Do you adequately understand how the flow of information, tasks, and projects move through your property management company?

When you’ve owned and managed your business for many years, you usually have a pretty sophisticated process in place, and several people are involved in the system of getting things done. But, are you doing a good job of holding people accountable for their specific tasks? Do you know what has to be done when?

The best solution is working with a solid workflow, and today we’re talking about how workflows can benefit you and the outcomes your management company is able to achieve.

Understanding Workflow through Michael’s Process

Michael Lushington is Fourandhalf’s COO, and before coming to work for us, he was a business technology consultant for 20 years. He got to know the companies he consulted with really well, and the way he did that was through workflow.

He need to know how information moved through the company. Without a documented process, he needed to do it all himself to quickly understand what was going on inside the company. He found ways to assess value and identify opportunities for improvement.

This can work for you. Get to know your business by building a workflow.

Workflows for Your Property Management Company

This workflow topic is a big one, so we’re doing a whole blog series. In our next blog, we’ll talk details and examples. Today, we want you to focus on these three things:

  • What is the process you want to identify? Usually, this is associated with some specific outcome. A good example is the way your maintenance process works.
  • Identify the individual tasks involved in completing that process.
  • Make sure you know the people involved in the process.

If you have the outcome, tasks and people, you can build yourself a workflow.

Outside In: Examine Your Process

Identify your people and list your tasks. Then, you can take a close look at your process and how it’s working. Look from the outside of your company in so you can be impartial about how things happen.

Some things to consider or notice might be:

  • Are there opportunities where you can identify defects in the process?
  • Can you speed things up?
  • Are you taking too many steps?
  • Can you expedite hand-offs and shorten delivery time?

This will help you improve what you’re doing, whether it’s maintenance or leasing or tenant turnovers or something else.

It’s All a Process

You may think you don’t need a formal workflow because you do everything and you know what you’re doing.

Swell. But, this doesn’t mean you have the best solution to creating a process. Sharing a project or parts of a project can allow you to run your company more efficiently. If you’re not doing everything yourself, you may find you have more time to actually manage and grow your business.

A workflow is a tool to produce an outcome.

Workflows also help you identify defects in your process.

Use workflows to serve your property management company. It doesn’t take a lot of your time, and the result is a better understanding of what your business does and how it achieves its outcomes. You’ll find some pretty incredible tools for following the flow of information throughout your company. It builds accountability and buy-in.

If you have any questions between now and our next blog, please contact us at Fourandhalf.