Clear View Property Management manages 450 units in Alberta Canada, with three local employees and five remote team members.

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Since most of his team is remote, Stephen has always valued operational processes to help keep his team on track. He has tried multiple different softwares and systems but struggled to find something that checked all the boxes he needed.

“We have used other process software in the past; we've gone down this rabbit hole a few times. We originally met with Podio, and Podio is great, but I have an IT background and I can't understand Podio. So, unless you're going to hire a full time developer or hire someone overseas to run that for you (and you literally will need someone full time or spend a ton of consulting to get that going), it’s not the best solution.”

“We used to have our applications in Excel and it was color coded to what task it was. I looked at it in a call one day and there were something like 12 different colors. How would I have any idea of where we're at with each one? Like, I didn't know what magenta meant.”

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Stephen was looking for a software that was:

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✅ Easy to use & update

✅ Integrated with their PM Software and Zapier

✅ Flexible for different situations and processes

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Stephen then attended Paul Kankowski’s Systems Conference and learned about LeadSimple’s operational process workflow tools. Having used LeadSimple for his growth and lead management, he was very intrigued by the new process management tools.

“It's great. We had [LeadSimple] for sales, but the team really need something for operations, and it just seemed like a really good fit that you guys were going to build out that automation software.”

LeadSimple checks all the boxes Stephen was looking for:

“We wanted to integrate it with PropertyWare. So you guys were able to pull the data out of our property management system and put it into LeadSimple. I personally believe that any system that doesn't do that means you’ve got to stop. You don't want to be putting data into both systems. 

“Number two, I think, would be an integration with Zapier. There's a lot of these systems and what we had before didn't have that option, and then you're really handcuffed with what you want to do with your data.”

“It's just simple. We didn't need to have a huge developer; we got to hire you guys to help us with the processes. But it is something that you can do on your own as well.”

The Clear View team has already felt many benefits from their LeadSimple processes:

✅ No more last minute communications around move outs

“We can reach out to the owner and say, this person's moving out. What do you want to do? Do you just want a new renter? Do you want us to sell your place? Now we can have that conversation earlier on versus like at the last minute.”

✅ Never forgetting to transfer utilities

“We've added some tasks in here to make sure that we're assigning tasks to the staff to make sure they contact utility companies to change utilities when the tenant moves out. It's kind of critical here, because it's wintertime. So there's no gas or no heat in a unit like that's going to be a huge problem.”

✅ Remembering to charge lease renewal fees

“Also just making sure that we charge our fees. Because every time we do a renewal, we should be charging a renewal fee. So if we're missing that task, you know, there's  renewal fees that are missing as well.”

✅ Stop accidentally charging rent to tenants who have moved out

“If somebody forgets to go into the property management system and disable their payment, and then they get charged rent for June, like then there are tenants moved out and you've charged rent to them and they're leaving you a bad review. … You're dealing with all of that drama when you really don't need to be dealing with that.”

Stephen also really appreciated the help and accountability of consulting with the LeadSimple team to build out their processes.

“There's a whole bunch of work that needs to be done, but in this business it was always daily fires, like actual literal fires. So, you have to sometimes put those out, but then the processes fall to the backend and then you're just constantly firefighting. So, yeah, your team was great about meeting with us. … When we had you guys do some of those processes or meet us on the calls that gave us the drive through to actually get those ones done.”

Stephen’s advice to other teams looking to tackle processes is: 

“I would say two things. One: go to Paul Kankowski's systems conference that he has. And the reason for that is because at that conference, you actually build out your processes. It's not one of these conferences where you're like, you hear a bunch of great ideas and you go back to the office and do none of them."

“I say number two is just sign up. …It's been one of the best decisions I'd say we've made is having you guys help out. And having LeadSimple has been great.”

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