Imagine for a moment that you’re in a crowded auditorium with hundreds of other property managers. There’s a lone speaker on stage asking the audience questions. “How many of you keep track of things like tenant improvements, parking space allotments and other CRE assets?” Most hands go up, along with yours. “Good. Now how many of you keep the data about what you’re tracking neatly organized online?” Dozens more hands go up. “Finally, how many of you property managers are still manually imputing data?” You know you need to raise your hand, but very few others are doing so. What do you do? After wrestling with your pride for a few seconds, you finally shoot your hand up.
“You’re doing it wrong,” the speaker says.
Ouch. The good news? You’re not alone. The bad news? You’re missing out on a more efficient way to manage your commercial real estate properties and processes.
The Disadvantages of Manual Data Entry
It’s understandable if you’re a property manager and still manually inputting data. After all, it’s what you know and it’s worked, well, adequately so far. But manual data entry has several drawbacks in general. Here are some of them:
- Time: Obviously, humans record data slower than machines. Even if you’re typing speed reaches triple digits in words per minute, you’re not as fast as today’s software. If you could eliminate the hours it takes you to input your data, why wouldn’t you?
- Money: Time is money. So however long your data entry takes is costing you financially, whether you do it yourself or hire another employee to do it. Multiply the hourly rate of the person inputting the data by the time they spend doing it and you’ll get a good idea of how much money you’re wasting.
- Accuracy: Even the most experienced data entry experts make mistakes on occasion. There’s always the possibility of human error with manual data entry.
Fortunately, real estate data automation can address all of these disadvantages.
The Advantages of Automating Data
Data automation software like Quarem Vantage can let you manage your entire property management process, from marketing and leasing to tenant improvements and lease administration. The advantages of this software include: lower costs, faster leasing, no missed obligations, no costly mistakes and happier tenants. The biggest advantage, however, is the time you save by no longer having to enter data yourself.
If you’re a property manager still manually inputting data and are interested in saving time with real estate automation software, request a demo with us today.