Apartments have existed for as long as anyone of us can remember. Once a residential establishment of ghettos or artists’ colonies, today apartments are the mainstream choice of anyone looking to invest in a residential property. The real estate industry has redefined how to view apartments. Apartment living is now a lifestyle trend and apartment or society management is a career field.
What Are The Aspects Of Society Management?
Oh there are quite a few things to take care of, if you are a community manager. The bigger the number of units in the community, the greater is the responsibility. Not all apartment communities have the same needs. It varies from community to community based on the resident population, city, state and country. However, there are a few basic things that remain the same :
- Communication
- Repair & Maintenance Work
- Gate Security
- Staff Tracking
In this blog, we would discuss the aspect of COMMUNICATION.
Why Is Communication Important For Society Management?
If the coronavirus situation has taught us anything, then how important it is to have a smooth system of communication in place. Social distancing, isolation and lockdowns have shown us how vital the role of residential communities is, to fight any sort of crisis.
In an apartment community or housing society, there are majorly two lines of communication.
i. Residents with Management Committee/Community Manager and vice versa.
ii. Residents with Residents.
It’s important to ensure communication across both these channels are easy and quick.
So How Do Apartment Management Apps Come In?
In the early days, Google and Yahoo groups were the gods to keep communication active in a residential society. A laptop or computer was necessary to be a part of the community Yahoo or Google groups. It did serve as a private forum discussion interface. However, posting a single topic was time consuming. The same forum is used to post conversations and notices, therefore leading to high chances of missing out on important notices. Also one has to click on each topic to see the whole message.
Adding in members into Google Groups or Yahoo groups was another headache. To ensure the group only comprise of authentic residents, an invite had to be sent out manually to let the residents join in on the official communication platform of the community.
WhatApp helped to solve the issue of seamless communication in society management. And granted, with its features of creating multiple groups, easy addition of members to groups, easy shareability of photos, videos and other media files have definitely brought neighbours closer. But the question still remains : Which of the multiple WhatsApp groups serves as the single official platform?
This question is answered by society management systems. Combining the goodness of Google Groups, WhatsApp and Facebook in its communication module, it has become the perfect platform to peacefully coexist with other communication modules residents may have.
Communication from the Management Committee is clearly visible as notices. With a different colour from the rest of the page, it stands out and ensures that residents do not miss important announcements. Conversation threads appear on the feed, showing the whole message. Replying to conversation threads is easy. Just scroll, type, press enter, repeat. That’s it. You have replied to all threads you needed to.
Society management software redefines communication. There are separate segments to communicate about decision making posts like Polls, or talking about a specific topic like in Activities or about selling away the guitar you are no longer using, in Classifieds. And all this is automated.
When a new resident comes, giving them access to the society portal is simple and quite DIY oriented. It serves as a good ice breaker for the new resident too. At a glance they get an idea about how their new neighbourhood is. And the best part? These society management systems come in the form of apps – easy to carry, easy to access.
Communication is the key to building a harmonious society. It’s important you make an informed choice when choosing your community communication platform. Make sure all residents are always updated about the happenings in their community.
