Chargie CEO, Zach Jennings, unveils his tips on how to keep properties up to date with the latest EV technology at Retcon 2022. He highlights Chargie’s turnkey solutions for all multifamily and commercial property needs as well as the EV incentives that come with EV charger installation. With the growing implementation of EVs, Zach stresses the importance of simplicity, intelligence, and reliability, when it comes to the best EV charging station and how with Chargie all three of those aspects can be ensured. Check it out and learn how to stay ahead of the game!
Transcript
Intro 0:00
Experience is definitely a huge theme today. Clearly super important to all of us who have residents. So really excited to dive further into that discussion with a great panel focus specifically on that. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Jason Guardini Anil Singh, Zach Jennings Dave McGinnis and Shlomi Ronan.
Speaker 0:28
All right, good morning, everybody. We’re gonna kick off the panel. With everybody making introductions, I think you’ve heard a lot about different technologies today. We have a mixed panel here of both technology providers and owners of real estate to really discuss how to implement technology both from a user experience but also from an owner management and cost efficiency experience to help streamline operations in particularly the multifamily space. So, with that, why don’t we start in the end and everyone introduce themselves?
Jason 1:04
Jason Guardini, Senior Vice President of it for saris Regis group, just like it says on the picture, we do third party property management for multifamily apartments, commercial, industrial, and we’re also a buyer builder and seller at that same market
Speaker 1:19
how many units
Jason 1:21
were right now at about 100. And we’re at 26,000 units 120 properties.
Zach 1:28
Zach Jennings, CEO of Chargie, we’re a turnkey EV charging provider based here in Los Angeles. We do the entire process from sales, installation engineering, ongoing brake fix maintenance, we run the network communications, the mobile app and technology through one point of contact for the entire experience to make it very easy on the property owners are currently also servicing Washington, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas as well.
David 1:51
David McGinnis, a head of business development at a company called open path or an access control provider, typically deployed at perimeter and common area entrances for your residents, as well as through integrations to the wireless locks on the apartment unit doors.
Anil 2:10
Anil Singh, Vice President of Technology at Veritas investments, we are owner and operator of multifamily assets in San Francisco in Los Angeles, about 350 buildings, 7500 units growing rapidly in San Francisco and Los Angeles belt.
Speaker 2:30
So we’ve heard a lot about different technologies that are out there today. And this for you and Neil and, Jason, let’s start out with just kind of talking about how you think about implementing new technology. What’s the what’s driving that decision today? Is it more of the user experience is a cost savings is a little both? Jason, maybe we’ll start with you.
Jason 2:54
Well, I think the drive comes from, you know, where technology sits today, technology used to be kind of a commercial base, right? You saw your cool technology commercial, now it’s all consumer base. So you know, somebody walks in, they want a door lock, right, they want something they can control with their phone. So it’s a mix of driving from the consumer end, but also driving from the business end of you know, some of these technologies help us save money, you know, you get smart thermostats, and you put those in, and you can save a lot of money down the road. So it’s a, I think it’s a mix of both that really drives it. And what we choose to put out in the properties. Now as being third party property management a little different, we inherited a lot of technology, with some of that, and a lot of retrofitting on that end.
Speaker 3:41
Anil what about you?
Anil 3:42
I’ll add on to what Jason said, we also look at gaps on what resident may be needing or what they want, with pandemic working from their apartments is really key. So how we can help them. People are struggling with rent payment, how we can help them. So yes, how do we use the consumerization of technology to help them with, you know, with the door locks or dog walking service or laundry, but at the same time, how we can help them really help them pay rent on a flexible payment plan, if they can, how we can help them build their credit, you know, credit rating by paying the rent on time. So we are also looking from that point of view.
Speaker 4:30
So Can each of you maybe talk about a technology that you guys recently assessed and are implementing? what’s worked, what didn’t work?
