Tech Tracks
A big part of the heavier tech load comes from a need to deploy those Web-based systems, which allow geographically spread-out firms to cull their data from a central location. Offered by companies such as Yardi Systems, Intuit’s MRI Residential, and RealPage, the programs can improve customer satisfaction on the front end with portals and service options for residents, while providing more in-depth and up-to-date financial reports for the back office. Given those advantages, the systems are quickly becoming a must-have to maintain a competitive edge, and multifamily firms are scrambling to get them up and running now.
“You’ve got to do it in order to compete and to run your business the way you want to run it,” says Pat Gregory, chief information officer at Richmond, Va.-based United Dominion Realty Trust, which has been rolling out RealPage’s OneSite software in the last year. “It’s certainly becoming a common theme that almost all of us are facing right now, because good, Web-based programs have just recently become available.”
Combine that trend with the penchant among go-getting department heads to view their own initiatives as everyone else’s top priority, too, and you’ve got a potentially acrimonious, three-way tug-of-war between corporatewide strategic initiatives, pressing departmental needs, and limited technology resources. More often than not, the tech guy is left playing referee in the middle. “When the IT guy becomes the gatekeeper, that’s a losing proposition,” Gregory says. “You end up in a position where at least one person hates you. Then sometimes, everybody does.”
Given that conundrum, it’s OK to pity the poor tech guy, especially if that guy–or gal–happens to be you. But you can do more than just feel sorry for yourself. While technology pros are feeling the strain industrywide, they’re also developing strategies to cope with those growing challenges, while fulfilling their mission to keep their firms on the leading edge of an accelerating technology race.
Top of the Charts
At many firms, the growing need to select and deploy new technologies quickly while improving business practices has yielded a more formal process for prioritizing IT projects. That means high-level executives, including department heads and CEOs, are taking part in deciding what gets developed and what gets left on the back burner. While that can result in more bureaucracy–and another meeting in your monthly schedule–it also takes the IT executive out of the corporate crosshairs.
Chicago-based Equity Residential, a REIT that owns and operates more than 200,000 apartments nationally, now holds quarterly meetings among its top executives and managers to review IT priorities. “I’ve got the CEO and the COO sitting there, along with all the department heads, so it’s not just the IT department telling the marketing department they can’t have this one thing,” says Jay Kurtzman, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Equity. “I may still end up being the bad guy, but at least it’s everybody, sitting down as a group, determining how each initiative fits in strategically to what we’re doing as a whole.”
Other multifamily tech pros stress the importance of those group strategy sessions, too, while underlining the importance of transplanting the technology decision-making process from the server room to the business suite. “It used to be an issue for us, until this past year, when we created a team to look at any new technology initiatives,” says Brian Galla, director of technology at Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co., a third-party fee manager that oversees 112,000 units nationally. “We sit down with representatives from all the different business lines and say, ‘OK, let’s all take a look at what these programs are.’ From an IT perspective, we’re able to communicate that we have a lot on our plates and make the business folks understand that they need to tell us which projects are the most important for the direction of our organization.”
At Dallas-based BH Management Services, which manages more than 30,000 units nationally, director of information technology D. Thomas Figert says the key during the process is to act as an adviser, and not a dictator, on all things tech. “I try to position myself not as a gatekeeper but as the voice of reason,” Figert says. “If it’s a question of regional value versus enterprise value, I’ll just lay that on the table.”
