“If it didn’t work after 3 months, the business was done” – Property Management Outsourcing Case Study

In this Property Management Outsourcing Case Study, we’ll take a look at a NSW based agency who’ve seen great results since reviewing the way their department is run.

Initially, the agency’s rent roll had grown from thirty-five to over one hundred and the tasks were becoming too much to handle. The staff treated every task as high priority, and there was no process to manage them, leading to stress and necessary steps being missed. Hiring additional staff seemed to be the answer and would help bring things under control, but the financial restraints made this impossible.

“We looked at the resources we had. All we had was time. We didn’t have enough money. That’s when we went to a Lee Woodward conference, which is where we met Joel (Davis).”

After discussing the difficulties they were experiencing, Joel proposed a consulting session to establish the best way forward.

“We booked a consulting session with Joel. I did not have the money, so I pulled it out of our overdraft; it has paid itself off in dividends since. It was the best decision we ever made.

From the consulting, we learned what could be done with offshoring, and we thought it was worth a go. We worked out that we could try an offshore team member for three months. If it didn’t work after three months, we were done – we just didn’t have the funds. So I thought, we’ll take a punt, and we got into it. The first thing we realised was that we were nowhere near ready for it. That was a big moment. We had a staff member that was trained and ready to go, and we were saying, ‘How do we do things again? Do we have a process for that? No. Okay, let’s go and build that first, then we’ll train offshore how to do it – and that’s exactly what we did.

We went through every process from applications to lease renewals, through to our key register, and worked on how to make it a better experience for both the client and us.

Every process is now set up to use automations, triggers, and alerts to keep everything organised and in check.

Once you realise how powerful these features are, it’s then about getting the information out of your head and into The Hub, building a system around it, and finally training someone offshore on how to do it.

There are so many things people ask me, and when I thought about this the other day, I don’t even remember how to do those things anymore because we’ve outsourced it to the degree where we don’t even touch it anymore. Now there are so many inefficiencies that I can see, as we’ve grown, that I think we can restructure again – I think we can double our efficiencies from what we’ve got now. I’m excited!”

The thought of taking on more properties used to be a dreaded one. Now, it is considered plug and play for the business and is a no-stress experience that can be handled with ease by the local and offshore team.

Their latest rent roll acquisition brought on 245 managements from another agency with six local staff.

What was previously being managed by six staff was now ticking along with one Property Manager, who seamlessly implemented all of the new properties into the STAFFLINK system (this is what prompted the Property Management Outsourcing Case Study).

After more than three years with STAFFLINK, there are over 550 properties under management with four local staff and two offshore team members. Where possible, every task and process is handled offshore. The local staff are now able to focus on client fulfilment and functions that require the specialised knowledge of a Property Manager, leading to a record NPS score and several industry awards.

The business is now in a healthy, profitable position, where the management team have confidence that all client needs are being met. The prospect of taking on additional properties is now an exciting one, and the dreams of expanding other parts of the business are now a real possibility.