Jason 4:41
Well, for us, the pandemic really drove, you know, being able to show your apartment remotely. And we had a lot of we hadn’t rolled anything out on our communities yet. We were just starting take a look at it. And we had a lot of innovative managers and leasing agents that were actually walking around FaceTime I mean, with potential clients shown it, or they started making their own videos. So that was one of the ones we really quickly realized we needed to roll out and will out pretty quickly and find a technology. And I don’t know if you guys saw was in a heather Wallace earlier, her and I work together she’s working with me, we kind of took the same approach is where you know, when evaluated, you know, three vendors and took a look and, you know, tried a bunch out. And then we found some of our other properties already had some that had the third properties we evaluated from that. And now we’re, we’re really pushing that technology really drove that. So,
Speaker 5:36
and with the impacts of the pandemic reduce today, are you finding that residents are still gravitated to gravitating towards using the virtual tours? And is it is it, kind of a key element of the of the marketing process?
Jason 5:52
Yeah, it is. People want that they want that flexibility, you know, when we’re closed or you know, be able to go with those locks and stuff. My, my daughter is visiting right now from Seattle, and the other day, she went to go check out an apartment and the people weren’t there. You know, she had a she had a time slot. They weren’t there was in Seattle when a management company, but they didn’t show up, you know, and had that been a Smart Lock situation, you know, where they could go in and have a time slot and be able to open it, she would have saw that. And they actually ended up renting somewhere else. So, I think that demand is really out there. And it’s useful for us, I mean,
Speaker 6:30
so, you’ve taken it to the point where somebody is going online, doing a virtual tour, putting in their information, so that you can verify them before giving them access to the building and then giving them access to certain buildings, so they can walk through and, and touch it.
Jason 6:44
Yeah, we have a couple locations, especially in the cities high rise where that’s it’s really useful for us to get in and do that. So not all, we evaluate where it’s going to work best, you know, we’ve got some we like to say senior citizen about age properties where, you know, really doesn’t make sense to put that in, that’s not going to happen.
Speaker 7:06
It’s interesting, Anil, what about you, you mentioned, credit and rent payments.
Anil 7:12
So I’ll give maybe three examples where we have deployed technology and measure the success of what’s working what’s not, it’s, it’s very important as you are looking to deploy anything, especially if it’s a resident, faced, make sure you know how you’re going to measure it. Otherwise, residents may or may not even use it. So touching on rent payments and making it flexible for residents. So they can make rent payments as a payment plan. And not only that build your credit while making the rent payments.
Speaker 7:49
So somebody wants to pay rent weekly, they can pay rent weekly?
Anil 7:52
yes. And we have lots of gig workers who have, you know, inconsistent income stream. So, we look at their income stream, and we develop a payment plan for them. So, they can pay different amounts on different weeks, and they still make the full month payment. So that’s one not only we allow them to make flexible payments. Every time they make payments, we report it to the credit bureau, and they are able to build their credit history. This is something unheard of. And even I wasn’t I was skeptical. But it’s working great. How many rent payment company will allow you to report your rent payment to credit bureau not many, we do that into the success. Another example is we are allowing our residents to pay their rent on credit card or a different credit card and earn rewards points on them. You know, so you are paying, let’s say $3,000 in San Francisco, you are earning 3000 worth of points on your credit card payments. And with a zero-transaction fee. So, one of the key things is how do you make rent payment without transaction fee? And we are we are making that happen. So that second example is the cost of the transaction costs being borne by you know, it’s borne by the credit card companies.
Speaker 9:19
So, they’re allowing you as the merchant to charge rent without any transaction fee in order to get the acquisition of the of the renter.
Anil 9:27
Yes. And during pandemic when we didn’t have this credit card. We allowed residents to charge the rent on the credit card. But we ate that cost to residents who are suffering so we didn’t want to pass any more costs to them. So, we add that cost. But after we implemented this credit card, now it’s not borne by us, or the residents is borne by the credit card company. So
Speaker 9:53
you’re still allowed to use whatever credit card to pay rent or you just this is the only car that they’re allowed.
Anil 9:58
They can use it as a normal credit card, they can do grocery shopping and pay make rent payments
Speaker 10:04
if they have like an American Express card or something else, can they use? Can they still use that? And you still give them the option?
Anil 10:09
Yes, if they use any other card, then there is a transaction fee associated with the transaction.
