. During the beta we need the “eagle eyes”. Please share your thoughts about how you see trendycharts.com helping you in your business or if you have issues with its functionality, please let us know.

http://www.trendycharts.com

Also, please feel free to post trendycharts on your favorite social media sites or within your Yahoo, LinkedIn, IREM, CCIM, BOMA, etc. groups. We appreciate all of the momentum we can get. I am loving the various polls people are posting. Yes, already in a couple of days we have had some good ones!!

Have a safe, healthy and happy 4th of July.

Thanks,
Linda
Stephan

Budget Season is coming. What on earth can we all do to make our lives easier for the 2011 budget year?

With all of the power of our groups is there anything we can do as a team to make our budgets easier? How about a state of the industry report from each area of our group? In other words, what do the Janitorial/Cleaning Contractors see for 2011? What should their Janitorial/Cleaning budget description look like and what are some good guidelines for costs? To me that is what I want to see the power of networking do for our industry. We all need the same things. Why not share the information so our lives are much easier? We all need it why not post it online or start collecting the predictions and give reasons why? Just some thoughts for a Friday morning. I would love to go to one place, put in my zip code and get a printout of all of the assumptions I need for my geographic area!! I can then take that data and apply those findings to my budget instead of calling and chasing and begging for answers. How do you do it? Do you share your budget data with other properties or are you an island, like most PM/FM and just use your own data and keep it to yourself?

Click to join:

Follow our group at LinkedIn.com while we discuss this subject and determine what we can do as an industry.

Value.

Ask me anything about technology or efficiency or automation or websites or whatever. If I do not know, I can find out.

Before that however, you have to have the basics. Today, you must be Informed and Equipped so you really do bring Value to your Properties, Facilities, Companies, Organizations. DO NOT bury your head in the sand. Spend this downtime getting really, really Valuable.

Every PM/FM professional must have and/or at least understand the below and its potential, both personally and professionally. How many of the below items can you articulate to an employer, employee, student, client, etc.?:

Anti Virus Software
Anti Malware
Anti Spyware
Computer Cleaning/Maintenance Tools and why
Automatic Microsoft Updates and why (sorry Apple, this is for the masses)
External Hard Drive + Automatic Back up + Additional Back up
FREE Online photo album
FREE Online document sharing
FREE Online calendar
FREE email account or two
The Twitter concept is not a stupid gimmick
Online PR Tools
FREE VoIP phone number and voicemail
FREE conference calling service
Online fax service
Why Notepad and html is so powerful
ISP = Utility
FREE Social Media account or two
Domain name
A website to call your own and a basic understanding of it
FREE tools for everything imaginable are everywhere

If any of this is of any interest to anybody, I am happy to go on and on and on with information. I do not want to freak you out or scare you, just make you and your projects better equipped.

I cannot imagine managing a property without the above under any condition. I need the above to function and manage my property as efficiently as possible.

Do others agree or am I just a freak here? If anyone wants to help me, jump in. If you think I am off base, just say so.

Thanks,
Linda@ManagerLabs.com

Well the property and facility management industry is inundated with acronyms: PM, FM, ROI, NOI, MLS, IREM, CCIM, BOMA, TI, LO, LOI, you get the drift. But now the industry is being exposed to terminology and acronyms that the tech world and many others, hopes will change the industry forever. The term is SaaS, or Software As A Service. In other words, an automation that is online and can be called a tool or portal. With SaaS, everyone is delivered the same software via a browser that you use for FREE or with a subscription, just like any other subscription service.

The point of SaaS is to actually provide service that enables you to automate or streamline the current process or method you are using today in your offices and improve service delivery and/or reduce your labor and overhead. For example, we all have heard of Lock Box, Multiple Listing Services (MLS), and Online Banking. Now the next generation of online technology has started with a multitude of products and tools that are above and beyond those traditional shared software, now online, products. The products vary from website portals that deliver template formats for property websites to payment processing and bill paying. Everything consumers have been enjoying at home for years! In addition, all of the Cloud products, such as document storage, email and online productivity applications are basically SaaS services as well. With the Property Management industry fraught with overhead and a multitude of remote sites, SaaS and Cloud should be on any companies radar as an alternative.

It is very exciting to find blogs, such as Software Advice where you can read about the Property and Facility Management industry and its migration to this evolution by our industry with technology. It is about time we get our act together and reduce our redundancy, provide 24/7/365 service to our customers, create standards, eliminate the pain of training, pool our resources, create economies of scale, and improve our accuracy. The author of the blog, Chris Thorman is a member of several groups I belong to on LinkedIn and I offered to share his basic and easy to understand article at his Software Advice blog for software advice to the Property Management Industry.

