If you’re anything like us, I’m sure you’ve started 2020 with a few goals in mind for your business, but perhaps unsure about how to achieve them.
What’s your business focus for 2020? Continue to build your portfolio? Reduce your overheads to be as lean as possible? Improve staff productivity? Reduce your carbon footprint, while at the same time increasing your revenue and profit?
If you’ve not already been through a digital transformation with your property reporting processes, then perhaps now is the time to help you address some of your targets.
Improve productivity
We know that digital technology can revolutionise the way that small businesses and agents operate by increasing productivity levels in the workplace. The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) highlights “With their relatively low overheads and installation costs, the right digital tools can dramatically improve productivity without causing significant disruption to the day-to-day running of a business.” Recent productivity stats highlight how tough the marketplace is at the moment – longer hours seem to be a given now to try and gain more productivity and value.
Embracing a host of new technology with a focus on speeding up and streamlining old processes, adding value to your services and providing customers with 24/7 access to information is one way to help achieve that. Using software and apps like TouchRight can help in a number of ways.
Digitally transform your current paper reports: and make use of the custom template builder for the full mix of property management reports including routine inspections, inventories, check ins, check outs, HMO, maintenance, Legionella, HHSRS, FFHH, block inspections, build to rent and more.
Get more done in a day: in a busy office everyone is under pressure to get the most from their working day. TouchRight is intuitive, quick and easy to use, so reports can be created instantly at the property with no typing or extra admin needed in the office. Create, reschedule and delete appointments on the go; perfect for a mobile workforce. You can even make the best use of time and start a report in the office on your PC and push it to the app to finish off at the property.
Give landlords login access to reports: save admin time downloading and emailing reports to landlords, by giving them their own login and ‘download only’ access to their reports.
Get remote comments and signatures from tenants on inventory reports: if you prefer to email inventory reports to your tenants for them to review, comment and sign within a given time period, you can do that within your TouchRight dashboard. Get an end-to-end paper-free reporting solution, that you fully manage. Everything is neatly documented, tracked and visible in a history log at the back of the PDF report.
Save duplication by integrating your back office system: we have a network of software integration partners in place so we can give a range of benefits to you and your business. Our integration partners include Acquaint, agentOS, QubeSLM and SME Professional, with Reapit soon to follow. Benefits include syncing property, landlord, tenant and appointment data from the back office into TouchRight to prevent duplication, plus the final report PDF link is available in the back office.
Tag maintenance issues in your reports, and push straight to Fixflo: to keep on top of property maintenance, you can simply ‘tag’ any issues in your reports and send directly to your contractors (no additional paperwork or notes needed!). Fixflo has integrations with a number of software providers, which means that if you use Fixflo your tagged issues will all seamlessly push into your Fixflo account.
Improve your carbon footprint
Technology shouldn’t only drive productivity improvements though. It can create big savings in other areas like paper usage, so if you’re concerned about your carbon footprint and want to make a change, technology is here to help! There are useful tools to enable a full paperless journey across the tenancy. Plus the added benefits of reduced costs from less paper and print cartridge use cannot be underestimated.
Take unlimited photos, that do not need to be printed: an unlimited number of photos can be added to your reports and all photos are date and time stamped. Any report can be emailed as a PDF and viewed online, and all the photos can be enlarged to full size for easier viewing. This is great for bringing issues and repairs clearly to life and essential for dispute cases. It also reduces any need for printing.
Create comparison reports across the tenancy lifecycle, that don’t need to be printed: reports can be linked to help you quickly view and compare details across the entire tenancy lifecycle. This saves going to a filing cabinet to find the previous report, and is ideal to make sure tenants aren’t breaking any tenancy rules, or to keep an eye on your contractors work. It also works well for in-house inventories and check outs. You might be able to produce a ‘comparison’ or a ‘changes’ report which is ideal for disputes or follow up actions.
Build your portfolio
And finally, I’m sure you’re always on the lookout for new landlords, and want to shout about all of the added-value services you are able to provide for your management fees.
Create professional, fully-branded customised reports that landlords will love: we’ve had lots of positive feedback from letting agents on the quality of the reports that they can produce with TouchRight. So much so that some will have a great ‘sample’ report in their back pocket, ready to show to prospective landlords to demonstrate what they can provide. Especially with longer tenancies and the need to keep landlords informed of the property condition. It only helps to provide tangible evidence of the top-notch service that you will be providing.
If you’d like to find out more about how TouchRight can assist with your property reporting processes, please get in touch at info@touchrightsoftware.com, or give us a call on 01904 390109.