Speaker 10:14
Yes, to Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Anil 10:16
So that’s the second example on helping residents. Third one. We have residents who do laundry, we are making the laundry, a smart laundry. So, it’s, it’s app controlled. And you can lock the laundry. So, you don’t have to worry about your laundry being stolen, or somebody opening your laundry. And that’s your success in seeing lots of success, too.
Speaker 10:41
That’s amazing. So, talking about the user experience, Zach and David. Both of you have technologies that you’re implementing to help building owners make their properties more attractive and more current with the current demands and needs of residents. So, Zach, can we start with you? I mean, car recently electric cars are proliferating. How are you guys being able to manage and help support the demand for electric charging in these older buildings.
Zach 11:15
So, we are installation, our method, we focus on what’s called the bookends to places you’re gonna have the longest well periods, there’s gonna be where you work. And when you move single family homes, it’s not an issue because you can put your own charger in your garage. But when you start talking, apartment buildings multifamily, that’s up to the property owner. So, our key to getting into these properties is one to make sure that we keep it incredibly low cost, we leverage incentives, rebates, whatever locally is available to help lower the cost of installation, since we are the entire turnkey process that allows us to make this a very seamless experience. So, we have a sales single point of contact from a selling point all the way to the end, when it’s commissioned, and then it gets passed on to the property management, we even then train the property managers on our system, so they’re aware of it. But the way we look at it is we we really focus on three aspects, simple, intelligent, reliable, if you can hit those, you’re gonna make everyone happy, you want it to be easy for the driver to have a good experience with the property manager not have one extra thing to manage and deal with. So, we have a very simple platform that they can see it all. And if they don’t want to ever log in there, they can reach out to us. And we can help make any adjustments necessary. Often the intelligence side, you need to have the technology to do things like load management, if any of your properties have demand, demand builds on top of the electric consumption, those can be very high. And sometimes you know more than half of the bill is just those demands. So, we have the technology that allows us one to put more chargers in by load managing them. And then also if you do have a demand issue, we can cap the system at certain timeframes to allow and make sure that you don’t have too much expense that then runs up those demand charges. And because like I said earlier, we have long dwell periods, we have more than enough time to allocate the power throughout the evening, when people are home to make sure everyone gets a charge. Not everyone needs to get a full charge rent at 5pm when they plug in, if they’re going to be there for 12 hours. And then the last part is just reliability. It just needs to work if it’s not working. It’s not acceptable. The EV industry gets charging industry specifically, it’s a pretty bad rap for the reliability of the hardware. So, we’re really focused on making sure with redundant communication, failsafe’s everything we can on our site to make sure that that driver always gets to charge it used to be an amenity, it’s now becoming a utility. It’s something someone needs to get to work the next day. So, we’re really focused on making sure that that experience is consistent and reliable for the drivers.
Speaker 13:33
Can you talk a little bit more, give me a little bit more detail about the cost model what it was a cost for the owner who pays for service how it works?
Zach 13:41
So currently, depending on the utility and the property’s location, there are incentives and rebates in place. So, for an example, here in Los Angeles, you can get up to 40 chargers installed in your property at zero cost that is $200,000, that DWP covers of the cost that covers the entire installation, zero cost to the property owner. And we actually have the capability to install ahead of that rebate and then carry the float until the rebate comes in so that we can get those chargers deployed even quicker. And then on top of that, we have a very low-cost model where we just take a little bit of the consumption revenue, so many of it’s not being used, you’re not having to pay for it, we have a couple of different models, obviously, we want to have flexibility depending on the situation. But we are able to tie the fees that come to us to the consumption so that if we do install 40 chargers, and you don’t have the adoption your garage, but we can get them installed for free now because of rebates. It allows you to get those in and then not have a huge recurrent fee until as a process builds up, you’ll just get a little bit of that consumption revenue will go toward invest to cover customer service, warranty, break, fix credit card transactions, all those aspects of the system, but it’s all controlled by us to make it a single point of contact
Speaker 14:55
and do the owners participate in in the revenue above cost as well?