Consider joining our family of LinkedIn groups:

PFMI (Property and Facility Management Innovators)

http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=1858850

–Vendor Bidding Lab (beta) subgroup of PFMI

http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2238793

–PFMC(Property Facility Management Companies) subgroup of PFMI

http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2644670

Rooftop Gardening

http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=143300

Certified Property Managers (CPM Group)
Need to be listed in IREM Membership Roster.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=138868

Join me at Maven Research too: https://www.mavenresearch.com/join/4G4Y4QmB

Please take this one question poll about how you process work orders. It should take you 5 seconds to respond!

Everyone in the Property Management and Facility Management industry is looking at how they do things. It is a good time to take a pulse on what methodolgy the industry is using for work orders?

Check out this poll and take the poll yourself.

Thanks,
Linda@ManagerLabs.com

Click here: http://polls.linkedin.com/p/82981/bfkgx

If you think being a Property Manager is about maintenance, utilities, contracting, technology advances or troubleshooting, you are sadly mistaken. Property Management is about “Customer Service” first. The entire purpose and being of a Property Manager is about tenant satisfaction and tenant retention. There is nothing else it is about.

With each maintenance item, utility bill, new technology and contract signed, it is about the end result: Customer Satisfaction and Service. It is probably the last thing you hear folks talk about or plan for or think of, and it should be the first! Each day you are on the job you need to start your day with: What have I done for the tenants today? If you ask that question and honestly address it, you will be an excellent Property Manager. Remember, if the tenants are happy, the building owner should be happy.

Happy Tenants Here!

Now, I know there are some building owners who are never happy and will never care if the tenants are happy. There are always a few bad apples in every batch, but for the most part, savvy building owners who really care about the bottom line do get it. It is really the naive building owner who does not get it. Quite simply, tenant retention is everything about Property Management.

With times being so tough it forces many to realize that their treatment of their tenants will surely rear its ugly head if the tenants have not been considered first. When you think about it, this just makes good business sense. Why would any business operate against the customer? Why would any business plan its operations around annoying customers? It makes you wonder sometimes when tenants are treated badly or ignored. That is absolutely insane. Why would you not answer the phone with each ring or respond like a lightning bolt with each work order request? I say it is pure training and education. Most folks who are trained or mentored are not always taught the importance of being nice and the simple rule that the customers come first.

Today it is paramount. It is not optional. The tenants must be considered and respected or they will move. It is that simple. When you look at the massive effort it takes to find a NEW tenant! OMG, you are lame if you do not treasure the tenants you have. If a tenant moves, that should be like a knife in your heart and it should hurt really bad. Nobody wants to lose a tenant today.

Now I realize that there are tenants who go out of business; but I am talking about a tenant who moves to another location. You must avoid that at all costs! You should never let a tenant leave your building. All of the staff must have that drilled into their heads. It must be the #1 thing they eat, drink and sleep, literally. It should be like propaganda on everything they use or work with. Make it your tag line and make it stick. Put it at the bottom of every timesheet, email or on every work order ticket. No matter what you do, every single member of the operations, housekeeping, security, contracting, suppliers and so on, must know this is your entire reason for being.

Once you are sure each member of your team is committed, the next thing is to create your program each year. Literally walk through each month of the year and create a theme or program or whatever you can do. It must involve everyone. That means, contracting services, staff members, and any other groups who touch your tenants must be on board with the plan. Include your contracting service vendors in the events and in sponsoring the events. The motto must be – We are in business because of the tenants and we appreciate the business very much!! That can be said in a ton of different ways, but you get the drift. Create a code word that equals your message.

If you come to the building every day with that message in your head, it will make a difference. Just think about being in the tenants’ shoes. How do they see the building, the staff, the contract service vendors? Do they see a group of folks they are proud to work with or do they see sloppy and messy or rude folks? All of that makes a difference and can make a tenant move as a result.

