CMMS Makes Property Management Scalable

The initial investment in rental or commercial property is significant, but the idea behind it is that over time those initial costs will be absorbed by the gains derived from it.  Those gains, the result of continual revenues from tenants, can be diminished by the “hidden” costs of maintenance.  When the inner workings of properties aren’t properly maintained, property owners can spend more money in after-hours contractor labor, and reduced equipment life-cycle, resulting in greater equipment turnover and loss.  This is something no property manager ever wants, but they are unfortuneatly the realities that must be dealt with in commercial real estate. Whether you own or manage one property or 1,000, your time and that of your support staff is valuable, and when work crews and managers have to spend extra time doing damage control on a property, that time is misspent.  To achieve the optimal ROI from your properties, you need a system that takes the worrying out of maintaining them. What is that system? 

A computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) can allow your manager(s) to instantaneously see tenant requests, generate work orders, view the status of previous work orders and inventory, and provide in-depth reports that show historical, current, and future trends for each of your properties and assets. Because CMMS is available through mobile devices, your managers are freed up to literally be in more than one place at a time. This allows them to be completely autonomus and still tackle multiple problems at one time in a managed interface. 

For the family-owned, 65-unit Hyattsville House Apartments in Maryland, the challenge was typical: keep each apartment’s equipment in top condition (central air conditioning and heating, garbage disposal, refrigerator, range or wall oven, etc.), while keeping costs in check.  To minimize equipment downtime, and keep tenants happy, the lean team of three needed a better-than-paper tracking system.  After looking at seven options, they picked eMaint’s X3 CMMS.  According to the company’s Office Manager, the decision was a sound one, “Before I brought X3 on board, it was difficult to track and report on the work done in the building, the history of the major appliances in the apartments, projects underway, and to maintain a database of frequently-used parts and materials. Now, we have the process necessary to make sure we deliver good service to our residents and can provide the management company with data showing where and how our time and money are being spent - and what we can do to operate smarter.”

By Tracy Watson