Embracing Technology
by JIM KJOLHEDE

August 15th, 2009

Being that I have been in the business for over 28 years, I have witnessed significant growth in the professionalism and the advent and continued maturation of technology in the Multi-Family space. I learned on the “Little Buddy” Prentice-Hall system and have always appreciated how technology can be a wonderful “tool” for site operations as well as multi-site operators. Unfortunately, I have a strong feeling that we as an industry try to hold on to the system that we just left and want the new system to do what the old one did!!! I always tried to look at the movement to the new system as a “tabula rasa” (blank slate) and one that I could learn to improve operations and effectiveness with NOI always in my mind. I think that as an industry we don’t take the time and money to “mine” the possibilities in front of us even after we make the decision for an upgrade in our systems. I wonder how much better our NOI could be if we maximized what is in front of us.