Top 5 Features of Commercial Property Management Software

If you are a commercial property manager trying to decide if investing in a software solution is right for your organisation, then read on!

Commercial property management software provides owners and operators of commercial real estate facilities such as office, retail, or industrial buildings with the tools to boost portfolio performance, make better business decisions, and remain agile. Such solutions can automate time-consuming processes such as tenant billing, lease administration and rent collection, provide a single unified version of the data, and perform complex calculations resulting in significant cost savings.

Whether you need to evaluate your entire portfolio, a single building, or an individual tenant, commercial property management software can give you the ability to get the complete picture.

In this blog, we will explore 5 key features of commercial property management software, and how they will benefit your organisation.

Lease acquisition and administration

With effective commercial property management software, commercial operations are empowered with comprehensive lease management and detailed lease profiles.

As lease management becomes increasingly complex, ensuring that property management and leasing teams are empowered with the most up-to-date and accurate building and lease information enables greater visibility and minimises inaccuracies. Commercial property management software centralises all contact information, notes, activities, leases, and opportunities, ensuring everyone is working from a single version of the truth and enabling effective commercial real estate tracking.

With AI-driven tools and automation built in, workflows become streamlined and tailored to meet an organisation’s unique needs, automating the full range of lease clauses, breakpoints, offsets, estimated payments, and recoveries, so the most important business information buried within lease data is visible and actionable.

AI-driven lease abstraction revolutionises the data extraction process, enabling fast and simple extraction, analysis, and consumption of data from commercial leases, providing improved auditability, and transparency of data.

With the enhanced visibility of lease data that commercial property management software provides, teams can cut costs by reducing instances of incorrect rent and service charges, and overdue payment fees, as well as make better decisions, and take action when needed to optimise portfolios.

Online tenant portal

Tenant portals answer a number of business needs, from driving efficiency and cutting costs, to strengthening relationships with tenants. Successful commercial property management cannot happen without providing excellent service to tenants, and tenant portals help to answer customer expectations and streamline services.

Going beyond lease negotiations and fulfilment, in order to boost occupancy and retain tenants, it is important to build partnerships with customers through providing a positive experience and service. When consumers can manage their media subscriptions, pay utility bills, and order groceries online, it is critical to match expectations with an on-demand service. An online portal provides convenience, transparency, and empowerment to tenants through online services available as and when the customer needs them.

By delivering open communication and self-service through an online tenant portal, organisations can improve their connections with communities. The ability to make quick updates, share important tailored content, and facilitate additional services such as amenity bookings improves engagement with occupiers.

In addition to boosting customer satisfaction, online tenant portals can facilitate the improvement and streamlining of operational processes. Through integration with operational systems, tenant requests can be delivered directly to the most relevant department, cutting out unnecessary steps, and ensuring repair tickets, payment transactions, and other common requests can be dealt with much more quickly. Through bypassing phone lines and customer service departments, helpdesk teams and customer service operatives are given more time to add value, and aid more complex cases.

Portfolio analytics and reporting

With commercial property management software, decision making becomes better informed thanks to powerful dashboards, visual analytics, and data extraction and organisational tools. Custom analysis is facilitated by adaptable reporting tools, and powerful integration enables the leveraging of industry standard tools such as Microsoft SSRS to create detailed, tailored reports.

With analytics and reporting tools, organisations can gain control over the entire tenant and property lifecycles with full visibility into property operations, allowing commercial property managers to evaluate risk from bad debt, manage disputes, and process billing and deposits with confidence.

A centralised database and intuitive analysis that finds trends, patterns, and aids in the modeling of potentials means that property managers can take control, and make well informed decisions that drive occupancy and profitability.

From a retail point of view, footfall analysis (such as dwell time) for specific locations can significantly influence rent review. It can also assist office managers in determining office usage patterns, and provide guidance on areas including energy management (heating, lighting, etc..) and facilities management (cleaning, etc.).

Finance and accounting

Commercial property management software builds efficiencies into financial and accounting operations, providing highly flexible structures and frameworks, as well as budget tracking and investment management tools.

Invoice management functionalities enhance payables processes, ensuring streamlined operations and transparent reporting to improve cash flow, and lower costs.

For accounts receivable, property managers can directly bill and receive services from external sources, reducing manual data entry, and streamlining processes. A robust library of standardised reports facilitates fast and accurate analysis for informed decision making.

Investment accounting features enable property managers to save time, increase accounting accuracy, and keep investors informed through automated processing and payment of contributions and distributions, as well as comprehensive views of portfolios and investors.

Construction and development budgets can be more easily managed, with features that allow for comprehensive tracking of all project costs from start to finish.

Building maintenance

Commercial property management software offers simplification and enhanced control over repairs and maintenance operations, ensuring compliance with health and safety regulations and offering excellent services to occupiers.

Enhanced visibility and automated management of work orders allows facilities managers to assign jobs to engineers quickly, with functions to prioritise urgent jobs, arrange routine maintenance schedules, and develop a comprehensive audit trail to ensure compliance with legal and statutory standards.

When managing widespread workforces, the connection of innovative mobile tools allows for streamlined and real-time working, delivering time-cutting benefits to contractors and on-site staff, and offering improved accuracy of data and faster responses for management teams.

Data capture and analysis of repair trends delivers insights to improve performance and identify potential issues early, allowing maintenance managers to intervene proactively before problems become more costly.

Commercial property management software also provides functions to capture and track all contractor information in one location, including details such as work specialism, trading currency, certification dates, trade memberships, and qualifications. This ensures that work is completed by professionals trained to work to regulatory standards.

Energy management functionality provides complete visibility and understanding of energy consumption, trends, and anomalies, while sustainability can also be managed by connecting systems throughout properties and monitoring energy consumption, to ensure ESG targets are met, and costs are cut.

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At MRI Software, we help commercial real estate organisations to make better business decisions and boost portfolio performance with our range of innovative solutions. To find out more about how we can help, please request a demo or call our friendly team on 09 883 3196 today.