Few jobs in the real estate world have changed so dramatically in the last decade as that of the property manager.
The people who fill these positions have been tasked with creating differentiation in commercial buildings, with coming up with new services and compelling programming, and with overseeing more amenities and ever-changing technology. Despite all of these additions to their responsibilities, though, none of their other duties have been taken away. Tenants, meanwhile, still want answers fast and prompt action when they have a problem.
Kastle’s comprehensive, end-to-end services can help property managers focus on their core jobs and areas that create a competitive advantage as they hand off important, but lower value, work to our specialized team. At the same time, Kastle can offer significant economic benefits to building owners – all with a flexible suite of tools that allows customers to decide just how much they want to hand off.
Here are a few ways Kastle can make the life of a commercial real estate property manager a bit more … manageable.
Streamlining credentialing
Credentialing is an especially troublesome task for commercial property managers, due to the large number of databases to maintain. Every tenant has a different set of employees, and those workers likely have varying permission levels, granting them different degrees of access throughout the building. Property managers are tasked to know when new hires start (and get their credentials to them) and when people leave. Managing this new client enrollment and departing client deactivation manually, via a series of databases is not just problematic, it opens the door for data to be mis-entered or overlooked entirely.
Kastle’s managed service model offers a central database that makes onboarding and off-boarding a snap. Permission changes? That can be done with a few keystrokes. And that could save property managers anywhere from 25 to 55 hours per month (the average time spent administering the system currently).
After-hours support
Kastle’s 24/7/365 support means issues that arise at night, on the weekend or any non-traditional period don’t need to disrupt the property manager’s personal time or wait until the next working day. We understand the necessity of a rapid response, too. Our target time to respond to a customer service issue is under two hours, with a targeted resolution in under eight hours. Operations centers calls are answered in 20 seconds or less, with high-priority signals (such as fire or duress) being acknowledged within 15 seconds.
Stress-free troubleshooting
When something goes wrong at a building, property managers are typically tasked with tracking down who’s responsibility it is to fix those problems – and all too often it can turn into a finger-pointing exercise, with one vendor blaming another, ultimately extending the problems’ lifespan. Kastle takes a comprehensive ownership position. Accountability, regardless of the issue, is on our shoulders.
There are also some notable economic benefits to this comprehensive approach. With Kastle, all of the costs are built into the system. There’s no extra charge for things like service calls, the constantly changing needs of tenants, system monitoring and ongoing operations. If a building door breaks on a weekend or holiday, you don’t have to worry about paying double time. Repairing the issue is already included as part of Kastle’s managed service.
Technology peace of mind
One part of maintaining the disparate databases and other essential tools of a commercial real estate operation is ensuring they all are running the latest software updates – and communicating with each other. For on-premises systems, that requires an IT department or is yet another duty for the property manager to cover. Cloud providers can handle those duties for some technology, but only Kastle covers the wide array the commercial market demands.
Our managed service model means Kastle is responsible for activating, maintaining and updating all of your systems for an unlimited time. Those include data backups and security patches, system programming and administration, system monitoring and maintenance and service calls.
Managing staffing shortages
The Great Resignation has upended the American workforce in the last year – and commercial real estate firms are hardly immune to its effects. A recent Microsoft study of over 31,000 workers in 31 markets that found 41% are thinking about leaving their jobs.
When that happens in the property management world, it’s especially challenging, because tenant expectations won’t change, even if there are fewer people to do the job. Kastle, though, can assume some of those work responsibilities, like security management, tenant response and problem resolution, letting the remaining staff spend more time focusing on things like amenity or services management.