Document management

5 Key Benefits of Taking Your Community Documents Digital

Managers overseeing daily responsibilities in a community or property management company handle countless documents.  They do so to keep track of information, streamline operations, and engage with residents. While the adoption of online document management systems has been gradual in the residential/rental management industry, more management companies are embracing it as an essential way to streamline their operations. In this blog article, we highlight the key benefits of transitioning to an online document management system.

1) Transition to a paperless economy

Moving your documents to an online management system is not only economically friendly but also provides managers with many business benefits.  By providing a central place for residents to log in and view important community documents, managers significantly reduce printing and mailing costs.  Additionally, by not printing out all of your community operational documents, your staff will have more desk space and be better organized.

2) Many solutions are cloud-based

Document management systems are available to property and community managers through two types of solutions: on-premise and cloud-based solutions.  On-premise document management solutions are installed on the company’s server. They are also limited to a specific number of device installs based on the licenses purchased and cannot be accessed from remote devices.   Cloud-based services are online web solutions your service provider hosts and are accessible from any device.  Furthermore, cloud-based software solutions are highly beneficial to your business in many ways.  Your IT team does not have to install any software on your machine or download upgrades.  Even more important, if the management office is destroyed by extreme weather conditions, all of your documents will be safely stored online.    

3) Manage your documents better

By taking your documents to an online system, you can better manage them.  Industry solutions offer both document storage solutions and document management solutions.  A document storage service is a central repository that can house a variety of documents. Essentially, document storage services help you to keep a backup of many files and share it with your internal team.  This type of document solution is generally very simplistic. A robust document management system provides community and property managers with the ability to streamline their file management process.  Managers can structure their folders, set user permissions, share files, notify residents of files they added, and more.

4) Secured access to documents

Since you manage hundreds or thousands of documents like company policies, budgets & financials, leases, and more, it’s crucial to make security a top priority.  There are three important layers of security that you should consider: platform security, personnel access, and file access. Ensuring platform security involves checking with the software company if they are using standard security protocols.  Some of these standard security protocols include HTTPS security and hash encryptions.  Personnel access involves a manager’s decision to give or restrict staff access to managing documents in the system. File access places emphasis on who in the community has access to certain files. A robust document management system should also allow managers to set permissions for board members, residents, tenants, and other occupants to gain access to files relevant to them.  

5) Help your staff increase efficiency & decrease cost

Overall, a comprehensive document management system helps community and property management staff to save time across all the communities/apartments they manage.  Specifically, an enterprise document management system will help managers and staff to reduce redundant actions. For example in Pilera’s document management platform, managers can share documents with multiple communities.  This is a powerful capability because managers can replace files in their original location and the system will update shared files instantly.  Think of a 50-page company policy that you need to share with board members in 100 communities you manage.  With an online document management system that handles file replacements efficiently, managers need not worry about the hassles and costs associated with printing and mailing.

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.