According to a recent BUILDINGS article, the vast majority of American companies (90%) plan to invest more in productivity-enabling technologies by 2015.

Leading-edge technologies are a common strategy for companies to reduce expenses, increase productivity, and even attract talent. But what do they mean for the average worker?

Here’s 3 ways technology has changed the work environment in property management:

1) Accountability

If a senior executive asked you out of the blue who was responsible for fixing the leak in the roof four years ago, how long do you think it would take to provide an answer? Now let’s assume you are new to the organization, and you know there has been some turnover with engineers in the last year. Unless the previous PM kept great documentation and filed everything in a logical place, such a request would probably take more time than you really have.

Companies have a growing focus on accountability, documentation, and tracking in their processes – enabled by the incorporation of new technologies into the workforce. Tools such as mobile apps allow you to quickly find out not only who did the work but also the time frame, costs and details surrounding it – in real-time.

2) Transparency

It wasn’t long ago when a property manager would need to spend hours collecting and analyzing their operations data. Frequently, this was a monthly exercise that could consume many hours, depending on the size of the portfolio. New technologies are giving property managers, as well as senior executives, immediate access to real-time data of their day-to-day operations. Not only do they have immediate access to the data, they also have the ability to easily sift through it. Which brings me to my third point:

3) Sorting through the Clutter

If you were fortunate enough to take over a property with an extremely organized person prior to joining your management team, congratulations, you are one of the fortunate ones. Most new employees walk into someone else’s mess and are expected to have it sorted out in a relatively short amount of time. In the past, this may have taken days, if it was even possible to round up all the data, which often looks like this:

Facility management software

Fortunately, these new tools are giving employees almost instant knowledge of property trends, problem locations, and insight into performance breakdowns.

With the constant influx of new technology and strategies surrounding it, climate change is indisputable – corporate climate at least.