Zach 15:01
And we are very open with the pricing model. So, the property owner decides the price so they can look at their electric bill and set whatever electric rate they would like. So, we leave that in the property owner’s hands. So they we always recommend, because it’s more of an amenity, you want to keep it pretty much breakeven make a little bit, maybe on it, but you want to be price gouging your residents, because EV drivers are pretty smart and aware of what the pricing looks like out there, just saying our gas driver knows what gas looks like, pull to a gas station, it’s $12, you’re gonna say this is crazy and go somewhere else. So same thing with electric vehicles. If you price gouge, it does create resistance and lower utilization. So, we always recommend to keep it just a little bit in there for yourself.
Speaker 15:40
And most of your installations in older buildings, newer buildings?
Zach 15:45
We prefer honestly to go into retrofits and the reason being is that we can come in there and just get it done very quick new construction we do as well. But if anyone has done new construction, it’s a very time-consuming process from the engineering construction, permitting, filing, getting it see a vote. So that can be multiple years. So, we like to come into properties know what’s available, we maximize what we can put based on the infrastructure in the property, we don’t like to pull a new service unless we have to, because that could add up to six months to a year and hundreds of 1000s of dollars potentially. So, what we always target is what do you have available now? How can we maximize the utilization of that infrastructure and be very efficient with the technology to allow that to help manage the power so that you’re able to have more ports and chargers in that via that garage without having to upgrade the infrastructure because of IT management?
Speaker 16:35
Sign me up.
Jason 16:37
I think it was number three on the apartments.com search to write electric charging
Zach 16:41
correct and as time has come on, you know finally the inflection point with EV drivers starting to more manufacturers making vehicles available to EV drivers. So now it’s becoming the top because like you’re saying Jason top three, most searched item on rent.com is to check that box to say does, is that building have EV charging available. So, it is becoming definitely a necessity, as things progress.
Speaker 17:06
So, David, there’s so many different electrical locks. And I guess mechanical locks out there talk about the pain point that you guys saw and how you’re your kind of solving it for both residents and building owners.
David 17:19
Yeah, so. So open path being an access control provider, we approach the technology a little differently than most of the access control providers out there. Because we’re using the power of cloud computing, and we focus on a mobile experience. And so that really ties into that resident experience, right? Resident experience today is mostly mobile, because you can interact with the property with your, with the community in a different way, right more intimately. And what we found was, there’s an expectation, and there’s actually a third COVID the pandemic It drove a need, right that I can do things in the building will be responsive to me, right. So, my ability to not just only unlock doors from or into the parking garage, and then into the elevator and then up to my unit or an amenity space, but the ability for me to make reservations, right. So, during the pandemic, if you’re enforcing and your fitness centers, capacity management, right, for social distancing, you could enable that reservation through the app, and that app would turn on your access privileges into that gym. Right, it would turn on prior reservation and it’ll expire. We also discovered that, you know, Jason, your, your daughter had this experience the the need or the expectation for self-touring, right. So, if I’m a resident of the future, and I’m going through a process, jeez, it would be nice for me, it will unlock the doors that I need to unlock all the way to that apartment unit. So, I can see the one that’s available. And I’m keenly interested in. So that was a secondaria. What’s behind the scenes is the power of the cloud computing is it gives you as an owner operator, the ability to scale your system, right. So, you might start and deal with, you know, in a in a vintage class B property might just be that main entry point to get into the building. But over time, you can just add more and more entries to it, right. And because it’s cloud, it just, it’s just a matter of, you know, flipping a switch. The second thing we find with Cloud is it just makes you more nimble, you can push updates out in real time. Right? So that means that as you’re adapting to new expectations, or new requirements that the markets presenting, you have a means of doing that. It’s not a Oh, geez, this old system that we have running on a Microsoft computer in my office, how the heck am I going to get that to do what I need it to do? Through the cloud, that pushes out as soon as it’s available, it’s on your system. So those are kind of the keyways and, you know, our approach to the to the market today and that can extend from new construction or retrofits extend from those primary entry points at the perimeter, and then more and more we’re finding all the way to the apartment unit lock because you want that and you expect that seamless experience, right? I never have to reach into my pocket to pull out another key or another FOB. It’s everything I can do is on my phone, or if I want to continue to use a fob, it’s on the fob.
Speaker 20:11
So, are you guys telling the software and the hardware?
