Shaping the Future of Multifamily Management: 2024 Happy Summit Recap

Featuring four keynotes and seven panels over three days in San Diego, CA, our sold-out summit drew in over 100 attendees from across the country. Industry thought leaders took to the stage to share their insights on the innovative approaches and strategies to improving onsite operations that elevate the resident experience. The centerpiece? All things maintenance.

‍Innovation, Technology, and Change Management in Centralization

Staying ahead in property management requires more than just keeping up with trends; it demands innovation and adaptability. AI and automation serve as valuable tools to optimize efficiency, offering tailored solutions to improve customer service and streamline operations. However, a centralized approach is key to enhancing AI integration, enabling specialization, and focusing on tasks that drive long-term value. 

Property managers and owners are recognizing the benefits of centralization to offload some of the most time-consuming, business-critical processes and boost monetary rewards, especially for our industry’s unsung heroes: maintenance teams. But the key question remains: How do we measure innovation and choose the right solutions across entire portfolios and property stacks?

“When evaluating technology, we look for integration and the ability for our team to be mobile. We want to ensure the team is seeing things in a streamlined user interface, because not only are they doing more on a day-to-day basis, but they need to absorb a lot of information. So we've evolved into a more centralized model so that everyone can see the key tasks that need to get done and the steps that need to be taken” Bhavnesh Jairam, CIO at Boardwalk Residential Communities during our Catalyzing Innovation in Multifamily panel discussion. 

Experts emphasize the need to use a centralized model to empower teams and improve efficiency, focusing on integration and mobile functionality in their technology stack. However, as this trend continues, change management continues to remain a crucial challenge, highlighting the importance of effective training and communication across property teams and residents.

“Part of our goal with centralization is providing a 24/7 response to our customers. Additionally, we talked with our team about the long-term benefits of this model, including higher-paying jobs, more growth opportunities, working toward a four-day workweek, and being able to work off-site from wherever you are. We have all of those things attached to our centralization approach” Heidi Turner, Principal & Cofounder at Blanton Turner, stated during her panel discussion with our partners at Funnel.

Centralization as a Mainstay Solution to Streamlining Operations and Workflows

Centralization, once considered a daunting and still often misconstrued concept, took the spotlight for forward-thinking organizations during Happy Summit, as they shared results of boosted efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

In the past, decentralized models led to operational challenges and high turnover rates in the industry. At HappyCo, we take tremendous pride in leading today’s landscape with customer-first software and services focused on team efficiency and productivity, building on these tenets:

Centralization allows specialization, enabling teams to focus on their strengths.

 

Emphasis on tasks that drive long-term value enhances operational efficacy.

 

AI-optimized software streamlines customer interaction and maintenance work orders.

 

Ensuring faster resident response times is increasingly important in resident retention.

 

We believe that artificial and human intelligence are essential for solving operational and on-site challenges. By leveraging AI to improve processes and empower teams, HappyCo is tireless in building the technology that equips property owners, managers, and on-site teams with the superior tools and software experience that meets the evolving needs of the market.

“Not everybody is good at everything. If we can continue to take things off of teams’ plates that maybe are not their top priority or don't fit their kind of genius, that works. We're not trying to get rid of team members; we’re adding value, and I think that stands out against companies saying ‘I want to downsize my leasing office.’ My perspective is that the more we can invest in the things that we aren't doing really well right now, the more we can improve operations and resident experiences” Sherry Freitas, Former Executive Managing Director at RangeWater during her panel discussion with our partners at Rently. 

Centralization Addresses the Issue of Fragmented Data

While advances in technology continue to create operational efficiencies, we can’t forget the glue that holds it all together: data. This was at the center of our Catalyzing Innovation in Multifamily panel with Kyle Nelson, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Snappt, who emphasized that “AI is only as good as the data feeding the model. We all need to stop and understand that when garbage comes in, garbage goes out. We've analyzed over 6 million documents, equipping our AI with valuable data from legitimate sources. We like to say we have a multi-million document head start on everyone else.”

Solutions like Snappt continue to lead the charge in aggregating and analyzing data to provide actionable insights, making the ability to streamline it even more essential. Selecting solutions that have a proven track record and serve a large number of residents over time certainly stood out in our panel with Raymond Mikulich, Chairman of the Board at Altus Group, and Tim Gamble, Cofounder and Head of Data Engineering at HelloData.

“Reconciling data is the biggest challenge in the industry right now, and there have been many attempts to do that, both by industry and by the big players. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent trying to sort that out,” said Mikulich. 

“AI is not some magic system that’s going to solve all of our problems. It's just a function trained on data, the more complete the data, the better the function will be at making predictions. Sometimes you can boost the completeness of a dataset by training a separate model to fill the holes. For example, you might be missing a year built, but you can use other building attributes to estimate a decade. With that said, filling the gaps can introduce errors so it’s important to do it carefully to keep results accurate,” Gamble added. 

Embracing the Future with AI and Centralized Maintenance

HappyCo has been at the forefront of helping customers elevate operations. Over the past three years, we’ve focused on developing next-generation software and service solutions to enhance efficiency and productivity. In the last six months, we’ve made it our mission to listen, having hundreds of conversations with customers and prospects that led us to uncover one of the industry’s biggest pain points: inventory management. And we’re not stopping there. 

AI and centralization will only continue to enhance operational efficiency and resident satisfaction. By implementing these technologies thoughtfully, you can stay ahead with a competitive edge and shape the future of property management. Upcoming integrations with partners like Wreno.io, Amenify, HelloData, Interplay Learning, Rently, and ResMan will play a huge part in helping our entire industry ecosystem get there.