Why “best-in-class” solutions still earn an “F”
When your best is still a small incremental change, it’s not what operators in today’s market need.
In multifamily tech, the buying pendulum tends to swing back and forth between best-in-class and all-in-one solutions as operators seek to build the tech stack that makes the most sense for both their business and the renter experience they want to create.
The right choices of technology solutions provide a modern, ecommerce, buying experience. The wrong choices drive prospective renters to your competitors, a problem worsened by declining demand for apartments and rent decreases.
Why most technology fails operators (and renters)
“Best-in-class” solutions aka single solution challengers tend to provide small incremental business shifts; a “better mouse trap,” in spite of their marketing claims of revolution. These changes come at a high price point, tend to fracture data, and the renter experience as prospects jump between various solutions their preferences and data get lost in the cracks between solutions trying to communicate with one another. To their credit, best-in-class solutions do provide moments of greatness along the renter journey. They are usually well-built, innovative products. Their Achilles heel is that they lack product scope to provide the meaningful impact businesses need. They are a nice-to-have band-aid that doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
“All-in-one” aka large legacy software providers that are a mile wide and an inch deep tend to provide a connected, but cumbersome renter journey that doesn’t align with or satisfy typical customer buying patterns. To be fair, the connected solution is appealing to businesses from a tech stack consolidation perspective. But as a brief multifamily history lesson, these solutions were originally built as accounting ledgers. Because of that origin story, they tend to contort the renter journey to fit into their property-based solution versus building a solution that is truly made to provide an excellent experience to renters. Additionally, they are slow to change because they are now large and bureaucratic organizations, and fail to keep pace with the way modern technology tools are built or changing consumer preferences.
With both “best-in-class” and “all-in-one” solutions, the renter unfortunately still has a poor experience finding arguably one of their most important decisions, where they call home.
With both “best-in-class” and “all-in-one” solutions, the renter unfortunately still has a poor experience finding arguably one of their most important decisions, where they call home.
To provide an excellent apartment shopping experience that aligns with modern buying patterns it should come as no surprise that operators need a new class of tech, to provide a connected, seamless buying experience for prospective renters from their initial inquiries all the way through current resident renewals. We call it Renter Management Software.
Renter Management Software makes the Dean’s List
The pendulum swinging back and forth between best-in-class solutions and all-in-one providers is a symptom of an underlying problem within the multifamily industry. As Goldilocks confirmed a long time ago, the extremes on either end of the spectrum are often not the best choices. Operators need to be able to create an exemplary apartment shopping experience for prospective renters and not be held back by the bad options of fractured data or lack of innovation that the current solutions provide. Operators need a Goldilocks middle-ground solution.
The pendulum swinging back and forth between best-in-class solutions and all-in-one providers is a symptom of an underlying problem within the multifamily industry. Operators need to be able to create an exemplary apartment shopping experience for prospective renters and not be held back by the bad options of fractured data or lack of innovation that the current solutions provide.
Prior to Funnel, there wasn’t a standalone software provider that delivered the entire renter experience from inquiry through renewal (without also tacking on the accounting, maintenance, and ledgers). Renter Management Software has four core tenants.
The grading rubric for Renter Management Software
In order for solution providers to earn an A+, or frankly to be graded on the Renter Management Software rubric they must exhibit the following four characteristics:
#1. Renter-facing solutions, only
No accounting ledgers, no stringing together solutions. Just tech to create consistent renter experiences.
#2. Single guest card architecture
It’s this simple: one renter, one guest card.
Not multiple systems, not linking cards, not moving guest cards between communities, not referring guest cards. Those workarounds don’t provide the business flexibility operators need, nor do they provide onsite leasing teams with the information they need to help prospective renters find the right home for their needs.
#3. Ability to centralize work streams or specialize roles
The core single guest card architecture, discussed above, gives operators the business flexibility to centralize various workstreams and empowers operators to restructure the intersection of people, processes, and tech.
Centralization allows operators to move beyond the 1:100 staffing models, and staff intelligently onsite but also create specialized career paths for team members. By taking mundane, but necessary, tasks off onsite leasing team members specialized teams take care of components of the leasing journey such as screening applications, renewals, resident requests, nurturing prospects, and more. Renters then interact with specialists at every step of their journey who provide top-tier customer care because they have the bandwidth to focus on the essential pieces of the renter journey.
#4. Core operating ethos: success is dependent on the happiest of renters
Again, nothing is more important than the renter.
Renter-centric is not just our core product single guest card architecture, it’s also the core architecture of how we partner with our clients to make sure that we’re aligned. Our success and their success are focused on providing five-star renter experiences.
Extra credit: A+ renter experiences grow loyalty
Another long-time multifamily trend: The multifamily industry looks to the hospitality industry for inspiration on buying patterns, customer experience, and loyalty. Loyalty has been integral in the hospitality and airline industries for decades. There is an opportunity for early adopters in the multifamily industry to set themselves apart and reward loyalty.
Can we let you in on a secret? Loyalty and building a national brand aren’t so far-fetched, or pie-in-the-sky for operators anymore.
Single guest card architecture solutions, like Renter Management Software, give operators the data insights to be able to reward renter’s loyalty.
Read more about the future of brand and loyalty in multifamily, in this Forbes article.
(And…While we’re grading things, Funnel’s AI scored a 100/100 secret shop score from RKW Residential, hitting every lead nurturing requirement they have, including immediacy, consistency, personalization, and appointment setting.)