Over the course of a year, the Inventory market has seen a rapid increase in new technology products, ranging from PDA solutions to more recently Smart Phone apps. With each claiming to be the best solution for producing inventory reports. Kate Maddison, Key Accounts Manager at Live Letting Exchange, explores the pros and cons of introducing this technology to their proposition.
"We are watching the technology developments in the inventory production arena very closely and have been for some time now. We are a technologically focused business and have consistently invested heavily in our IT platform, so people may ask why we have not yet made the jump to PDA/Smart Phone technology?
The honest answer is we have yet to be fully convinced of the benefits and whether the solutions out there actually address an issue or whether they create new ones. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the technology has the ability, on paper (no pun intended), to improve efficiencies, speed up transactions and deliver a more impressive proposition to Clients. However, you have to question whether by doing this we are looking for a solution for a problem that doesn't actually exist and is the reality of this technology very different in practice?
Improved turnaround times are often cited as a benefit - but the reality is that a well managed inventory panel doesn't ever have issues with delivery times - they work to stringent SLAs agreed with Agents and deliver against them. Some of the newer technologies available appear to be mainly about promoting time saving and cost benefits at the expense, we feel, of detail. We haven't yet found a product which provides a level of detail over and above that which an independent professionally written Inventory provides.
Even if you make the leap that technology could improve delivery times, could this be at the expense of quality? Does the instantaneity of some of the Voice Recognition packages, PDAs and Smart Phone app. products out there (where the report is produced as the inventory clerk inspects the property) have the potential to damage quality? We do have a concern that this could be an issue and believe it is beneficial to have a separate process where a clerk can compile a report away from the sometimes pressurised environment of the property inspection itself.
Some companies are pitching solutions which allow people with very little knowledge to use their technology to produce reports - this worries us a great deal. In an industry where Inventories are almost as important as Tenancy Agreements, it begs the question, "Would a professional Letting Agent allow just anybody to produce their AST’s?".
Is technology genuinely improving the product or simply making Inventories easier to produce by a wider audience? We would certainly be wary of any technology that delivered a product of poorer quality in favour for a faster delivery time. Inventories, Check-In and Check-Out Reports play far too an important role in the successful management of a tenancy and deposit resolution.
We will continue to offer bespoke inventories as our core proposition for the time being but continue to review developments on an almost daily basis. One thing's for sure, the industry is changing quickly and we certainly wouldn't rule out the potential for a technological solution to address these challenges."
To find out more about Live Letting Exchange’s national Inventory solution, please contact Kate Maddison, Key Accounts Manager, on 077365 17459 or kate.maddison@live-lx.com
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