David 20:15
Yes, the great question. So, for open path, we’re both a hardware and a software platform or hardware, or the access control readers, those wired access points. And those readers and all the electrified door hardware, the electric strikes, or the mag locks, they wire back to an open path panel, just like access control works today. And throughout the industry, our hardware is a little smarter, we’ve done some innovative things like put cameras into the readers itself. So now you have the ability to see who’s on the other side of that door, you can, you might want that for real time, before you unlock it, you might want it for after the fact in case you need to do some sort of investigation or analysis. We’ve also built voice AI, and to some of our readers. So now that reader will actually engage with you. Right? And so, you can it will help you connect you, especially if you’re a visitor or delivery person to connect you with your host automatically.
Speaker 21:09
And so, are you finding the most of these implementations are in existing buildings or newer buildings? How have you guys been scaling up your, your implementation?
David 21:19
Yeah, that’s a fair question. So, the kind of the short responses were applicable in both, but what we find is there’s so much more inventory that’s in operation today, that that’s the biggest part of the biggest opportunity of the market. And we find that there, you know, as owners or operators are trying to pivot trying to adapt. They’re realizing that technology investments they made, you know, 510 1520 years ago, just can’t meet what the market needs today what that new baseline is. So that’s been you know, where a lot of the a lot of our attraction has been, but new construction is also important. Yes, it does take a long time to get a building out of the ground and to deliver. But it’s, you know, you’re planting seeds for the future.
Anil 22:02
Yeah, if I may add just one point to what David just said. So, whenever we deploy a technology for resident, we measure the adoption of it. I mean, that’s the key. And we measured adoption of resident facing application, one that had access to door control system where you can open the door through to your mobile device. And the other set of buildings had just a resident tap, but no mobile access to the doors. The one with no access control, enabled mobile app, the adoption in the he started with like 10% adoption, but dropped to like zero after month to one with Smart Access Control stared at more than 90%. So, if you give residents real value, where they can really open a door, through mobile device, let their guests in through mobile device, adoption stays extremely high. But one where you just let them pay your rent or do other things. It often stays low, and many drop to zero in many, many buildings. So, it’s very important that these things are being asked and demanded by the steps.
Jason 23:12
Yeah, I agree with that, too. When you’re searching like the smart locks, I’m sure we notice, you got to take a look at what the what the smart locks do. Because you can wind up with some technology that really doesn’t do what you want work, and you’ll end up replacing it. So definitely ask all the questions like with charging, what do you do if a resident or if the power dies? So those sorts of things? So definitely check those out.
David 23:35
Yeah. And then Neil, to your point on the on the app engagement, right, long term adoption and utilization without question, you’re right. unlocking doors is the single highest use utility, right that an app can provide because you’re unlocking doors many times every day, I’m paying rent, probably once a month, maybe through your package, I can do it weekly. But yeah, but that’s the you know, that’s where we find people. They’ll explore the app more because they’re in it right every day. And you can continue to introduce new capabilities, new features that just enhance the value of that resident.
Jason 24:08
Yeah, for maintenance as well. That’s really keys, having the smart locks on and being able to, you know, have a maintenance guy get a time window. And a lot of the systems are working with the ERPs to where you can schedule that work order and have it unlocked. And that time went on, they’ll come into the into the unit.
Speaker 24:23
And he’ll talk about kind of how you think about the investment because all this technology requires investment except for zego, where we’re getting that for free pretty much. But most of the technology there’s obviously a cost both capital outlay but sometimes also an investment in time and energy to just implement it and get it through the system. With so many new technologies out there. How are you narrowing what you focus on and what kind of returns metrics are you thinking about in order to make that investment
Anil 25:00
Yeah, so investments is the key decision we look at all time. First of all, we try to identify the gaps to figure out what really gives the value. And these days lots of applications are being built, like, you can buy them and integrate it. So, we are looking at that as well. And in San Francisco, especially in San Francisco, you cannot pass the cost to resident. So, it has to be borne by the landlords. So, we look at not in terms of what it’s costing us versus what we can pass to residents, we look at in terms of return some and hire leasing velocity. So, we use those as a metrics to measure. But at the same time, when we are looking at what values we need to provide, we are asking residents, we are doing surveys, we are learning from other owners and operators to really stay in sync with where the market is moving, you know, and we are solving problems that will really help the resident right. So, as I said, flexible payment, pay on the credit card and earn rewards. When residents move in another example is moving is in a very experienced, sorry, stressful experience. How do we streamline so if somebody is moving from let’s say, New York to LA or San Francisco? How do we streamline their experience and how we can enable this experience through mobile? So, we are looking listening, listening to all the vendors and piloting the technology, one of the things we do really well, because we have more than 350 buildings, we, if we like a piece of technology, or a solution, we can pilot on five buildings or 10 buildings, and really see what that option is and really see what the value is. So, the sort of key, you know, proposition for us is pilot quickly. On buildings, we like to pilot and see the benefit. And is it really solving a problem or not? So, we are really measuring the adoption KPIs. So that’s kind of how we do things.
