Q&A with IBS: Evolving Technologies Bring New Efficiencies to Real Estate
Posted July 19, 2011
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Emerging platforms, new web-based capabilities and need-driven requirements for increasingly sophisticated functionality are among the many factors that continue to push the real estate industry forward.
Property management and accounting systems provider Integrated Business Systems (IBS) of Totowa, NJ helps make real estate organizations more effective and efficient. In the following Q&A, IBS President Mike Mullin discusses the latest, high-demand processes and products in the market.
Question: In general, and beyond economic improvement, has the market seen any significant changes that are driving companies to invest in technology today?
Answer: The economic recovery, certainly, is giving real estate companies more wiggle room to upgrade and enhance their technology. In many cases, they have not spent a dime for several years and are overdue to update their IT infrastructure. But the bigger picture shows that companies also are embracing some technologies that have come of age fairly recently. Application Service Provider (ASP) deployment for software applications and enterprise data is a prime example.
Q: What has changed with ASP that makes it more popular today than in the past?
A: The shift really has a lot to do with comfort level, along with improvements in Internet security and decreases in the cost of bandwidth. People are banking, paying their bills and shopping online. They have become more comfortable with data residing in the cloud. The number of existing IBS users opting for ASP has jumped dramatically, and nearly all of our new installations are choosing this method.
Q: The proliferation of smart phones and PDAs has engendered an expectation of "instant access." How is this translating to the business of real estate?
A: A lot of emphasis has been placed on the value for property managers, who can view and update work orders onsite. But now we are seeing more use of mobile technology on the marketing side of the business, in both the residential and commercial sectors. The ability to quickly capture data on an iPad or Blackberry empowers leasing agents with more information. They are better able to engage their customers, which is an advantage in this highly competitive climate. Mobile is becoming a big deal, and it is compelling to see more technologies being wrapped around the sales function.
Q: The buzz around tenant web portals seems to be growing. What's new in that area?
A: Web portals initially became popular as an efficient means for commercial and residential tenants to submit work orders, and for real estate owners and operators to track job progress and payments. On the residential side, these portals often evolved to incorporate the ability to review billing, make payments and communicate with management about things like package deliveries. This type of "concierge portal" has gained some traction in the commercial sector as well, especially in large cities. Recently, interest in this larger functionality has started to expand outside of urban areas.
Q: What other areas are benefitting from new levels of automation?
A: Check scanning and AP workflow are two noteworthy areas. The implementation of electronic check conversion software improves cash management and streamlines the workflow for payments dramatically; time of entry can go down 50 percent or more for a 250- to 300-unit property. With AP workflow, vendors mail invoices to an owner/operator's centralized P.O. Box, rather than to individual properties (as is traditional). One point of contact scans them into the enterprise software, which enters critical data right into the system instead of it flowing upward from property, to regional manager, to home office. This eliminates time and money spent on data entry and shipping in the traditional distribution model, not to mention issues with lost invoices.
Q: How are real estate technology companies keeping up with changes on so many fronts?
A: Foresight and flexibility are among the requisites for succeeding in this perpetual-motion industry. When we designed our browser-based product, IBS 10.0i, a decade ago, we really were looking to the future. The appetite at the time for ASP delivery was limited, but we saw that it clearly would become a preferred choice, so we designed the system for traditional in-house as well as Internet deployment. And while we have continually focused on enhancing our core system, we also have recognized that real estate owner/operators want their accounting functions to integrate with third-party leasing, billing, accounts payable, utility, banking and other services. We have employed sophisticated software and processes that enable our system to seamlessly integrate with dozens of leading third-party applications.
Q: What is next?
A: In tight times like these, when profitability can hinge as much on running a tight ship as on making deals, real estate companies will readily embrace tools that help them become more efficient. We expect that to be the main focus in the short term. Moving forward, we see the potential of the Internet as a means of connectivity among various management-related systems.
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