Saago: 5 Tips on How to Find Competitive Advantages in the Real Estate Maintenance Sector
Understanding whether the real estate maintenance sector is highly competitive or not varies depending on the company manager's understanding of the maintenance market segment and the company's financial situation.
We believe that technological advancement in the real estate maintenance sector's work processes is still in its infancy and the prevailing mindset regarding technological improvements is somewhat too "old school." Business processes of companies are based on past developments and habits, which are very difficult to change, because implementing technological innovations is time-consuming and forces employees to relearn.
We believe that competition is a driving force for innovation. Companies that have thought ahead about how to technologically update their services or products before other companies are in a better position. Why?
Because these companies have significantly greater competitive advantages over others. A company manager or department head can do many important things to achieve a competitive advantage. One should start by understanding the business processes of real estate maintenance companies. Gaining clarity on this reveals bottlenecks in business processes.
It is important to remember that real estate maintenance services play a crucial role in ensuring the trouble-free operation and sustainability of real estate objects.
So, what activities does real estate maintenance encompass?
More specifically – real estate maintenance includes the management and maintenance of the following systems:
- Buildings
- Equipment
- Utilities
- Equipment systems
Although the real estate maintenance sector is not a very appealing sector compared to other service sectors, it is certainly important because it ensures the efficient operation, safety and longevity of real estate. Without effective real estate maintenance, businesses and organizations would face significant challenges in providing their services.
Estonian software company Saago Tech OÜ has enabled several real estate maintenance sector companies to improve their processes through software technology as follows:
- Simplified obtaining an overview of different internal company workflows
- Helped save time in making work processes more efficient
- Automated maintenance schedules for services provided
- Made contractor management easy
- Automated invoicing and work order management
- Enabled companies to move away from old software and paper documents
The most common bottlenecks in real estate maintenance are problems caused by lack of information and insufficient use of software. The emergence of problems is understandable in itself – companies have focused on providing their core services and therefore have been occupied with day-to-day work, and the use of software has taken a back seat.
The technological level can vary greatly from company to company. This is because for some companies, daily work with paper documents, Outlook and Gmail calendars, combinations of both, or Microsoft Excel files where tasks are organized is the norm. All these existing tools have some portion of the company's data, which means that customer data is scattered across different software, papers, people, and there is no central overview of customers. As a company manager, it is very difficult to make business decisions when there is no central software to get an overview of providing core services.
It is also very common to consolidate information fragments from different software into an Excel file and manage the company based on it. Whether this is normal in 2023 is a question for the company to answer.
To highlight the 5 most common problems that real estate maintenance companies have to deal with daily:
- Technician workflow management in real estate maintenance
- Administration of automatic maintenance schedules
- Maintenance log keeping
- Automated invoice generation
- Quote preparation and work assignment
Below we highlight the most common problems in the real estate maintenance sector and offer some solutions that Saago helps clients solve.
Technician workflow management in the real estate maintenance sector
Employee time tracking is not a big problem when using the right software. There are several software solutions for time tracking and some companies even use NFC validation in the office. However, there is some complexity here, as all simple solutions are very elementary and do not take into account the specifics of the real estate maintenance sector.
The real estate maintenance sector has very specific characteristics.
We highlight the most common ones:
- work tasks are located in different buildings and different equipment
- individual work tasks must be signed off by clients
- clients are information-starved, meaning they have no information about upcoming maintenance work
*Weekly overview of upcoming real estate maintenance work.
We solve the problems of real estate maintenance companies daily at Saago, because we have created a simple SaaS (software as a service) service that enables companies to use the most up-to-date software to manage their work processes. And we do this as a very simple subscription-based service.
Saago allows real-time monitoring of employee task completion. Office workers do not need to do any additional actions, as all task information is automatically entered into Saago. The technician performs their usual work, but enters work information on the screen of a phone or tablet displayed according to instructions and thus provides feedback to office workers.
"The main reason for using Saago was better understanding of the planning of technical maintenance work and getting rid of paper documents. I think we've managed to do that with Saago!" Regional manager of Stell Estonia AS (formerly ISS Estonia).
The importance of preventive maintenance and how to do it
Not only in real estate maintenance, but also in equipment maintenance, there are common problems with the accuracy of preventive maintenance schedules and feedback from found problems. Problems often only surface when they occur, but it should be the opposite – problem prevention is a preventive activity.
Preventive maintenance must be automated and extend the life of the property or equipment. To avoid future problems, detailed maintenance history must be described in handover acts and maintenance logs. This is a difficult problem for many companies because there are no good software solutions on the market, and therefore many periodic maintenance schedules are described in regular office software – Outlook calendar, Google calendar and in some cases even on paper or in Excel files.
*Entering and executing regular maintenance schedules is very simple.
One can imagine that maintaining maintenance schedules in software that is not intended for this purpose creates a lot of additional work for companies and employees responsible for maintenance schedules. This concern is everyday deja vu for some companies and harsh reality for others.
