Integration pays off – Mobile property inspection with easysquare as the perfect data basis at DOGEWO21

Bidding farewell to stacks of paper

As Dortmund’s largest housing company, DOGEWO21 manages more than 16,000 apartments home to over 40,000 people. It goes without saying that house caretakers must regularly conduct a whole range of property inspections here. DOGEWO21 outsources its legally required safety precautions inspections to an external service company. Beyond this, there are other cyclically recurring tasks such as inspecting rubbish areas and checking the cleanliness of stairways. Up to now, the caretaker completed and documented these with pen and paper. “The goal of the project was to replace the existing paper system with a mobile solution integrated into our SAP^® system. In doing so, we wanted to kill several birds with one stone. For one thing, we aimed to simplify generation of the annual operation costs statement for our operating costs team. For another, we wanted to create system-supported documentation for potential reviews of operating costs. Apart from the question of allocating costs, the caretaker inspections are the basis for maintaining our especially high quality standards at DOGEWO21, which is why we also hoped the new solution could provide a new management tool,” explains Heiko Bahn, project manager at DOGEWO21.

From a standard product to a bespoke solution

PROMOS perfectly incorporates cyclically recurring inspection tasks with the easysquare quality assessment solution. To adapt this function to property inspections, the standard solution underwent customer-specific adjustments tailored to the DOGEWO21 caretaker service. The employees were then able to try out the solution and identify further necessary changes. This method has been proven as best practice in numerous customer projects over the years. The mobile solution was finally rolled out in full upon completion of the project.

Creating a good foundation

Because the quality control and safety precautions are based on the technical rather than the commercial master data, the project involved adapting the master data (functional locations and modules) at DOGEWO21 and partially transferring it into the new functions. When it was necessary to record new inventory information, the most comprehensive version of the relevant item was stored in the system. The mobile solution offers an additional function in the standard for module maintenance. If the house caretaker updates a building characteristic while performing their regular tasks, this information is fed back into the SAP^® system and confirmed there by another employee in accordance with the dual control principle. Bahn is happy with the result: “In this way, we can quickly increase the quality of our master data with little effort and make the best use of it for property inspections.”

Heiko Bahn, head of division portfolio management, DOGEWO21

Immediately available inspection results

With the easysquare solution for mobile property inspections, the house caretakers receive their building inspection tasks in the app. In contrast to general safety inspections, property inspections by the house caretaker are not based on legal obligations but are directly intended to maintain quality of life. “We want to provide living space and the accompanying infrastructure to our tenants in perfect condition. Regular inspections are essential to this”, explains Bahn. In accordance with the cyclical plans, the house caretakers receive their inspection tasks in the easysquare app and can conduct the inspection on site in the app. The data is then automatically reintegrated into the SAP^® system and can be accessed there for verification or billing purposes.

Clever handling of data with individual SAP^® reports

Instead of filling up filing cabinets, the house caretaker inspection reports can now be generated with the click of a button. The sceptical tenant wishing to see evidence of the caretaker service performed and billed in the operating cost statement can now find the results in just a few mouse clicks. PROMOS developed two customer-specific reports for this purpose. With the service specification in SAP^®, a PDF overview of all recurrent planned inspection tasks can be generated and filtered by building or caretaker. Meanwhile, the proof of performance documents the work actually performed on site by each employee. “Today, we accomplish in just a few clicks what used to take hours. We no longer have to spend so much effort compiling the individual reports. This also significantly reduces our paper consumption”, says Bahn. In addition to its role as verification for tenants, the data is also processed in an additional report for the team in the operating costs department. Using relevant allocation keys, they create an overview that serves as the basis for operating cost accounting.

A convincing result

The project involved various divisions at DOGEWO21, including teams in commercial and technical property management as well as the IT and operation costs departments. The continuous participation of the responsible parties from different departments in the project meetings and workshops proved to be a decisive success factor for the project as a whole. With the newly created solution, it is now considerably easier for the DOGEWO21 house caretakers to directly enter their inspection results on site. The project has also led to a significant improvement in the quality of the technical master data. Bahn describes the most important advantage of mobile inspections: “We profit as a company not only from the legal certainty and documentation but especially from the automatic SAP^® integration. All data is centrally available at once and can be evaluated for the relevant purposes in just a few clicks.” In the future, it will also be possible to automate processing of operating cost data for the generation of operating cost statements, thus eliminating more manual work steps.