Final modified on October twenty fourth, 2022
By Brittany Benz
Between rising inflation and shifting resident and worker expectations, you’re going through some powerful challenges. To beat them, you want higher instruments to assist your workforce get work completed quicker and higher serve your clients. Your day-to-day challenges are what we focus our product innovation on.
Yearly, we host an annual convention for our clients for 3 days of studying, networking, and connecting. This yr, we introduced extra new merchandise and enhancements than ever — designed to assist our clients develop their companies, improve productiveness, and enhance the expertise for his or her residents, homeowners, and buyers.
In a dialog with Daniel Waas, Vice President of Product Advertising at AppFolio, we discover a number of the main traits we’re seeing and the way AppFolio’s newest improvements assist fulfill the trade’s altering wants.
Inform us why AppFolio’s latest improvements had been developed. What main traits have pushed their creation?
Earlier this yr, we surveyed property administration companies to search out out the highest challenges they had been going through and to see how they’ve modified year-over-year. Primarily based on our findings, we found the highest three challenges had been operational effectivity, maximizing income and income, and staffing. And that’s not stunning given the traits we’re seeing available in the market, together with slowing hire development and the rising danger of a recession. After we in contrast information from the earlier yr, staffing, the dominant subject in 2021, dropped to 3rd place, however it stays a vital part.
These analysis traits, together with lots of of buyer conversations, form our pondering round innovation. The best way we’re translating them into how we might help our clients obtain higher outcomes is threefold. First, we need to improve productiveness by persevering with to automate an growing variety of repetitive duties so property administration groups can deal with their clients.
Second, we need to assist companies develop their high and backside line. The rise in productiveness from automation helps organizations develop their doorways with out having to develop their headcount on the similar price. It additionally offers groups the time again to deal with their clients and to create a greater resident and proprietor expertise, all of which interprets into extra glad clients, higher critiques, and extra development.
Lastly, we’re taking a look at staffing challenges and seeing the affect they’ve on property administration groups. In keeping with Gartner, 65% of workers are rethinking the place work ought to match inside their lives. Workforce members are harassed, burnt out, and in some circumstances, leaving property administration behind and discovering a profession in a distinct trade. So we’re trying to discover methods to present groups time again so that they have extra time for a wholesome dose of human connection — making their jobs so much simpler and somewhat extra significant.
Clarify the most recent capabilities in AppFolio Property Supervisor. What worth or advantages do they supply to clients? How do they assist resolve a number of the trade challenges or wants you simply described?
I’m proud to say we launched quite a few improvements at Buyer Convention. I’ll provide you with a breakdown of three that I believe may have a huge impact on the way in which our clients overcome the challenges I discussed.
Property administration companies anticipate expertise to allow them to work on what issues. In our product imaginative and prescient, we discuss with this as “Making a world the place managing communities feels magical and easy, liberating groups to thrive.” This actually involves life in Financial institution Feed, a brand new functionality. As I discussed beforehand, tedious, handbook duties are actually holding companies again. So this innovation will assist to automate extra of the accounting workflow. Financial institution Feed is a wise accounting software that routinely imports financial institution transactions and simplifies reconciliations so companies can hold cleaner books with much less effort. The transactions from accounts our clients have linked to AppFolio via our Plaid integration are routinely imported each night time, and AI-powered solutions assist them simply match them to transactions. It’s one other instance of eradicating the necessity for handbook information entry and decreasing errors.
The second innovation I’ll contact on that additionally helps assist extra significant work is Report Builder. Report Builder permits clients to flexibly construct reviews that ship real-time perception into enterprise efficiency. In different phrases, decision-makers will be capable to get fast solutions to the vital questions that inform enterprise technique. Customers can now mix and customise reviews to fulfill particular necessities, save new reviews for future reference, and simply share reviews, all whereas sustaining drill-down capabilities.
Along with these two improvements, we additionally launched FolioGuard Safety Deposit Different, powered by Obligo. This functionality mainly simplifies monetary interactions between the property supervisor and their renters by eliminating the necessity for money safety deposits whereas nonetheless holding renters accountable for damages. Ultimately, it delivers a clear-cut and productive stakeholder expertise for residents, workforce members, and homeowners whereas growing worker productiveness and bettering resident and proprietor retention.
Along with these improvements, we additionally added new companions to our integration market, AppFolio Stack™, which launched in June. Inform us extra about these new companions and the way the integrations will assist our clients.
Integrations have been large for us this yr — and our newest integrations proceed to advance what we got down to do with the launch of AppFolio Stack™. For individuals who haven’t heard of AppFolio Stack™, it’s our new integration market that offers you the ability to customise your key workflows to match how your corporation operates, all inside our easy-to-use platform.
A few of the newest integration companions we’ve added to our market embody LeadSimple and zInspector, Homebase, Opiniion, PetScreening™, and ShowMojo, with 30 Traces coming quickly.
Homebase offers multifamily entry management, property-wide Wi-Fi, and integration with sensible condominium expertise for a seamless resident expertise. Opiniion streamlines the method through which property managers accumulate, analyze, publicize, and act on resident suggestions. PetScreening™ helps customers handle residents’ pets and help animals digitally whereas maximizing alternatives for pet-related income. And ShowMojo automates the complete leasing course of, from answering calls and emails from events to scheduling showings and gathering suggestions from these viewing the property. All 4 of those integration companions will actually empower our clients to ship that frictionless expertise residents anticipate and wish right this moment and permit them to reply quicker.
Our different associate, LeadSimple, syncs resident, proprietor, and property information inside AppFolio to set off a variety of customizable workflows, arrange drip campaigns, and nurture prospects. And zInspector is a collaborative field-to-office property inspection resolution to doc and effortlessly share property inspections and duties. Each of those integrations will actually drive operational effectivity for our clients and unlock new enterprise insights. Lastly, 30 Traces will assist with CRM because it offers on-line advertising and social media technique, on-line repute monitoring, search engine marketing, and cellular advertising options.
What’s subsequent for AppFolio?
At AppFolio, we’re totally devoted to quickly creating improvements to fulfill the altering wants of our clients and anticipate the wants of the trade. We’ve got plans to proceed to develop our platform into new markets and will probably be including extra companions to our integration market, so keep tuned!
If you happen to’d wish to be taught extra about how one can unlock efficiencies and supply a greater buyer expertise, check out this text.