Saago's subscription-based service allows you to add maintenance schedule rules and activities with one click to all your real estate objects or equipment and as a result, automatic maintenance tracking is very simple. In Saago, it is possible to create your own digital maintenance contracts and start managing your entire client portfolio in just a few minutes. Everything is automated and happens based on the input of the company's responsible employee.
Digital maintenance log – is it necessary?
One of the hardest things for real estate maintenance companies is keeping up-to-date and easily accessible maintenance logs.
In some real estate buildings you can find paper folders stored on a wall or table, in others you cannot find them at all. Keeping maintenance logs up-to-date with all information is a crucial part of property or equipment maintenance – it is an integral part of problem prevention and avoidance.
*Up-to-date maintenance logs on paper are a common occurrence, but the question is how to navigate them.
In recent years, the Estonian state has promoted legislation on digital maintenance logs. The Regulation No. 1 of the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Estonian Government "Requirements for fire alarm systems and buildings from which a fire alarm signal must be transmitted to the Emergency Center, and the procedure for transmitting and abandoning fire alarm signals", Paragraph 25 Section 3 highlights the possibility of keeping an ATS (and other systems) log in a digital environment.
This means whether on paper or paperless – the maintenance log must be filled with maintenance information and it is clear that in addition to companies, state governments are also thinking about this.
Saago's subscription-based service has made maintenance log keeping simple, because automating maintenance schedules is a big step towards keeping maintenance logs current and digitized. By digitalizing work tasks, all tasks and solutions related to buildings and equipment become digital and a "digital timeline" remains that can be replayed at any time.
How an outdated billing process increases your costs
Business processes change over time. Previously, creating invoices was a fun part of doing business, but not anymore today. Many companies still use "old school" accounting software and many companies still rely on paper handover acts that are manually entered into the accounting program at the end of each business day. Sometimes billing handover acts are lost and sometimes the documents don't even make their way to the accountant's desk by the end of the week. All manually performed activities are very time-consuming and irregular, and errors can occur when entering information from paper into the accounting program.
Fortunately, Saago has kept this fun part of invoice creation in its software. With Saago, invoice generation is automatic and simple, even if you need to manage a very large portfolio of real estate objects or equipment.
Saago has spoken with more than 300 companies and many of them mention two main activities in invoice generation:
- Invoice source data is obtained only when my technician returns to the office at the end of the business day and hands over the handwritten information on paper to our accountant.
- We create invoices when the accountant enters the information from paper into our accounting software so we can send an invoice to the client.
Sounds like everyday deja vu or your company's harsh reality?
Again, as a manager or sales manager, you often think about how to make things simpler and more efficient in your organization, considering the following.
- Should I hire even more people?
- How can I be even more cost-effective?
- How can I achieve even more work and efficiency with existing work processes?
- How can I continue to grow as a company with existing staff?
All these questions can be answered if the existing bottlenecks in the organization are identified and addressed. Automated accounting is as important as logical business processes because automation helps avoid simple, repetitive, monotonous activities such as manually entering information from paper into some accounting program.
*Integration with accounting software is just a mouse click away.
*The technician can complete their work task on a phone or tablet and the entered information reaches the accounting department in real time.
Online quotes
Offering the right price is an important skill for winning clients, but creating a winning quote in a matter of minutes is also mandatory. At least that's what we believe at Saago.
Often companies don't think that preparing quotes could be something to improve in the company, because using existing tools (pdf or xls file templates) is an old and working habit. There were times when Microsoft Office was the one and only software in a company that could solve almost all company problems, but by now business processes and customer needs have changed drastically. Using general and non-specific software may still work for the next 2–3 years, but it will not give you a competitive advantage in the market.
*Preparing and copying quotes is possible in 2 minutes. Client comments can be added to all quotes and if necessary, quotes can be corrected in real time.
Feedback from Saago clients shows that simple and quick quote preparation is an important and integral part of the overall operation of the company. Saago's online quote module makes quote preparation efficient in the company and allows unlimited storage and review of all prepared quotes. As a result, the company can get a quick and accurate overview of quotes for its entire client portfolio.
So why should real estate maintenance companies still update their digital solutions to achieve success?
In summary, it can be said that companies have many more problems that need solving, but by Saago addressing the above 5 challenges as a priority, it is possible to achieve quick and most visible competitive advantage in the real estate maintenance sector. Each company decides for itself how to find answers to its problems, but in Saago's opinion, solutions already exist on the market.
Saago recommends that companies start thinking about the long-term perspective of their own company and for this, first take the initiative and solve existing challenges. Get a real estate maintenance subscription-based service like Saago and you are already one step closer to making your processes more efficient and profitable.
In conclusion, the real estate maintenance sector is undoubtedly vital and developing, but it needs technological innovations for the market to grow and succeed.
