“Collaborate Now!” “Share your desktop, files and more!” “Free T-Shirt if you just buy our $5,000 dollar software!” As a busy commercial real estate professional, your daily newsfeed, inbox and even phone lines can be inundated with software and solutions companies all promising to make your life easier or more collaborative, or your work more streamlined. While these companies may talk a big game, generic project management solutions aren’t designed with the specific needs of a CRE portfolio in mind. Before you make that out of the box, guaranteed to “meet your needs” without knowing a thing about your actual business, read on. We’ve got the lowdown on all the common pitfalls to generic project management software.
The Right Tool for the Right Job
The number one problem with generic project management software is just that – it’s generic. If you want to track lease rates and term expirations for each of your various portfolio properties you will most likely have to enter that information into “field 1” or “field 2” or some other generic column or row. You know, that same space that would work equally well tracking the number of boxes of thin mints the local Girl Scout troop has on hand.
While you may be thinking that kind of simplicity in data storage and sorting could work for your needs, consider the inordinate amount of your time planning, arranging, dragging and dropping to even get your data in a readable format in the first place. Each minute, hour or day wasted on deciding how and where to input data and best manage generic forms is time that could be spent generating new leads or growing your overall business.
One Size Never Fits All
On a related note, the generic nature of off the shelf project management software can be a poor fit for a diverse CRE portfolio. Some CRE professionals maintain thousands of properties. Others, only a handful. With one size fits all type of software solutions you can be left scrolling through pages and pages of unwieldly data without a customized ability to label, file and cross-reference. In the inverse, you may end up paying for a myriad of features that just don’t make sense for your portfolio, given its size. With customizable, CRE specific property management software, such as that offered by Quarem, you’ll have the data you need in the format that makes the most sense given your specific businesses individual needs.
Customer Support that Understands Your Business
If you’ve ever been on the wrong end of a generic customer service call center telephone call for something as simple as fixing your cable, you know the frustration of feeling like you just aren’t understood at a time when you’re most in need of help. If you opt for the generic platform project management software, get ready for more of the same. While customer service staff may be well intentioned and at least know the difference between a worksheet cell and a drop down menu, they certainly won’t understand what a lease abstract is or how any of its data impacts your business strategy.
In short, many individuals and business choose generic project management solutions based on immediate dollar savings, not realizing this outlook is shortsighted. The time, money and frustration saved by choosing a professional and experienced CRE management software provider, such as Quarem, will far exceed any initial benefits. So put down that cardboard, pre-packaged software box and hang up on those cold callers. You have a CRE business to run and Quarem is here to help.
