Building & Facilities Operations

Would you listen to property management professionals who could boast over 90% occupancy in their buildings? We would and we did and we’re here to share our results!

We surveyed top performers in property & tenant management for their general beliefs, current processes and opinions of best practices around service responsiveness. What we found might surprise you!

It was no surprise that the vast majority of top performers consider tenant service and responsiveness a market differentiator – 92% agreed with that statement. Service responsiveness is not only critical to tenant retention and attraction, but also to protection against litigation. A fast response time means fast advice, fast action and fast damage mitigation. You know it’s important, so how do you now improve it?

From our compilation report and inspection of top performers, here are eight best practices demonstrated by the best-in-class buildings:

Get the full Service Responsiveness Benchmark Report for free with industry standards and best practices!

You may also be interested in:

Retaining with Responsiveness, Be Our Guest

Here’s a Resolution: Improve Responsiveness to Tenant Requests

How to Rock Occupancy with Technology

Get the most out of every tenant meeting!

Creating a great tenant experience that builds loyalty and fosters retention is essential in today’s economic climate. Yet, measuring tenant satisfaction is tricky and often requires a three-pronged attempt:

1. Formal measurement through surveys
2. Informal face-to-face interaction
3. Proactive, scheduled tenant meetings

Explores the key ways you can utilize tenant meetings and measure satisfaction to get informed, improve satisfaction, and preserve income.

Read the full article: Happy Tenants, Healthy Building!

Use tenant meetings as an opportunity to showcase your service. Point out any services that might have been extended at no cost and as a courtesy beyond the scope of the lease.

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**Remember** The most effective retention plans are proactive and documented!

Learn how Building Engines can help you improve tenant service.

Ever taken advice from a candlestick? Odds are, your service can’t hold a candle to that of Beauty and The Beast’s Lumière. Afterall, how often do you urge tenants, “put our service to the test!”

That is the one major, elastic characteristic tenants consider when looking for a space: exceptional service. My advice for keeping tenants in your building is to leverage the factors you can control: service response time and quality.

You don’t need to sing and dance for tenants à la Lumière, but you do need to respond to their service requests. Here’s how to maximize the process:

Insights from industry expert Patrick Braswell:

Video (2:08): Improving Responsiveness to Tenant Requests

Presented by Patrick Braswell, Tenant Representation Specialist

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Want more? Read Improving Responsiveness to Tenant Requests. If that doesn’t work, try the gray stuff – it’s delicious.

Visit our website for more information on tenant retention strategies, managing  service response times or bringing your program online.

It’s a new year and new you – with the same needs to enhance operations and customer service. As we shelf 2011 and delve into 2012, here’s a look back at our most popular educational content and resources from the past year.

The top topics enjoyed by your peers:

Checklist: Implementing a Successful Emergency Response Plan

How ready are you for an emergency? How do you track and document incidents? What sort of emergency preparedness training do your employees have? When was the last time you practiced a tabletop exercise? Time to assess your readiness?

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Webinar Executive Summary: From an Owner & Investor- Metrics That Matter

Senior Real Estate Investor, Timothy Donahoe shares his perspective on identifying key areas for metrics and visibility to mitigate risk and enhance investor returns. Watch the full webinar or just the highlights of Donahoe’s insights into quantifiable operational performance metrics. Take measures to measure!

CRE Quick Take: Proving Your Value to Your Manager, Owners, Clients… and Yourself!

This article shows you how to keep all your balls in the air AND prove your value to the owner, interested in the highest return from the property, and your tenants, interested in the best service and value for their money.

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Building Engines Kit: Tenant Retention

Is your tenant retention program building loyalty and increasing retention? Does it accurately document tenant meetings, service requests and other important state-of-the-tenant information:? Download the Building Engines Tenant Retention Kit and start assessing your level of tenant service today!

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Get ready for the year to come!

Register free for the 2012 Real Estate Operations Masters Series and receive automatic registration for webinars, on-demand content, and best practices on a variety of operations topics.

