From automated data entry to the cloud, the digital revolution offers property management companies and owners new opportunities for innovation, differentiation, and growth. The Fribourg Management Company has embraced digital by investing in an innovative information system.
What are the technological challenges for property management companies?
Through the new technologies and work tools that we are implementing, we aim to bring real added value to our real estate expertise, whether it's improving the quality of our services or enhancing the work environment for our employees. Currently, we are focusing our efforts on the digitization of our business processes.
An overview of challenges and technological choices with Baptiste Morand, Director
How does technology fit into your "business" processes, and how does it improve the user experience?
Business processes provide services to an ecosystem of users, including employees, owners, tenants, concierges, and service providers. Each new technology project is an opportunity to evaluate the efficiency of our internal and external processes and to think about the best way to create an optimal user experience. Our goal is to make collaboration easier, faster, and more efficient within our ecosystem. For example, we have set up an online platform to digitize exchanges between the property management company, owners, service providers, concierges, and tenants. All flows are digitized and archived, providing traceability, saving time, and offering immediate access to documents and data.
How do these changes impact your employees?
We cannot expect digital adoption to be innate. When we implement new technologies or work tools, we assume that employees need to be actively involved. By demonstrating their effectiveness and through proper training and support actions from our partners, we ensure that our employees gain agility and productivity. Furthermore, digitization enables us to ensure business continuity. We were able to confirm this during the health crisis.
In the same vein, we wanted to expand our visibility through social media. This has been achieved since the beginning of 2021. We are now present and active on Facebook and LinkedIn, thanks to our collaboration with a local agency specialized in social media. We are also working together on the creation of our new website, which will be launched soon.
They say IT is a commodity. Is that the case for property management?
IT is indeed a commodity, but without good IT systems, we cannot build high-value-added services. For example, we have implemented an infrastructure based on Microsoft Azure cloud, which has provided us with more flexibility, robustness, and security. It is also thanks to this cloud shift that our employees benefit from a high-performing and accessible work environment everywhere, even outside the walls of the property management office.
The health crisis revealed the need for mobility in the workplace. How did you experience this?
The modernization of our employees' workstations has been one of our priorities for several years. We want each of us to be able to work securely from any location and under their preferred conditions. The health crisis proved us right: from the first lockdown, we were all able to continue our activities and collaborate remotely.