As Co-Founder and CEO at Daisy, I’ve come to realize just how important KPIs are for HOA condo and co-op buildings. While KPIs are standard in tech companies and many other businesses, residential buildings and property management companies haven’t adopted them. In my opinion, that’s a mistake. 

What are KPIs?

For those who are not familiar, KPIs (key performance indicators) are metrics that help you evaluate the success of your organization at large, as well as the progress of specific activities - for example, any projects in progress or programs you employ.

As a tech entrepreneur, I’m no stranger to KPIs. In every company I’ve been a part of, we’ve relied on data to guide us towards making the right decisions and to monitor the success of our actions and company trajectory. 

A lot of businesses have started using this methodology to evaluate their company's actions. The metrics needn’t be financial - many companies use measures like satisfaction score (or NPS), employee retention rate and user engagement. The goal is to create a clear system that allows everyone in the organization to measure their efforts, from HR teams to sales and operations. KPIs enable you to understand if your and your team’s actions have made a positive impact over time, and help you easily prioritize your efforts and resource allocation. 

‍‍

You are what you measure 

Setting the right metrics is the most important step; the metrics you choose will send a clear message to your team about where your priorities lie and how you define success. For example, if you decide that revenue is the top priority as opposed to customer satisfaction, your customer-facing team may choose to double-down on sales rather than concentrate on making your customers happy. 

‍

A building as a business 

At Daisy, we believe every building is a unique ecosystem with its own vibrancy and life. You have a community with dependencies on the building, its staff and services - much like a company. Buildings have financials, onsite teams, daily operations, amenities, calendars and metrics. Board members and owners have goals for the building, and want to see its value rise. Residents (and board members) want a great experience. Talk about opportunities to strategically track and improve all these things! 

How buildings are being measured today

The lack of data use in the decision-making process in the real estate industry shocks me. Currently, building success isn’t being measured at all. Over the last 20 years technology has been used to track, analyze, adjust and optimize processes, as well as provide transparency. While we experience this in nearly every other aspect of life, it’s completely lacking for buildings. Because of the lack of measurement and accountability, owners and board members are left with few ways of ensuring their building success will be in good hands. They’re left asking - how many buildings does each property manager oversee? How many buildings do you manage? How long have you been in business? Yet, if you look at reviews, there’s no correlation between the numbers and the actual success of a building. But, if you create KPIs- you will actually be able to determine if your building is healthy - everything from the financials, to the structure, to your residents’ satisfaction. You can start being proactive - improving your building, keeping residents and owners happy.

‍

How Daisy does it different

Daisy took a very different approach to buildings . When we crystalized our vision back in the beginning of 2020, we started setting metrics to measure our success. What will a successful building look like? What will indicate to us that we are doing a great job? We built dashboards to measure each building's health, financials, and resident satisfaction. This enabled us to focus on what really matters and make sure we are taking building management to the next level. 

Here are some metrics we measure and I think you should too:

• NPS (net promoter score) & Satisfaction score - First and foremost are the people living in the building. Are they happy with our performance? We send out periodic surveys to all our buildings to measure their satisfaction.  
• Financials - money saved; collections; reserve fund to operations budget ratio; common charge comparison to other buildings in the area
• Maintenance - mechanics and overall maintenance checkups; average energy consumption
• Compliance - number of violations; time to close violation 
• Community strength - engagement in digital and physical events
• Onsite team metrics - punching in and out; shifts missed; reviews
• Projects achieved - time to accomplish and satisfaction of small, medium and large 
• Issues open - response time, how many, and how quickly they’re resolved

These metrics help us oversee buildings and communities health and  ensure that we’re making board members’ lives easier and residents as happy as can be, so everyone is living their best building life. 

Need help setting KPIs for your building? Let’s chat!

‍

‍

Written by Yotam Cohen - CEO & Co-Founder of Daisy.