Optimizing Suite Turnover and Building Management

Challenge

CAPREIT is a real estate investment trust (REIT) which is primarily focused on purchasing and renting residential property. Their ability to grow and maintain a steady flow of revenue is contingent on their ability to understand tenant occupancy and turnover rates. Managing suite turnover – the process of repairing and upgrading units prior to new tenant occupancy – proved to be a business challenge, as management lacked visibility and relied on people-intensive and paper-based processes.

Similarly, CAPREIT’s operational managers, who are responsible for monitoring the status of the various buildings they rent, relied on a series of paper-based checklists. This proved to be a pain point for a multitude of reasons. First, lists had to be completed on site and then later reproduced digitally for upload into Salesforce – a time-consuming and error-prone process. Second, the lists themselves were not standardized so data quality varied greatly between different operational managers. Finally, operational managers would sometimes inadvertently resubmit past checklists and management had no way of verifying the accuracy of the submitted data.

“Lots of companies can develop mobile applications, but to truly digitally transform a process you need a vendor like AppCentrica that understands how to make the user experience relevant to the task.”

Solution

CAPREIT engaged AppCentrica to help them improve their ability to gather data and insight, reduce costs, and improve efficiency around suite turnover and building status management.

Before developing a solution, AppCentrica worked directly with CAPREIT site and operational (regional) managers to understand the intricacies of their jobs and the various challenges they face that impede efficiency. Next, AppCentrica provided a detailed architectural framework for two different mobile applications – one specifically designed for site managers to streamline the suite turnover process, and another for operational managers to modernize the labour-intensive, paper-based checklist process.

Both applications were designed to function on Android per the business requirements of CAPREIT and both were fully integrated with their respective data repository – suite turnover with SAP and the operational management checklist with Salesforce.

Outcomes

The two mobile applications developed by AppCentrica have greatly improved CAPREIT’s operational efficiency.

The suite turnover application has enabled site managers to conduct inspections using only their mobile device. They have full access to all relevant tenant and building information through the application and can easily plan their day accordingly. As well, while actually performing an inspection they can more easily record relevant information in standardized fields, take/upload photos and quickly determine the business impact – such as the payback period and adjusted rent rates – of maintenance and renovation work.

The checklist mobile application has also helped operational managers and upper management alike. Performing building status reports is now a highly automated, standardized process. Additionally, the application captures the user’s geolocation which can be used to verify that the building inspection was indeed completed on site and is valid. Overall, management now has a consistent flow of up-to-date building information and can more easily identify and mitigate problems as they occur.

Finally, the integrations developed by AppCentrica have automated a series of supplementary processes. The SAP integration for the suite turnover application was of particular use for CAPREIT’s finance teams who can now access information captured via site managers in real-time, allowing them to make better-informed decisions and approve or reject requests without the need for additional reinspection. Similarly, the Salesforce integration built out for the checklist mobile application has eliminated the need for data re-entry and has given management access to more advanced reporting capabilities.

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