Property maintenance is one of the biggest headaches for property management companies. This is because maintenance can be unpredictable because you’re not always aware when issues are going to arise. However, there is a way you can be more predictable and proactive with your maintenance approach. You need to track maintenance metrics so you can achieve predictability in your maintenance process and improve your overall maintenance experience. Property maintenance metrics play a crucial role in evaluating the overall health of your process. They give property owners, managers, and maintenance teams valuable insights to make informed decisions and improve maintenance strategies.
What are maintenance metrics?
Maintenance metrics can also be referred to as KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators. KPIs help you measure the success of your operation or processes. This allows you to avoid issues before negatively impacting your company’s bottom line. When it comes to assessing a property maintenance operation, KPIs are essential.
When we speak to property management companies, many have no idea which metrics they should track. Even when they do possess some understanding, they often resort to manual methods, burdening themselves with time-consuming tasks and increasing the likelihood of errors in their reports. Some common reasons property management companies aren’t tracking metrics include the following:
1. Lack of Awareness: Some property management companies may not know the benefits and importance of tracking maintenance metrics. They may not realize these metrics can provide valuable insights, drive improvement, and enhance overall property management.
2. Resource Constraints: Tracking maintenance metrics manually requires time, effort, and resources. Smaller property management companies with limited staff or budget constraints may prioritize other operational tasks over implementing a comprehensive maintenance metrics tracking system.
3. Manual Processes: Property management companies that rely heavily on manual processes and paperwork may find tracking and analyzing maintenance metrics challenging. The process can be cumbersome and time-consuming without appropriate systems and tools.
4. Lack of Technology: Some property management companies may not have the necessary technology, like maintenance management software, to streamline and automate the tracking of maintenance metrics.
5. Lack of Performance Evaluation Culture: Property management companies may sometimes not have a strong culture of performance evaluation or a focus on continuous improvement. Without a proactive approach to monitoring and analyzing maintenance metrics, they may overlook the insights metrics can provide them and their team.
In this article, we will dive into the importance of metrics. Specifically, what metrics you should focus on and how you can track them. Tracking maintenance metrics can positively affect every aspect of your property management company, from resident satisfaction to owner retention and your team’s efficiency.
Why are tracking metrics important?
Maintenance metrics are crucial for numerous purposes. However, the foremost significance lies in the fact that without monitoring, it becomes impossible to determine the success of your process. Without having any data to compare, you won’t be able to determine how your team is performing and if any changes need to be made. This can lead to property management companies thinking their process is working when there are hidden flaws. In addition, even if you know there are issues with your process, you won’t be able to determine where those issues are without the proper visibility. By tracking the correct metrics, you can identify where process changes need to be made.
Here as some of the most important reasons you should track maintenance metrics:
1. Staff Evaluation:
Having the ability to evaluate your staff in an objective way through metrics will showcase the performance and effectiveness of your maintenance team. By tracking metrics such as speed or repair and jobs per day, organizations can assess their maintenance teams’ efficiency and identify improvement areas.
2. Resident Satisfaction:
Our data shows that poor maintenance practices is a significant reason for resident turnover.. This means ensuring a simple, efficient maintenance process is crucial to retaining residents. A high turnover rate can positively impact your bottom line. Additionally, a poor maintenance process is a common reason residents submit negative reviews online. A poor online reputation makes attracting new residents and property owners difficult. In fact, data shows that 78% of prospective residents said property management companies online reviewers were the number one factor in choosing a place to live.
3. Continuous Improvement:
Maintenance metrics provide a baseline for measuring progress and monitoring improvement over time. By setting targets and benchmarking against industry standards or internal goals, organizations can drive continuous improvement in maintenance practices, equipment reliability, and overall performance.
Maintenance metrics are essential because they enable organizations to evaluate performance, make data-driven decisions, optimize maintenance strategies, allocate resources effectively, control costs, drive continuous improvement, and communicate effectively with stakeholders. Organizations can enhance operational efficiency, asset reliability, and overall business performance by monitoring and analyzing these metrics.