It’s four days into the new year. Maybe you’ve already made  your resolutions, maybe you’ve already broken them, maybe the only resolution you care about is measured in pixels. Regardless, here’s one for business-sakes it would pay to heed: Improving responsiveness to tenant requests.

Here’s why:

Tenant Service is Elastic.

Service response time plays a key role in determining the involvement tenants have with a building manager. Longer waits and slower responses lead to an overall negative experience and vice versa. Being the most controllable aspect of any building, the speed of service with which a building manager can successfully complete required tasks, could make or break a tenant relationship.

This stems directly from two things. First, the rate at which an owner must charge a tenant more or less cannot be changed. Second, the location of the building will not change no matter how much you may want it to. This leaves one major, elastic characteristic tenants consider when looking for space to rent: the service provided.

Why do Tenants Choose to Stay?

Here’s How:

Be Effective, B-E- Effective (Automate)

Service must be provided efficiently and effectively. One of the major issues today with responsiveness falls back to the owner. Whether the tenant cannot get in touch with the building manager, or the building manager has not made available an effective means of solving issues, the tenant rarely is the one at fault. See if your company is putting its best face forward with effective customer service.

Allowing tenants the ability to submit work orders easily only quickens the response time. Automation, therefore, becomes crucial. Implementing a system where tenants have the ability to electronically submit service requests allows them to save time, which subsequently leads to a better experience.

Don’t Just Have a System, Use It!

Many things can be fixed quickly, and consequently should. Requiring someone to call the maintenance office every time a light bulb goes out never proves to be an efficient way of handling a situation. Automation is great, but it does not work if no one knows about it. Tenants need to be informed about the utilities they have access to in order to make the most of them. Simply having an online system is not enough if no one uses it. In order to effectively and efficiently vanquish service requests, the tools available to tenants must be used.

Find Out How Your Service Stacks Up

Know where your service level stands compared to that of your peers and industry top performers. What are other property owners and managers offering that you could adopt? What response times and service performance are standard? Take Building Engines Service Responsiveness Benchmark Survey for a compilation report identifying Best Practices you may want to consider.

Want more? Read about How to Rock Occupancy with Technology!

In our last survey, only 22% of respondents reported occupancy levels above 90%. Odds are, most property managers and owners could use a lesson on the components of tenant retention and attraction. In the age of echo-boomers, digital natives and social media mavens, the strategic application of technology is a key component to maintaining and raising occupancy levels.

While the primary factors of location and price are significant, they are not as easy to control as service and technology. For most CRE firms and properties, there are some essential technological tools that will aid their ability to  retain and attract tenants.

Following our recent spot as a panelist in Realcomm’s recent webinar Tenants, Tenants, Tenants – Using Technology to Maximize Occupancy, we decided to share a summary of recommendations for using web-based tools to fill a building. With the time-sensitive professional in mind, we compiled the webinar’s highlights into an Executive Summary!

Executive Summary (1:34)

Using Technology to Maximize Occupancy

As one of Realcomm’s panelists, Building Engines’ Scott Sidman summarizes his recommendations for using technology to maximize occupancy:

For your Tenant Retention Efforts:

1. Automate as many of your day-to-day operational practices as you can through web-based tools.

2. Apply a strategic objective to their use. One possible goal: tenant retention through responsive service.

3. Set clear targets and use your tools to measure performance against those targets.

4. Make that information easily accessible organization-wide and transparent to your tenants. The culture of service and accountability will pay tremendous dividends.

5. Use communications and data collection tools like Surveys and CRM applications to aid in meeting preparation and data driven decisions based on real tenant need.

For your Tenant Attraction Efforts:

1. Develop a social media and content strategy. Align brokerage and management through managed use of LinkedIn and blogging.

2. Re-think your website, or build one. It is an external and internal sales tool. Make it interactive, engaging and consistent with clear messaging.

3. Create new positions (e.g. content manager or social media strategist) or distribute tasks. This will require an acceptance of change management.

