How is data and important information gathered for your team? Do you use spreadsheets, online tools, a cloud application or even a combination of these?
No matter how you evaluate data, you may have noticed one thing. Managing data in different files, documents or systems don’t exactly ease up your work. Adding a couple of team members into the equation, working together to make your business a success, can actually be more challenging than you think.
Shattered data + several team members = a broken phone
The main aims of any real estate asset management company are to increase and optimize the value of the building and to manage and maximize the investment returns. Analyzing your business performance is, therefore, at the core of your strategy to reach this goal. Setting up the most important KPIs for your company can support your goal – without those, it is difficult for you to inspect your business performance and identify areas in need of improvements.
Throughout the entire life-cycle of real estate management, you anticipate potential risk by analyzing data and forecast profitability for the owners. That sounds great and can be easy, if the data you are working with remains 100% correct. But by gathering data from multiple sources, you put their reliability at risk. Data stored in the one file you are working on might be up to date, however in the other one you just got from the property manager, operating expenses variate a bit from the numbers you are using. Multiple teams either store the same data or they store complementary but separate data. Both situations cause several problems. Using shattered data in the business analysis might cost you a lot of time, effort and money.
In many cases, things are easier to understand through examples – so here is one.
Do you remember a situation where you have told a story to someone – who then has told the story to various people a bit differently and the journey of the story continues like that. Eventually, your story has changed a lot during its journey – perhaps even to a whole different scenario. In this game of telephone, the story can be understood as data and different people as different files or documents. They all tell their own versions of the story. Even though the information at the beginning of its journey was correct.
The larger the team, the longer the chain – the greater the chance of changed information.
The point is, this also happens when you use shattered data in your business. Even though you might send the correct, updated file to your team members, the file’s data can be corrupted during its journey from one receiver to another.
The common problems of using shattered data
Communication problems, slow decision-making process, excessive use of time: sound familiar?
These are just a couple of examples that can be caused by using shattered data. Many times it’s hard to even realize that these problems are actually consequences of not using aggregated data. Having the data in one place, in one certain online tool or cloud application, ensures that your team can work seamlessly and the analysis your team wants is valid and reliable.
Don’t waste more time on different systems and tools. In our cloud-based application, Assetti, we have made it simple to follow how certain properties and units bring in profit while being able to communicate with team members – all in the same application. Nowadays the volume of data we are working with is growing steadily in many business sectors, so its usefulness in business development can’t be denied. That’s why it’s important to use it the correct way to get the most out of it.
