Condo Media - August 2010 - 40

MANAGEMENT

by Eric Swardstrom

Three Important Management Rules
Make Life Easier and Increase Customer Satisfaction
roperty management is a difficult job. Owners have great expectations and notions of how their property should be run. Some ideas are realistic and achievable, others are not. As the association manager, it is your job to satisfy customer demands. It is very easy to lose track of what is important as you get bogged down in the fire drill of the day. Here are three keys to effectively managing associations:

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coverage and limits on the master policy to the new unit owner. The Right Information, at the Right Time, for the Right People. Having information is one thing, but having the right information at the right time for the right person is something that only the most effective can achieve. The Internet has changed the way business is done everywhere, even in association management. Information no longer needs to be locked in file cabinets or stored on inaccessible backroom servers. You are making key decisions about the property every day. Make sure you have the right information available to you whether you are at your desk or onsite at the property. Share information with your customers, vendors and other stakeholders. With encryption and access control, you can be sure that only the right people see the information they need. Everyone that services, lives at or is a key stakeholder of the property has a need to view appropriate information about the property. Locked, inaccessible information becomes stale and dies. Shared information stays alive, grows and becomes a critical link between you and your clients. Store and share policies, contracts, spreadsheets and other property-related information. Store photographs, diagrams and maps. Provide a photograph of the water shut off to the maintenance tech saving him time searching for it; share the insurance summary document with a unit owner.

Manage Property Information

exceeding your client’s expectations. Unfortunately, when it comes to expectations, you and your clients can be on a different page. Without a common understanding, you are destined to come up short. And no matter how well you deliver, you will ultimately be judged on the things you don’t do or the things that were done differently than expected. Multiple property stakeholders with different agendas each with their own filing systems, e-mail and calendars make communications and expectation setting even harder. A Single Property Document. When the owners, key stakeholders, vendors and managers are accessing the same operational documents, expectations stay in sync. You simply review the contracts and recurring tasks for items like cleaning, landscaping or pest control, and confirm the level of service. Everyone can look to the same document to confirm important dates like lease or insurance renewals, elevator certificate expirations and sprinkler inspections. Routine and recurring activities are clearly identified. Property specifications like roof access, alarm panel instructions, emergency procedures and shut-offs are spelled out. Clients need this information, appreciate your thoroughness and better understand why it’s hard to “just go on the roof” when roof access involves going through a penthouse unit. You can achieve high client satisfaction by reviewing what you do and how you do it, and by clearly reporting on what was done. By properly documenting and reporting management activities, it is easy for your client to understand and appreciate the value you provide.

Information Overload. There are thousands of bits of information you need readily available to ensure smooth operations. That information is stored all over the place. There are three-ring binders and filing cabinets holding countless maintenance policies, contracts and customer documents. There are spreadsheet and word files holding gigabytes of information, including legal documents, contracts, warrantees and plans. There is the maintenance staff with years of local knowledge in their heads. And then, there are the thousands of e-mails and calendar entries. You use complex and expensive transaction processing systems to enter invoices and payments for your condominiums, HOAs and apartments. You conduct regular meetings with trustees, board members and owners, and write extensive meeting minutes. You have spreadsheets for everything imaginable. And yet it can still be a challenge for a new maintenance technician to find the water shut-off, for an on-call manager to quickly identify the right elevator company to call in an emergency or for an assistant to communicate the

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Lack of Common Understanding. Quality is defined as meeting or

CONDO MEDIA • AUGUST 2010

Condo Media - August 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Condo Media - August 2010