4. Foster a top-down organizational commitment to leveraging technology effectively.

5. Start with objectives, create the strategy and measure everything you can.

For more tenant retention see the steps in our Tenant Retention Strategy!

In a recent sample, 83% of Building Engines clients considered tenant responsiveness a market differentiator. How does your responsiveness stack up to that of your peers and industry top performers? Take the Building Engines Service Responsiveness Benchmark Survey and receive a compilation report aggregating responses and identifying Best Practices you may want to consider.

This 5 minute survey will provide comparative analytics to help you answer and understand:

• How your performance compares with other property owners and managers
• Where your perception of the value of responsiveness relates to others
• If response time standards should be set and included in the lease SLAs
• Real data on performance standards you may want to adopt

This month marks the ten year anniversary of Building Engines’ first contract for sale. Since our first software license was signed in 2001, Building Engines has been revving its engines and building as a company. After a decade of successful partnerships, we must thank our loyal clients, driven team and savvy partners for their invaluable support. We look forward to continuing our growth path of expanded product development, services, and relationships!

Here is a look back at Building Engines’ Early History:

• January 2001 - Company Founded by Davd S. Osborn and John S. Childs under the name Requestcom, Inc.
• October 2001 – Work Order Manager Module launched
• November 2001 – First client: Meredith & Grew
• November 2001 - Visitor Access Manager Module launched
• March 2003 – First portfolio-wide client : Albert B. Ashforth, Inc.
• August 2004 – Company name changed to Building Engines, Inc.
• December 2004 – Preventive Maintenance Module launched
• January 2005 – First Healthcare Client: Golden Living (formerly Beverly Enterprises)

Here’s to many more milestones in the next decade!

Q: Why do technological things never work?

A: Because there’s “no logic” in it!

Buhdum Che! OK, so bad joke, and an even worse perspective to adopt when it comes to property and tenant management. Technolgoical tools have been essential in the drive for efficiency and business process re-engineering in property management companies. Owners and operators today face more management demands than ever, and are often asked to accomplish more with fewer resources.

The best management firms have responded by accelerating their adoption of information collection and reporting tools through Software as a Service (SaaS) technologies. These SaaSy companies typically see improved service levels, tenant retention, asset protection and risk management, but there are also some less advertised perks:

Differentiation for Your Company

Top companies see the effective use of technology as a way to create differentiation despite operating in a tenant-perceived sea of sameness. Ultimately, they see it making them more profitable.

No Reliance on In-House Techies

At the same time, technology advances have made sophisticated technologies accessible to property and tenant management organizations of all sizes. The Software as a Service business and technology model has eliminated the need for in-house technology staff to acquire, deploy and maintain online information and operation systems.

Get Lost, Costs!

The SaaS model has dramatically lowered both initial costs and total application costs. Applications are easily aligned to each organization’s workflow, or introduce and reinforce industry best-practices. Software with intuitive interface design can remove user barriers and the need for intensive training.

Read here for The Keys to Enterprise Level Software Acceptance!

The Einstein Principle:

Accomplish More By Doing Less

Einstein’s theory of relativity was born from a work ethic principled on narrowing one’s focus (for him this unfortunately left out distractions like hygiene, social decorum and his wife). Property owners and managers should take a page from his book (no, not The Evolution of Physics). They should re-engineer their processes to allow them to focus their attention on select meaningful and productive pursuits.

Today, even the best property managers and owners likely aren’t developing one of the greatest achievements of the past century, but they are being more selective with with their endeavors. OK, so they don’t want to spend their time juggling, but what to do with the other balls?

The most successful organizations select a technology partner to provide the critical information, systems, and support competencies that are not central to a property management organization. Enabling technologies help companies accomplish more with fewer resources, improve service levels, attract and retain tenants, manage assets more effectively, and lower business and financial risk.

The adoption of information collection and reporting tools allows managers the time to apply their skill and experience to more meaningful tenant interactions, decision making, outreach, and brand management. Just don’t pull an Einstein and forget to wear socks.