There is no room for error here. The Property Manager is the leader of the team and the leader must think of the tenants in every project, every thought, every maintenance plan, etc. How you ask? Well first of all communication is the #1 thing. Today there is so much technology you can use for free, especially email. Be sure all of the occupants of your property know what is going on. That is the most effortless and basic thing you can do. For instance, if you are doing anything to improve the building, tell them about it. Also let the tenants know what to expect. That is the most basic rule of customer service. Hang signs, hand out flyers, whatever you can do. Plaster it in the restrooms, whatever works for your configuration or building traffic flow. Nobody wants to walk in to the office and ask, what is going on. They should already know. Give all tenants advance notice!! Do not wait until the last minute. Why? Because that tenant may be planning a big event themselves, or they may have VIP visitors coming to town. Encourage them to tell you about their significant visitors or meetings. Why? Because you can help to welcome those visitors as well. You can spread the word to the staff to be on the look out or to help people get into the building with boxes or whatever. It is jumping through hoops and making them feel special.

There are so many ideas on tenant retention and most of them are truly common sense and not rocket scientist level stuff. They are old fashioned and traditional courtesies or ideas that show people you care. Your goal is to have the nicest and friendliest staff in the world! If you can create a powerful team, you have it cinched. If you have cranky or ornery folks among you, they will have to go if they fail to follow your leadership. I am sorry to say, but you will have to hire nice people who can deliver the best customer service possible. Do not compromise that point. You can always give folks a chance to change, but if they do not change, they must be asked to leave.

Just remember to ask yourself – What have I done for the tenants today? – and if you do that simple thing each day, you will be on the road to excellent Property Management and superior Customer Service which all lead to high levels of tenant retention that you can count on at your property.

Surf and Ride

Peoria Charter Service Bus

I am at a roadside rest area and I do a double take. Did I just read what I think I read on the side of that huge Greyhound Bus? What does that giant skin on that bus say? Now I see the bus driver coming towards me, and as my reporter instinct tells me, grab him and find out!! I did just that.  He was so proud to tell me that, yes, his riders can surf the web while they drive down the highway!! Wow, now that is really innovation. The Peoria Charter Bus company travels between a university town, Champaign, Illinois to Chicago, several times per day. The owner of the bus company said, why not give the passengers wifi. And so they did.

McDonalds Free Wifi

McDonalds has Wifi

My husband and I frequent McDonalds and it is not for the hamburgers! We go to McDonalds for the coffee, yogurt parfaits and wifi. We have been doing this for years. The wifi was never free, until now! Yes, at every McDonalds you can go in with your laptop and get awesome high speed internet access.

Virgin America plans Wi-Fi launch party in the sky

Virgin Airlines has wifi

Just a few months ago I saw a headline about Virgin America Airlines.Virgin America Airlines (yes flying) is now offering wifi on its planes and flights. I did not know they had wifi at all. So when you are flying to a destination you can use your laptop. How convenient is that!

My point is that we as PM / FM professionals have to see that internet access is no longer optional. If you cannot bring wifi areas to your property, what is the speed bump? Now, I am not saying this has to be the fully functional network for the occupants to conduct business, not yet at least, but at least have some lounges or lobbies with some wifi.  Make it super easy, at their own risk and see what kind of deal you can find from your local ISP.  Maybe exchange it for a plug or advertising signage, so it is FREE for the lounge or lunch area, or vending area. I say, if there is a will there is a way.  A router costs nothing, so try to get FREE service if you can. Ask the vending machine operator to sponsor it, or anybody with a vested interest in your occupants.  But for heaven’s sake, do not ignore it. Wifi is here and it is not a fad, it is a basic utility. It is our job to make it happen!

I received an exciting email from IREM in February 2010.

Why does this get me excited? Because there has been very little effort put forth in our industry to make things easy or to put anything online. It is my hope that this is a trend and we do not look back. I just spoke to a legal professional who happens to live in a large multi-family apartment community, managed by one of the larger multi-family management companies. This person told me that the apartment community has gone back to paper checks. Reason: cannot afford to pay the fees associated with online or electronic rent collection!! When I heard this I was so very disappointed that our industry continues to shoot itself in the foot.

With this email from IREM, I have a glimmer of renewed hope that our industry can and will forge ahead, despite our incompetence and inability to engineer a solution. If you are an IREM member this is great news. If you are not an IREM member, maybe you should be. The following is the email sent to me which outlines the new tools available as they relate to the painful submission of your Income/Expense data from your managed properties.

Click here to learn more: Did you know they have updated the Income/Expense process?

Email from IREM:
Don’t throw away $420 – Submit Your Data by April 1, 2010 and get:
FREE Income/Expense Analysis book (a $420 value)
FREE Individual Building Report, (now downloadable)
All new Submission Web site – Data submission is simple!
Forget everything you know about data submission. The new Income/Expense Analysis Web site is streamlined and easier than ever to use. Check out the new features, below:

- New Additions to the Site!
We’ve added new items to make your data more viable: a new green survey, concessions line items for apartments, and tenant Improvements for shopping centers, just to name a few things!

