Lately we have gotten a lot of questions and interest in the Property Management section of Maestro. So much so that we wanted to take a few minutes and highlight some of things that we have seen make a difference for organizations.
As with most things, it’s best to start with the basics. There are a number of fields that should be fairly easy to track down. The best place to start with getting this information would be your County Clerk or Assessor’s office. At minimum we recommend having:
These are the things that should be super easy to track down and include in your system. One thing you want to get right from the start is your naming convention. Is your record going to be:
You will want to be consistent across all your records. It’s also important to think about how you are going to be updating records in the future. For most organizations these changes are done manually because there are so few changes that it is easier to go in and update the few records rather than do things in bulk. However, if you are one that will only update once a year and want to do things in bulk, you will want to make sure your naming convention is similar to the records you get from your government so that you aren’t spending time adjusting the data so that the records update. Remember, Property Address is the key identifier so they must be the same (including spaces at the end) for the record to update. In the example above, this would import three records rather than 1 because they are all different.
So we’ve got the basics in, now let’s look at some of the other things that would be important to put in:
These are things that can be very valuable as you are looking for space for potential entrepreneurs. These are also really good projects for interns and/or rainy days. The pictures can be very valuable when there are questions about a particular building. If you have pictures, PDFs of Floor plans, or anything else, it can really aid the conversation.
Having that level of data in the system will be a really good basis for most organizations. However, this isn’t where you should stop. There are some great opportunities to engage your Design Committee, and add a lot more information to your property records. Things such as:
These items help provide a very detailed listing for your property and are are great project for your design committee to tackle.
Another great volunteer engagement project can be for your Economic Vitality Committee. While your design committee is working on their portion, have your EV committee working on some key identifiers such as:
These and other involvements can really help you narrow down property that a potential entrepreneur may be looking for when they contact you about available space.
If you are looking for even more demographic and other tracking metrics, check out this blog. Having that information really takes your data to the next level. Not only that, these are great ways to engage both your Design and Economic Vitality Committees.