Why should you track maintenance metrics?
Tracking maintenance KPIs allows you to share data with your stakeholders to provide them insight into how you are doing. Suppose you experienced slow repair speeds and implemented organizational changes to enhance scheduling, resulting in improved repair speed. By sharing this information with property owners, you demonstrate your commitment to monitoring and enhancing the success of your maintenance department. Healthy metrics can also be an excellent tool for acquiring new property owners.
Property owners want to know that their properties are handled while costs are low. Oftentimes, owners don’t want to be bothered with all the little details that go into managing a property; that is, of course, why they hired you. Giving them a monthly or quarterly report of data metrics helps provide them with a glimpse into how things are going and help to build trust in the partnership.
Costly maintenance costs and high resident turnover are some of the biggest reasons property owners churn. If you have unusually high maintenance costs, metric tracking is a great way to determine why and make informed decisions on what needs to change. In addition, by tracking your resident satisfaction, you can keep a pulse on how your residents feel about their renting experience and make systematic changes if you see an influx of poor reviews.
What metrics should you focus on?
So now you understand why you need to be tracking maintenance metrics, but how do you know what metrics to track? Determining what metrics are most crucial depends on your team’s individual goals. Are there areas of your process need to be improved? What are the most important things to your stakeholders? Where in your process are you lacking in visibility? Answering these questions can help you determine what metrics you should focus on. With Property Meld’s new Insights Dashboard, we provide oversight into the most critical metrics to help you achieve maintenance excellence.
Here are some standard metrics you should focus on:
Speed of Repair:
Speed of repair measures how quickly a repair is completed after a resident has submitted it. The quicker a repair is completed, the more likely you will receive better resident reviews. In general, property maintenance aims to address repairs and issues promptly to ensure the proper functioning and safety of the property. Urgent or emergency repairs, such as plumbing leaks, electrical faults, or security-related problems, should receive immediate attention.
Non-urgent maintenance, such as cosmetic or non-essential fixes, may take longer to address. These repairs might be scheduled and prioritized based on their impact on the property’s functionality, aesthetics, or the comfort of your residents. The time frame for completing such repairs can range from a few days to several weeks, depending on the workload of the maintenance team, the availability of materials, and any other logistical considerations. Keeping your repair speed under seven days for all repairs is optimal, but the quicker, the better.
Speed to Assign:
In property maintenance, “speed to assign” refers to the time it takes to allocate or assign a specific maintenance task or repair request to the appropriate maintenance technician or third-party vendor. It measures how quickly the property management or maintenance team takes action after receiving a maintenance request or identifying an issue. Failing to assign promptly is one of the most common roadblocks in the maintenance process and can lead to longer repair speeds. Not to mention, the longer it takes to schedule a repair, the more frustrated your residents will become.
Speed to Invoice:
One common complaint from property management companies is that vendors take a long time to submit an invoice for jobs they’ve completed. This can lead to issues with your accounting department and discrepancies in your owner statements. Speed to invoice measures how long a vendor can submit an invoice after the work is completed. With Property Meld, you can set up automatic messaging requesting invoices from vendors as soon as a work order has been marked finished.
Technician Utilization Rate:
Technician utilization, or simply utilization rate, is a metric used to measure the productivity and efficiency of your internal technicians.
The technician utilization rate is typically expressed as a percentage. It represents the amount of time a technician spends on billable or productive work compared to their total available working hours. It indicates how effectively technicians are utilized and how much of their time is spent on tasks that directly contribute to revenue generation.
The calculation for the technician utilization rate is as follows:
Utilization Rate = (Billable or Productive Hours / Total Available Hours) x 100
Jobs per Day:
In property maintenance, “jobs per day” refers to the number of maintenance or repair tasks completed by a technician in single working day.