Are you a new user?
1. Step-by-Step Guidance
Are you a new user? You’ll be guided through each step of the submittal process by pop-up help boxes so you never have to guess what to do next.

2. Terms and Definitions as You Go
Don’t waste time searching the site to find out what to put in a specific field. Definitions of terms are viewable.

Have you submitted before?
1. Year-to-Year Data Comparisons
Submitted before? Automatically verify your data with your previous year’s data. The system will flag data inconsistencies.

2. Find Your Property More Quickly and Easily
Use the new search, sort, and filter capabilities to assist in finding your property.

Hurry – submission deadline is April 1, 2010! Click here: http://iedev.irem.org/contributor/

Click to donate.

We as PM/FM professionals understand the severe pain of disasters and tragedies. It is our job to manage them and respond to them. Let us show our compassion and understanding.

Many of you have already leaped into action and I am so very proud to know you for that. For those who may be unsure of what they can do, at a minimum add a link to your blog or website to help the people of Haiti and the disaster relief causes. Every dollar we send helps. If you have a company website, it is super easy to add a hyperlink to your site. Just my 2 cents worth. Here is a popular link, but please know, there are others too. Google has a Haiti Disaster hyperlink on their main search page.

Those close to the ports or who have access to facilities or docks can offer assistance in that way. There is a huge logistics effort underway so space is a commodity and access to docks and marinas. Whatever you have the power to offer, even if a single $1, it all helps.

Red Cross —– http://www.redcross.org/

Thanks,
Linda@ManagerLabs.com

Join Our LinkedIn Groups:

Certified Property Manager Group (IREM Designation)
CPM Group http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=138868
Note: Membership is approved after verification via http://www.irem.org Member Search

Property and Facility Management Innovators
PFMI http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=1858850

Property and Facility Management Companies
PFMC http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2644670

Vendor Bidding Lab (beta)
Vendor Bidding Lab http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2238793

Rooftop Gardening Group
Rooftop Garden http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=143300

How healthy is your Organization’s Core? Every time you hear a ringing phone, think about it.  I would bet that if you attended Realcomm 2009 in Chicago over the past 3 days, you know exactly what I am talking about. If you did not attend, you MUST attend next year. Get out the coffee can and start saving your money. If your company cannot afford it, pay your own way. Visit www.realcomm.com for more information.

The well being of your corporate infrastructure depends on it! To survive your organizations core must now run 24/7/365. There is no more 9 to 5. It is obsolete terminology.  There is no time for processes to cease or take a break. Today is a 24/7/365 world and the pace is getting faster and more efficient. Is your infrastructure gaining speed or losing speed? Are you hearing ringing around your offices? If so, you need to focus and reduce those ringing phones.

Think about investing small sums by trading the wasted labor expense it takes for a permanent solution that can be used over and over again. Consider the growth opportunities if you can do more with less.  This is not about eliminating people at all. It is about retraining people and realigning people. Grow the business itself, not for the sake of growing the labor pool, as many of us have done in the past.

Our industry is jam packed with business intelligence and we need to discover and unearth it. Our industry holds the key to a massive opportunity for somebody, and that somebody should be you!  The data we all share and the information we all have is vital and it is being unearthed.

Everyone is now relating to one another 24/7/365 via the internet.  People no longer want to wait for your office to open at 9:00 a.m. That is almost silly to even think of today.  What is your own reaction to waiting or being told “No”? Ask yourself that question every time your phone rings. A ringing phone should truly be the bell that goes off in your head. If there is a will, there is the internet.  If you need something you go online and just get it.

You must invest in your Organizational Core. Automate tasks, digitalize Documents, minimize paper, embrace technology, and embrace the change. The challenge for us as an industry is three fold:  ego, money and awareness.  Ego for those that believe their way is better; money for those who have the money now and do not want to lose it (ie, large software companies that will soon be obsolete); awareness for those that do not know about the movement.

There are a few organizations pioneering industry wide standards that you need to be aware of:

Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate – (OSCRE) – http://www.oscre.org   “Deliver global standards for exchanging electronic real property information and drive their adoption”

Multifamily Information and Transactions Standard – (MITS) – http://www.mitsproject.com/ “MITS is an industry-wide effort by the apartment sector to develop common data standards and extensible mark-up language (XML) protocol to facilitate data and systems integration.

