You can’t miss the self-storage industry trend toward automated facility management. For many businesses, the pandemic made this transition essential for survival.
Self-storage operators agree that automating access control – and facility management in general – provides a competitive advantage.
As you explore your options for automated facility management, remember that tenant access plays a critical role.
Check out these five major benefits:
1. Security
Facility security is important for operators and tenants alike. Minimize risk with a system that lets you manage and update access points and hours, review activity logs, and keep operations secure from anywhere.
If a security issue arises, you need to address the problem quickly. If you’re offsite, you can identify and resolve problems faster with features like remote activity log access.
Promptly suspect access if tenants are abusing their access with overnight stays or other unwanted activities. Automated access also allows you to review non-tenant activity, so you can identify and revoke access for any problem employees or contractors.
2. Efficiency
Automated facility management saves you time and staff resources, especially for day-to-day tasks like access control.
Cross-checking payments, activities, insurance, and communications across software platforms – or computers, if you’re hardware-based – eats up staff time and reduces productivity.
Simplify this by implementing automated tenant access. No more putting out fires one at a time. No more going into the office to verify payments and revoke or reinstate access. You can streamline even further with access control integrated into your facility management software (FMS) that automatically updates information within your system and manages access around delinquent payments.
3. Effective Management
Security issues won’t wait. You need easy, real-time solutions to solve problems and ensure tenants always have the right access.
Automated tenant access lets you address issues in real-time from anywhere. It also helps reduce the risk of errors. If your tenant hasn’t paid for the month but can still access their unit, there’s no incentive to pay. If there are ongoing security issues due to incorrect access points or hours, occupancy rates will drop.
Automating facility and access management not only ensures a consistent experience for tenants – you also reduce the risk of data loss, downtime, and oversights. Flexible options with intuitive workflows make the transition easier than ever.
4. Tenant Satisfaction
You can attract tenants and improve occupancy with competitive rental rates. But to keep those numbers up month over month, you need to provide customers with a safe, satisfying facility experience.
Tenants who experienced blocked access without cause or don’t feel safe at your site will leave. Eventually, these missteps add up to a larger reputation problem that influences prospective tenants to look to your competitors.
Keeping customers happy doesn’t have to be hard. Provide easy, reliable access to their units and simple solutions for payments. Integrate your access control into your FMS to streamline communications and get your tenants answers faster.
5. Growth
It’s simple – streamlining your operations and delivering an easier, more secure self-storage experience benefits your bottom line. Profits improve when you minimize property damage, improve productivity, and increase tenant occupancy.
Fewer hours spent managing access on-site lets you focus more strategically. Automated access gives you the freedom to innovate and grow your self-storage business.
A Seamless Approach
Automated tenant access can be a game-changer for your self-storage facility and help you boost occupancy, efficiency, and revenue. Make sure to include it in your considerations as you start – or continue – your journey in automating your self-storage facility.
