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“Love the One You’re With”—Embrace the Technology that’s In Front of You

Ok, your technology may not be perfect, but it’s what you’ve got, so be sure to make the best of it. Here are a few tips on how to get the most out of the technology you have:

Keep an Open Mind

One of the most important things you can do is to keep an open mind about your technology. It may not be perfect, but it is likely the only option you have at least for the foreseeable future. Try to focus on the positive aspects rather than the negative. How does the technology help you, rather than it’s shortcomings.

Configuration

Was your technology configured internally?—by the technology provider?—by a technology expert? Would you say that the person configuring your technology knew what they were doing or did they simply do the best they could? There are a lot of nuances to configuring today’s complex technologies—Yardi, MRI, RealPage, AppFolio, etc., and sometimes the smallest configuration mistake can cause major headaches for you. If you aren’t confident in your system configuration, or if you’d like to make sure everything was set up as intended, it wouldn’t hurt to have someone take another look to ensure you are running at optimal performance.

Training

Have you ever gone through formal training on your technology? I don’t mean training from one co-worker to another, but formal training provided by either the technology supplier, or a product expert? Oftentimes when you start in a new technology, your initial training is overwhelming and some key features and important processes won’t sink in the first time. It’s a good idea to get a training refresher at least once a year to ensure you are following best practices and are up to date on any new features.

Keep Up With Releases

Be sure to keep up with new releases, and always read release notes. You want to understand new feature releases, periodic plugin/fixes, and system upgrades. If you fall too far behind, this can and will cause issues with the performance of your system. As an organization you will need to determine if you are most comfortable being an early adopter, dealing with the potential bugs and issues of a brand new release, or if you prefer to let others work out the kinks before you adopt. At JDR, we believe the sweet spot is to be within 1-2 releases of the current, where many of the issues of new releases are worked out and you are not falling too far behind.

Finally, you can always enlist the help of an expert like JDR. We’ll first conduct a brief discovery call to better understand the challenges you are facing. We can then dig into your system to find ways to correct your issues. We’ve worked with a lot of clients and solved a lot of problems over the years. We may even have some simple solutions to improve your overall experience.