Smart technology builds BTR communities

The use of smart building technology within BTR is increasing rapidly. There are now apps for residents and property staff to arrange virtual tours, lease an apartment, access and manage amenities, utilities and far more, all from their smartphone.

So, although all these apps are valuable, the volume of solutions required to manage these can become overwhelming, and collectively reduce the benefits they bring. 

Smart technology provides data which is key to gaining a deeper understanding of resident behaviours. This knowledge helps building management to make strategic decisions which can enable them to achieve operational savings. 

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To ensure a good return on investment operators must make sure that any smart technology they implement for their building is utilised– if it’s easy to engage with, it will be used, but if it is lost in a sea of other apps, there is a good chance it could be ignored or forgotten.  

Building a community of apps

Where possible, it’s best to bring different platforms together to build a community of apps in one place. In a BTR block where a resident is paying one fee for the whole service, this not only makes sense but is easily achievable.

Take the resident app from Spike Global. The Spike Living Portal brings together a range of functions that a resident requires; information about events, parcel delivery notifications, document management, amenity booking, maintenance requests and more. A resident only needs to have this one app on their mobile to control their whole experience. 

Bringing all these functions together increases convenience for property management as well as the resident. Spike Living can act as one data control point, for example, which is important to comply with GDPR. A building using Spike and partners does not have to upload and update resident details into multiple apps. 

Many operators still rely on manual processes that keep them away from front-of-house duties. By implementing smart technology to reduce slow, manual processes, property staff can focus on other important tasks such as face-to-face resident interactions which technology truly can’t replace. 

Parcel management, for example, is traditionally a painstakingly time-consuming task which takes property staff away from resident-facing duties. Smart technology such as Parcel Pending by Quadient automates parcel management, considerably reducing, or eliminating, the time staff needs to spend sorting parcels. Without them, a team will need to accept, sort, store, notify residents and distribute tens or hundreds of parcels per day, depending on the size of the block, which can quickly become a full-time job. 

By integrating Parcel Pending by Quadient technology into an existing resident platform, such as the Spike Living Portal, there is no need for residents to download additional apps if their building has lockers installed. Instead, residents receive a notification through the Spike Living app with a unique code to gain access to their parcel, at their convenience, giving them peace of mind that their package is secure.

More and more smart technology is going to enter our buildings and that can only be a good thing. BTR residents want convenience, and what is more convenient than having virtually everything they need, quite literally, in the palm of their hand?

This article was written by Parcel Pending by Quadient

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