As
the name suggests, a Resident Portal is a Portal (website) primarily
for your residents. They have to benefit from the portal, use it, enjoy
it, and eventually point it out as a positive influencer on their
experience of living at your property/properties. Having a website that
enables Rent Payment and maintenance requests is not a "Resident
Portal". It primarily lowers operational cost for the
property/corporate, but provides little value to Residents. Rent payment
occurs once a month, and maintenance requests (per unit) occur once in
many months (hopefully). If that is the frequency your residents
interact with the "Portal", it is not a Resident Portal; it is a
Corporate Portal.
2. Customized Portal
It is well known
in our industry that there are no two properties alike; and that is
because we all work hard to make it the case. Therefore, there should
not be two Portals that are alike. If you are buying a cookie-cutter
one-size-fits-all Resident Portal, you are going down the wrong path.
The Portal cannot be a static website with a feature or two; it has to
mold itself to adhere to your audience needs. The Portal must be
customizable enough to address the specific needs of the property
on-site team AND residents. If you think this is too much to ask, think
again.
3. Service VS product
One of the objectives of
the Resident Portal is to automate mundane logistical tasks by rendering
them online. Therefore, make sure you don't find yourself working twice
as hard than before once you launched the portal. Make sure wjat you
buy is a Service and not only a product. Make sure there are actual
people servicing you, and not just HTML pages. This is acute in the
ongoing lifecycle of a Resident Portal and will enable you to have
access to a wealth of knowledge (as in subject-matter experts) on how to
extract more from your portal as time goes by.
4. Hosted
solution VS. on premise
If you buy a Resident Portal, make sure
it is a hosted solution (as in a third-party hosting and maintaining it
for you) vs. software you buy and actually have to manage yourself. If
you do chose the optimal Resident Portal, the complexity of managing it
and evolving it on premise greatly supersedes the cost associated with
hosting it at a third-party.
5. The experts vs the rest
Go
with the experts; work with the ones who live, breathe and dream
Resident Portals. Many companies offer a Resident Portal "add-on" to
their current offerings; heck, some offer it for free (and we all know
what that looks like). When it comes to a Resident Portal and your brand
is on the line, make sure your brand does not convey "Cheap" to your
most valuable prospects (your residents). And above all, try to stay
away from your brand being associated with "free". It's just like a good
dish: it's only as good as the ingredients put into it.
6.
Get more bang for your buck
Digitize, automate and streamline as
many property services as possible while you're at it. Residents will
clearly benefit from the 24/7 access to those property services, while
your operational costs will decrease (the online effect). More (service)
for less (cost)? truly possible with the right Resident Portal. While
prospecting for the optimal Resident Portal for you, make sure to dig
deep and understand which Property services can be automated and
rendered via the Resident Portal to your audience.
7. Carries
your brand, look and feel (and domain)
It is your Resident
Portal; for your Residents; living at your building. I cannot see one
reason on earth why your brand, look & feel will not dominate the
Portal. After all it is an amenity you provide to your residents. Do not
be fooled: the Resident Portal is the storefront to your property for
your residents as your Marketing website is to your prospects. And I've
said it before and I will say it again: your most valuable prospects ARE
your residents.
8. All-inclusive
Make sure your
Resident Portal is the one and only access point to all that is online
for your residents. Do you have a Facebook page? Great! there needs to
be access to it from your resident portal. Twitter? Even better. Access
it from the Resident portal. Do stay away from giving your residents
multiple destinations for different purposes; that's just confusing.
9.
Don't forget your love ones
Empower your on-site team; make sure
the Resident Portal is exciting and valuable to your onsite team too.
It is a partnership: residents consume services and content rendered and
generated by on-site teams. If your onsite team will not use the
Resident Portal, you run the risk that your residents will not use it
too; and then we are back to square one.
10. Did I mention
Focus on your residents?
I seriously thought of making this list a
13 bullet list with having the last three points the same as this one.
But ten is a nice round number, so I stuck with it. But still worth
mentioning one last time: if residents will not use your Resident
Portal, it's wasted money and effort. A Penny can save you a Pound; but
without residents using the Portal voluntarily, and perceiving the
Portal as another important amenity, you'll wish you've spent that Pound
and not be perceived Foolish.