Jobs per day can vary depending on various factors, including the complexity of the tasks, the skill level of the technicians, the availability of resources and materials, and the overall workload. It is a key performance indicator used to assess the capacity and productivity of the maintenance team. It can help measure their ability to meet service level agreements or customer expectations.
A high number of daily jobs suggests that the maintenance team is efficient and capable of handling a significant workload. It can indicate effective task management, streamlined processes, and optimized resource allocation. However, it’s essential to balance quantity and quality, ensuring that tasks are completed to a satisfactory standard and without compromising on quality or safety.
Resident Satisfaction:
Resident satisfaction measures how happy residents are with the services you provide. It is typically measured out of five stars. Resident satisfaction is tied closely to the speed of repair. Ensuring the maintenance process is easy and efficient for your residents will improve resident satisfaction.
How to track maintenance metrics?
Tracking maintenance metrics is crucial for assessing maintenance operations’ performance, efficiency, and effectiveness. Here are some steps to help you track maintenance metrics effectively:
1. Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Determine the specific metrics that align with your maintenance goals and objectives. Choose metrics that are relevant to your organization and provide meaningful insights.
2. Define Measurement Methods: Determine how you will collect and measure the data for each metric. This may involve using software systems, spreadsheets, or manual record-keeping. Ensure that the measurement methods are accurate, consistent, and reliable. Property maintenance software like Property Meld allows for automatic reporting derived from clean work order data.
3. Set Targets or Benchmarks: Establish targets or benchmarks for each metric to provide a standard for performance comparison. These targets can be based on industry standards, historical data, or organizational goals.
4. Regular Reporting: Develop a schedule for reporting maintenance metrics to relevant stakeholders. This may include weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports. Regular reporting helps track progress, communicate performance results, and foster transparency and accountability.
5. Continuous Improvement: The insights from tracking maintenance metrics are used to drive ongoing improvement efforts. Identify areas for optimization, implement corrective actions, and monitor the impact of improvement initiatives over time.
Remember that tracking maintenance metrics should be an ongoing process. Regularly review and adapt your metrics to align with changing organizational goals and evolving maintenance practices. By monitoring and analyzing maintenance metrics, you can make data-driven decisions, optimize resource allocation, and improve the efficiency of your maintenance operations.
How to use metrics to improve your maintenance process?
Maintenance metrics play a crucial role in identifying areas for improvement and optimizing the maintenance process. Here are some ways you can use maintenance metrics to enhance your maintenance process:
1. Identify Performance Gaps: Analyze maintenance metrics to identify areas where performance falls short of targets or benchmarks. This could include metrics such as speed of repair, jobs per day, or technician utilization rate. You can focus on improving specific areas of your maintenance process by pinpointing performance gaps.
2. Root Cause Analysis: Use maintenance metrics to analyze the root cause for recurring issues or failures. Identify patterns or trends in the data that may indicate underlying causes of staff inefficiencies or maintenance delays. This analysis can help you implement targeted solutions to address the root causes and reduce future occurrences.
3. Resource Allocation and Planning: Use metrics like technician utilization rate, open work orders, and response time to evaluate resource allocation and planning. Assess if you have the correct number of technicians, skill sets, or tools to handle maintenance demands efficiently. Adjust staffing levels, optimize work order prioritization, and allocate resources based on the data to streamline your maintenance process.
4. Benchmarking and Best Practices: Compare your maintenance metrics with industry benchmarks or best practices to gain insights into areas for improvement. Identify industry leaders or organizations with high-performing maintenance operations and analyze their techniques. Adopt and adapt their successful strategies to enhance your maintenance process.
By leveraging maintenance metrics effectively, you can make informed decisions, prioritize improvement efforts, and continuously optimize your maintenance process. Regularly monitor and analyze the data to drive performance improvements, enhance equipment reliability, reduce costs, and deliver better service to your stakeholders.
See how Property Meld’s new Insights tool can help you effectively track and monitor key metrics related to property maintenance by scheduling a demo.
