Whether you’re a traditionalist or a property management pod person (don’t worry, we’ll explain), it’s critical to make sure your processes align with your property management system.

Here’s how teams are thinking about property management systems today, and what that means for your company’s standard operating procedures.

Popular Property Management Systems

Forbes recently shared an article reviewing several different systems of property management, and their recommendations for the future. Here’s an overview of core styles and what they mean:

Portfolio Management

Portfolio management style relies on one person to manage the needs of a specific set of buildings – their portfolio. This style allows the individual on your team to form deep relationships and have a detailed understanding of building and resident needs. That said, entrusting all responsibilities to one person – who may become overwhelmed if workload increases, or may even leave – is inherently risky.

Departmentalized Structure

Property management teams who opt for this structural route have various departments with different specialties. Leasing, Operations, Resident Experience, Compliance – each team focuses on a specific aspect of management, which may be helpful for larger portfolios with complex requirements. Communication is key, though – failing to relay updates or process changes interdepartmentally can result in huge headaches.

The Pod System

(No relation to popular sci-fi movie plots.)

The pod system is a newer, more flexible way of structuring your property management system. Per Forbes, it’s a fast growing trend that can “revolutionize” property management.

Simply put, pod management is a hybrid blend of portfolio management + departmental structures. Smaller, more compact teams are entirely responsible for a subset of your organizations portfolio. From soup to nuts – or more accurately, leasing to turnovers – these teams collaborate to ensure all aspects of ongoing management are covered. Pod system styles can help prevent service interruptions from portfolio or staffing changes, and allows for scaling as portfolios grow.

How InCheck Works With Your System

Whichever management system you use, it’s important to make sure your work processes align with it.

Knowing what you’re responsible for (and when, and how to do it) is critical for operational success. That’s why we built InCheck to work with any of the above management structures – and any others that come along in the future.

Here’s how your team can structure your processes to align with your management type.

Standard Operating Procedures

Your team’s SOPs are the brains of your organization. And when they’re automated, it’s even more important that they’re set up properly.

InCheck can organize SOPs so they’re only triggered or applicable for specific properties. That includes property groups (e.g. pod, manager, region – just to name a few) or even individual properties. This way, your team can see exactly how Pod 1’s SOPs differ from Pod 2’s. And you can run reports and view analytics to see which are working better.

Portfolio-style management teams also benefit from SOPs being documented and centrally accessible. If there is a staffing change, or if responsibilities need to be reallocated, you can see exactly what steps are taken to complete the work, and who needs to be reassigned. We’ve also got built-in functionality letting you know when work needs to be reassigned from an inactive user.

Role & Team Assignments

Work can be assigned out in a few ways using InCheck:

• Directly to a specific user – If one expert on your team always handles something, you can assign work to them directly.
• To a specific role – If it’s the property manager’s job to take care of something across a portfolio, or in a pod, or at any given property, you can assign work to the Property Manager role. InCheck is smart enough to know who the PM is at each location, and direct it to that person.
• To a specific team – If more than one person can take care of a specific Task, you can always assign work to a Team. Teams are groups of people, any of whom can pick up the assigned work and complete it. This setup is a great option for pod and department-style teams.

However you work, InCheck’s flexibility lets your team automate what needs to get done in a way that makes sense for you.