Jason 27:09
Yeah, for us, you know, we do the same as well, but for us to its capital, right, having that capital expense upfront for, hey, we’re going to rip out all the locks 100%. So, we really look at solutions and partners who kind of do you know, as I was saying, look for the rebates look for the options and look for a partner like on the locks and smart things that will say, you don’t have to do it in 800 units, we’ll work with you. And we’ll do it as you use your NOC natural occupancy and retrofit as you move along, and not have to do it up front, because that really cuts down on the capital costs of doing that. And same thing, we pilot five properties will generally couple different options before we decide to do and then look at, alright, this is a solution that helps out not only the resident, but also it can help us out in our operations ends as well, when we look at technology and the demand.
Speaker 27:58
So, Jason, for somebody that’s in the audience or in the audience thinking about a new development, what are the is there like a shortlist of must technologies that are kind of top of mind that you would suggest that they implement or plan on implementing
Jason 28:17
Chargie for electric vehicles? Definitely, but and having the smart units, right? You don’t have to go for the full-blown smart units where you’ve got everything in there, you know, command, but I mean, just think of the basics, right? What do people want, they want the thermostats, they want the door, you know, everything, you don’t need a fridge that talks to you and all that when you do but you know, just I would want the basics on there. Because, you know, it’s nice to have when you build but you know, 5-10 years down the line, they’re gonna be looking at retrofitting and, and replacing what they put in. And so, you want to be cutting edge but not bleeding edge. And you know overbilled for that. So, I recommend it. But new construction is so hard, though, I would agree with these guys. He’s in for us, like, you know, they’ll come in and ask me, and then you know, they get out into the field, and they’ll just do whatever they want. And there’s, there’s, you know, 10 or 15 different guys, and they’re pulling different strings. So retrofitting is easier. I agree.
David 29:16
Yeah, so for new construction, kind of the feedback that we hear from owners or developers, you know, there’s kind of attributes of technology that are important to them, they’ve learned through time, and, and through, maybe sometimes going down the wrong path. That kind of the three key things are think mobile, right. So there has to be a way to tie into a great mobile experience for your residents. You probably want to be cloud based, because that facilitates again, that nimbleness that the ability to pivot where an on-premises system doesn’t allow you to do that quite as easily as elegantly. And then third would just be that they’re open platforms, right. So, API, and so on application programming. interface so that each system can talk to each other. And you may not have any use case for that today, but there’s going to be one that emerges, and you want to able to tap into that API in order to be able to deliver that. So that’s, you know, those are kind of the three I’m curious if that’s, if that’s part of the thinking, as you’re looking, evaluating different vendors is that
Jason 30:21
Yeah, yeah cloud-based api access is different you know definitely something we look for if you want to integrate with all your systems right because we’re we’re going to go out we’re going to choose the best of breed you know too many companies try to do everything right it just doesn’t work out because they just wind up not doing anything well so if you find the best of breed with good apis and they’re cloud-based and you know even from the construction standpoint you know when we when i work with some of our builders we’ll you know mention hey think about the building infrastructure and you know everything’s wireless now so you think you don’t have to you know connect the buildings but you actually do when it comes down to technology so one way or another you know even with you go you got to go with the new cellular technology they still want to link your buildings and unfortunately some of that is still hardwire so always think of that
Speaker 31:09
Interesting, i had a good question but forgot about it. Anil, again you talked about rent you talked about um door locks anything what’s what’s next that you’re looking at how important is integration quite frankly i think that’s what i was going to ask is with your existing systems and are residents getting app fatigue yet?