Realcomm – http://www.realcomm.com,  Jim Young, Founder. The intersection of Commercial Real Estate Corporate Real Estate, & Technology.

Manager Labs – http://www.managerlabs.com, Geoff Domoracki and Linda Day Harrison, CPM, CCIM, Founders. Where the concepts of the future, become a reality for the industry today. An organization dedicated to providing all PM / FM firms and related Vendor Services, the opportunity to embrace technology, identify technology and utilize technology before they buy the technology. Bring your need or idea to this group and we will execute it as a prototype to prove out its effectiveness and ROI.

Each of these organizations are progressive, consciously and consistently providing the cutting edge to our industry. Your Organizational Core is depending on you.  Keep your core healthy and consider any and all the baby steps that are available to embrace the new ways.  Almost all of our mundane and redundant efforts can be automated. Going forward make a pact with yourself to think about your Organization’s Core and whether or not your decisions and actions are working towards a healthy core. Test yourself and watch what is physically going on around you and every time you hear that ringing phone, think of it as your wake up call.

When your day is spent trying to revolutionize an industry, it can be rather exciting yet a little frustrating at the same time. Not only do you have to get the word out to millions of people, but you also have all of those who ignore you when they hear ‘change’. Those people may agree with you that they want everything to be done faster and cheaper, so long as it stays the same. We always start out by reminding them that there can be very little progress without change, but it is hard for them to swallow that part of progress as it relates to changing anything. Progress they want, change they do not want. In order for a property manager to be able to say, Yes and Now to each customer, building owner, staff member, vendor, leasing broker or anyone they encounter, there must be a monumental change within the industry to make this dramatic progress a reality. We are hoping, like so many people, that by adding Greening to the concept it might take off. It seems that anything about Greening or The Environment is popular. As property managers we need to start Greening ourselves.

For us to become a green industry our effort will be more than just recycling, it will have to include creating standards, minimizing training, eliminating redundancy, identifying the appropriate tools and stopping the madness of starting over every time a new property is assigned to us and minimizing the horrific pain when a property is taken away or sold. If and when, we as an industry, empower ourselves as property managers to provide Yes and Now solutions, there will be a great efficiency or greening of the property management world. The greening will take place throughout every facet of the physical property as well. The greening will impact actual costs and improve customer retention, lower employee turnover and increase the actual value of the property if we all pull together and green this industry.

For over 2 ½ decades I have been in property management, with the majority of those years in the field, at the frontline. The frontline is an appropriate description of those persons in a company who deal with the customers. When you are at the front, the demands come from various directions. Those challenges come from the general public, existing customers, building ownership, the local municipality, the corporate office, vendors or even our own property staff, and usually all at the same time. There is a constant barrage and an endless flow of expectations, with internal conflicts. Herein lies the problem or dilemma.

For instance, the customers expect us to be at our desk at all times to answer their questions or answer the phone when they call. The building owner wants us to walk the property each day and insure all things are in top condition, while watching every single penny spent and every single penny collected. The property manager is also held accountable for each member of the building staff and the assurance to ownership and our corporate office that the staff is being supervised with eagle eyes. Those high standards are expected at the on-site office we are assigned to, in addition to the other 6 properties we manage.

The corporate office wants reports done on time so the accounting department is insured immediate response to their inquiries or needs. When a broker inquires about space available, those tenant rep brokers want the answers now. The local municipality expects us to be at the ready and drop everything, on a moment’s notice to do a full building or fire inspection so we comply with all codes and ordinances. All of the vendors want to be paid immediately after performing their services and the vendors will call repeatedly until we can tell them the exact time they will be paid. Simultaneous to this we are listening to the property leasing broker on the other line who is impatiently waiting for feedback on a 7 page, lease proposal that he/she needs to have our feedback on within the next 15 minutes. All while there is another tenant standing in the office appalled that the illegal car in their parking space has not yet been towed, along with the staff member who wishes to find out why their paycheck was shorted 1.5 hours overtime.

All of the above scenarios can be made less painful if we pull together and start a grassroots effort to revolutionize the property management industry and take the property manager out of the line of fire by igniting a movement towards creating an environment whereby the property manager or the frontline staff, can truly find the time to provide excellent customer service. In addition, immediate responsiveness to the general public, our customers, the building staff, the government, the corporate office and the vendors who all believe they are entitled to receive answers now and make us a Green industry.

