Four years ago, my firm, The NRP Group, was developing 10 to 15 multifamily projects a year. Fast forward to the present, and we’re scheduled to deliver 20 projects in nine states and break ground on 25 more by the end of 2018. Last year alone, we entered three new metros—Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.—and launched two new, stand-alone businesses, providing general contracting and construction management services and property management services to other owners and developers.
Growth is thrilling, but it doesn’t come without pain points. As we grew, information logjams were starting to become a problem. Financial data were trapped in spreadsheets on employees’ computers and required regular emailing between stakeholders. Invoices were sitting on a desk in Dallas, waiting to be approved by someone in Cleveland. Images of property damage were stuck on people’s phones and weren't getting seen by the right pair of eyes to trigger the next steps for repairs.
We needed something to help us better run our discrete building lines. There was software that's good for financial modeling, software that’s good for property management, and software that’s good for construction businesses, but at our size and with our vertically integrated business model, we needed a single solution to help us manage all our operations cohesively, and we didn’t have the resources available to us to order a custom-made enterprise software from the likes of SAP, NetSuite, or Salesforce.
So we hit upon the idea of layering on a custom-built software program that allows all those systems to work together. We created a Web-based interface for only a handful of users—me and my information technology team—to make our own work easier, and then began to expand the platform to other departments. We created prototype integration applications for various department workflows and tested them on 10 or so users at a time, which prompted those users to tell us the true specifications they were looking for.
At the end of this iterative process, we realized we had both a powerful dashboard for our management team and an internal platform of mobile-friendly business-process management tools for our employees, from entry-level property managers to C-suite executives.
Automated workflows mean no more paper, and no more paper signatures. Management can view the dashboard to gauge our development pipeline in real time, see how lease-up is going, or see what rent-value adjustment was made at a given property, freeing up more time to make strategic decisions.
On the construction side, our head of construction can now monitor what’s happening at sites on the other side of the country without being there. It also enables us to compare and approve bids at the touch of a keystroke. Moreover, our subcontractors are pulled in, making collaboration with them seamless.
At the highest level, the new software has boosted confidence among our investors, because it facilitates reporting of key performance indicators without a time lag.
Along the way, we’ve learned that our platform still requires human compliance. That’s why we’ve built in reminders and alerts, to keep everyone on track logging their appropriate data. If you're off your expected schedule, the system is smart enough to ping you. If you haven’t approved that invoice, you’ll get an alert.
In the end, the system has also enabled us to add new employees in new markets, and harness their local talent and expertise—a powerful benefit.