Anil 31:38
Yeah, no integration is key if you are looking at a vendor and if they cannot integrate look somewhere else for resident you don’t want them to go to five different apps to do five different things so seamless one app if possible experience is the key to answer the second part of the question about what we are looking at next uh you know uh if you think about resident you know for us security of the residents is very important so not only smart access to the locks but also security feed into the camera so they can see their units they can see the lobby they can see when their packets are being delivered and being in San Francisco downtown area getting a package delivered and having it safe in your lobby is extremely important so we are looking at partners who can keep your packets until you pick them up so that area is also growing fast uh we are piloting with a vendor uh on how that works
Speaker 32:51
Is. That something different than the amazon lockers?
Anil 32:54
yeah, we have amazon lockers too uh but sometimes amazon lockers they would
put it in your lobby and that doesn’t look do well so plus if somebody is getting a furniture delivered that won’t fit there
Speaker 33:08
That won’t fit in the locker
Jason 33:10
We feel the same with that, they just don’t get used
Anil 33:14
Exactly, exactly so how do you have it safely stored until the resident picks it up you know and resident these days could be anywhere, they could be in Hawaii when their package is delivered so how do you keep it safe for a week or two so these are the areas we are exploring
Speaker 33:31
Are the deliveries companies cooperating in terms of coming in and looking at the different systems?
Anil 33:38
Yes. Yeah, and this area is again evolving very fast one thing we are noticing in proptech is new ideas are coming from all over the place and if you are if you want to build your experience for residents and provide them services you will have lots of options you know so look at what’s available what works for your resident your building and pick the right platform and everything that Jason and David said in terms of integration open apis those are going to be the key you know as i said if they have to go to five different places to do five different things adoption would be not there and you will you know invest in technology or system that wouldn’t work
Jason 34:26
yeah, and just on the open apis like one of the big initiatives we have right now is you know dashboards and reporting and getting that operational data going and that’s one of our big projects of the year so having systems that work with that is key you know that helps us not only with you know resident data but operational data as well
Speaker 34:44
so on the back end you now are able to capture all that data and do some data analytics to be able to determine what are the key drivers of uh the resident experience and make your investments accordingly
Jason 34:56
yeah we started our journey with a different platform that we’re gonna um be sun setting just because it’s not flexible right it doesn’t have all the open apis doesn’t have the flexible reporting doing we’re rolling out a new system that’s built on Microsoft’s power bi and it’s built for the real estate industry and you can basically pull whatever data you want into it right because it’s got an open platform for you to do that and manage and massage that data so that’s key for us in a big initiative and it’s got the full company backing all the way up to our you know major partners
Zach 35:33
Yeah, to add to that, uh in the ev side of the business at least for the charging and data is always incredibly important to us as well that’s what we have a dashboard for the property owners that is an open api that can be integrated into other dashboards as well but the key is we monitor that consumption that usage that utilization to then justify when it makes sense to add more charges or put that next step of investment so you clearly are able to look back at the history and make a rational decision based upon that past experience and what is going on with that property and some properties just naturally will have more utilization than others and when you see it and you can justify the next step you know bring us back in and we lay out the options of what it looks like to continue to expand the system so you’re not forced into a huge upfront cost if you want to do in a modular fashion you can do that by just continuing to add to the system as necessary
Jason 36:22
Yeah, for us its being n third party property management too that’s key because you know we have we live on the fee and that cost per door really eats into that so knowing what that cost per door is with all the different things that we’re running is so key into our profitability
Speaker 36:41
Zach are you guys integrated into the billing systems or do you have your own separate billing system billing that goes out to the to the tenant how does that work?
Zach 36:49
uh we have both options right now the primary is our own billing system just because of the way that it works from the charging side it’s easier for us to have full control over the systems but we do also have the availability to integrate with other payment systems so like you’re saying before you don’t get overburdened with too many apps we have the ability to integrate to an app that necessary so that our charging initiation functions can be triggered from some other app without even having to be a part of our ecosystem.