Because the industry is bogged down with redundancy, limited standardization, dysfunctional tools, insane repetition and wasted motion, we are the biggest culprits of waste and ineffiency. Today, with all of the creative electronic gadgets and sleek cell phones, why is a property manager ordering 3-part NCR work order pads from Peachtree, bulletin boards to post notices, reams and reams of paper to print statements, newsletters and other legal notices, cases of timecards for the staff to punch in and punch out, binders to store records and logs, and tons of envelopes to mail out the paper coupon books, paper invoices, vendor paper checks and paper remittance stubs and letters imploring the vendors to provide the paper certificates of insurance or other vendor compliance requirements? The reason is simple. We are not creating cohesive systems or systems of any kind. With cohesive systems that communicate, the redundancy will be gone, the manual task will be gone, the errors will be gone and the service will be improved.

There is a group tackling these challenges right now. If you have heard of the organization Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) you are on the right track. This group is taking the challenge head on. OSCRE understands the key is to create standards across all firms. OSCRE is doing this very task in a very impressive fashion. As a group, those of us at ManagerLabs.com are studying the OSCRE standards and investigating how we as web developers and technology innovators can embrace this profound effort to standardize the property management industry. In a conference call with one of the OSCRE leaders last week, we were given an overview of the various standards already in place. ManagerLabs.com will continue to monitor the OSCRE processes and keep spreading the word about this important step in the process of improving the property management industry. If you take the standards and connect this to all of our systems, we will all be able to share data across any database, no matter what accounting system, work order system, commercial listing service or lease abstract system.

Our mission at ManagerLabs.com is to connect all of these dots so things can truly be ‘touch it once’. Every aspect of managing any asset should be treated as a giant template. Once this template is in place, simply change the names and fill in the blanks. If we, as an industry can start looking at standards, practices, systems and procedures as templates, we can truly be a much Greener industry.

For more information on OSCRE or to join this group, visit http://www.oscre.org.

There may be some that wield high tech tools of sorts, but overall the property/facility management and commercial real estate industry is lacking the technology that would unleash power into its systems and processes.  Because we are so busy making our clients money, counting light bulbs and managing labor to the tiniest penny, we typically fall short of optimizing our workflow.  In my 25 years of experience, I have realized that the pathway for our industry to dig itself out of this low profit margin hole is by embracing the tools that exist today. It has always been my personal mission or desire to demonstrate that a property manager can go from 0 to 60 with the right tools and infrastructure at their fingertips, simultaneously providing clients and customers with a higher level of service.

There are managers who do not yet have automated work order systems, dispatch capabilities or automated monthly owner reports and early on in my career it became apparent to me that this inefficiency ultimately had an impact on the bottom line. It was in an office akin to a mini-Kinkos of sorts, producing upwards of 18 partners books per month, where I realized the gap that was emerging in our industry. I will never forget the moment when we were actually able to convince one single client to permit us to email a PDF to them. That was a huge milestone in my career and one I will never forget. We were so proud that out of 55 clients, one single client would permit such high tech delivery! This huge triumph over the antiquated way of business, opened my eyes to how cost effective and efficient things could now be given the technological advances. 

Despite the advances, our industry was still slow to adapt, and for me the gap between technology and the property managers became exceedingly more of a problem.  The way Property Managers operated was unnecessary, redundant and even absurd in some cases. Tasks that were taking days could take the click of a button, streamlining and accelerating my business, leaving me freed up to provide quality customer service; walking the property or meeting with potential new customers; working with leasing on creating new ways to lease our buildings; taking customers to lunch; working with programmers to develop a comprehensive and effective website; producing a newsletter; hosting a tenant retention activity; even staff training day.  All of these useful and creative projects had taken a backseat to the repetitive, wasteful functions that currently occur in the normal course of a property/facility manager’s day and the industry cannot afford to tolerate this any longer.

There are a few simple things that we can begin to adopt now that will take the industry from 0 to 60. The first is cross industry standards various templates for all of our databases and that will allow software systems to talk with each other. When all of our software is communicable, we will eliminate redundancy and exchange information with clicks instead of paper and laborious data re-entry. The second is connectivity and communication. It is not necessary for a manager to be tied to a desk, in fact a good property manager is mobile without compromising the inflow of requests or customer service needs. The manager is always available and reachable with the tools to dispatch requests and monitor the vendors or projects at all the properties they oversee.  The third is effectively utilizing the Internet as a fundamental component of customer service… Adopt these principles of standards, utilizing the Internet and management mobility and you will empower the property/facility management industry. Not only will you provide the speed and improve the quality, but you will provide your clients and customers with the excellent service they deserve from today’s up to speed, property/facility manager.