Society Management Systems

The pandemic continues to be a catalyst for innovative ways to overcome the challenges posed by the crisis. In a bid to stay relevant and operational, businesses and organizations found themselves rapidly welcoming change and adopting technological solutions for traditionally manual processes. The housing sector was no different story.

The previous year saw many housing societies and gated communities turn to a dedicated society management system to ease the administration and facilitate seamless communication. A survey undertaken during the pandemic revealed that 67% of the people visiting a residential community are vastly delivery personnel. With the implementation of a society management system, these points-of-contact can be vastly reduced.

Communication

One of the most important things that the pandemic has taught us is the importance of seamless and effective communication systems as we abide by the social distancing norms. A vast majority of a locality's administration comprises of either communicating updates, resolving queries, sending/receiving important notices between the manager and the residents or communication among the residents.

A society management system with a tailored communication module can deal with this very niftily. Where previously communities relied on multiple communication channels for multiple types of communication such as Google groups, Facebook pages and WhatsApp groups, all of that could be concisely collected in one dashboard in a handy app with relevant colour-coding. This ensures that no important updates or polls are missed by anyone in a sea of information. With the integration of personal individual channels, a manager can see all out-standing queries lined up name/apartment wise, drastically reducing the chances of lost/forgotten queries - all on their phone.

Visitor Tracking and Security

With a society management system, there is more than just communication that gets made easy.

With densely populated societies, the security of its residents, kids, senior citizens and pets is always a prime concern. The ratio of the populace to the security guard is extremely steep. Naturally, there are security loopholes that can be easily exploited in spite of having the best security entourage in place. With a society management application, the level of security can be pushed up a notch fairly easily. 

These apps can track the drop-offs of residents' couriers and deliveries and critically reduce the scope of parcel mismanagement to zero - something larger societies are privy to. This cuts down on the number of non-residents entering the locality and saves the courier from hunting the actual doorstep making it a win-win for both the courier and the residents. Additionally, all of this gets done contactlessly, making it a viable security solution for a world still operating amidst the crisis.

These apps can track and manage the entry and exit of visitors, house-helps, delivery agents and driver verifying, and check-in and check-out of vehicles - all of which helps in maintaining a higher level of security, safety and capping the crime-rate.

Data Management and Transparency

Managing a society comes with handling plenty of dedicated accounts for upkeep and maintenance activities. To track all the residents' money into each fund, traditionally, there would be ledgers for maintenance funds, reserve funds, sinking funds, repair charges, funds for festivities, working capital, and much more.

With a streamlined society management app, this strenuous process of maintaining paperwork gets replaced with automated finance tracking. Once the manager set's up pre-defined labels, their work is as good as done. The app then maintains and tracks every amount credited and debited along with proper tags and details. This not only removes the scope of human error but also makes the whole process financially sound.

Taking it one step further, with a society management app, all the accounting, management, expense/income tracking become highly transparent for even the residents to view where and how their money is being utilized.

Quicker Processing and Queries Resolving

Be it a large locality or a small, an integral part of every society manager is resolving its residents' queries and grievances. By having a society management app in place, the process of lodging a query gets reduced to a task of mere seconds - completely cutting away the face-to-face interaction. With an IVR in place, these queries can be immediately addressed. They can be assigned relevant service personnel as well as receive status updates and notifications upon work completion.

Without the app, the complaint of water leakage, faulty gas pipeline, electrical problem, etc. takes about a day or two to get delivered to the right person and to get resolved. With the right technology in place, these times can be drastically reduced to mere hours.

From the administration perspective, the app automates and efficiently handles mundane, routine tasks of monthly bill generations, payment dispersals, sending all other necessary announcements, alerts and updates. This feature comes extremely handy for maintenance bill dispersing and payment tracking. The app can send routine alerts with minimal to no supervision. It then tracks all the payment received along with the pending payments. It then sends alerts or reminders via the app itself or through email and/or SMS as preset.

In addition to the above, the data collected can be intelligently analyzed to get actionable insights about the resource utilization, the nature of recurring queries/grievances and all other businesses of a housing locality.

Integrating Customized Modules

These apps can incorporate customized requirements which can include basic integrations like facilitating online payments through the app itself. They can also be smart integrations such as analysing the water meter reading and bring down the community water consumption or calibrating it with the community hardware and software to repurpose the common areas without compromising on either social distancing or security.

Alternately they could be innovative integrations that offer convenience. One example of what we created for certain localities during the pandemic was introducing a grocery delivery and a life-essential shopping module. Societies and local vendors can tie-up and connect on the app/portal. Residents place the order via the app, vendors track it through their devices and the system tracks the status and drop-off of the items in an efficient and a transparent way in the form of alerts and in-app notifications.

Conclusion

Apartments today are a highly sought investment option for many people. The real-estate business has also caught up and redefined housing localities, turning them into a lifestyle statement. With double-digit amenities and thickly populated buildings, the position of a society manager has only turned into a serious and competitive job over the recent years.

Add to it the turbulence and novel demands posed by the pandemic induced norms and resulting challenges, the task of handling and overcoming these hurdles is a humongous ordeal. With the world working remotely, schools going online and practically each member of every household confined indoors, housing localities all over have been pushed to function at their maximum capacity.

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