How to pick the right property management software platform

System compliance and security

A software provider and its solution must comply with the relevant privacy and security laws in your local region. If not, you could be fined and at risk of a third party selling your data to someone else.

In the EU look for GDPR compliance, CRPA in California and PIPL in China.

You will also want to ensure your service provider is compliant with payment standards if you take payments, such as collecting rent. Look for PCIDSS, the EU payment standard and in the US, keep an eye out for SOC2, a cloud security certification required by a lot of US institutions.

Your solution should also provide the ability to restrict what users can view. The principle of least privilege (PoLP) is the standard in information security, speaking to giving people access to only the required data they need to do their job. A solution should provide flexible and granular controls that allow you to lock down certain users and restrict access. This also streamlines training and onboarding by reducing overwhelm.

Reliability

Today we expect our technology to work, always, under all circumstances. Interruptions to service with systems going down can be hugely disruptive and impact resident satisfaction and team efficiency.

Insist your Service Level Agreement (SLA) include a benchmark of 99.95% reliability, which equates to downtime of:

• Daily: 43 seconds
• Weekly: 5 mins 2 seconds
• Monthly: 21 minutes 54 seconds
• Quarterly: 1 hour 5 minutes 44 seconds
• Yearly: 4 hours 22 minutes 58 seconds

Automation

Ultimately one of the greatest benefits of the technology that powers property management environments is its ability to automate tasks. This can help owners significantly reduce building management administration tasks by creating efficiencies.

A high-quality software solution should include a wide range of integrations that allow a diversity of actions to be triggered. This will allow small minor day-to-day tasks to be automated such as adjusting access to areas, communicating to residents and managing deliveries.

This solution should also be scalable – a lot of systems are built with a lack of guardrails and when many events are triggered it can slow the system down. This could become a problem if you are commissioning a new building for example. Ask about scalability to ensure your system will be as reliable as you hope it will be.

These are just three core aspects to consider when reviewing property management software solutions. For more tips, keep following our blog or give us a call to learn more about our StarRez solutions.