Everything covered – Do you already know our PROMOS account report for SAP Fiori^®?

What tenants and landlords want

Aside from the financial burden of monthly rent and the furnishing of a property as evaluation criteria, certain qualitative factors are decisive for tenant satisfaction. Good reachability and competent contact persons are among the top priorities that tenants expect of their property management company. This might be the reason why the phone continues to be so popular as contact method. Since questions can usually be answered immediately, this form of contact is perceived as quick and easy. The prerequisite is that the person on the other end of the line has the right answers. Real estate companies would be well advised not to lose sight of factors like this – a frustrating experience can quickly translate into a negative review on Google.

From a landlord’s perspective, rent that is not paid or paid too late is one of the most common reasons for trouble with tenants.^[1] Those who are satisfied with their tenancy and feel that they are taken seriously usually pay the rent on time and remain with their landlord for longer periods. Low fluctuation, fewer vacancies and predictable rental properties make professional tenant support an essential asset for increasing the profitability of real estate. In light of this, software solutions that enable employees to provide better information are becoming increasingly important.

Anyone who knows SAP^® knows that information is not always easy to find, even though the ERP system provides all the data required by customer service employees. To optimise usability for users, PROMOS has developed the account report in SAP Fiori^®. A small tile contains many useful functions that your employees may suddenly need during a phone call – and which are quick and intuitive to find!

Making valuable connections

With receivables management as the objective, requirements for the new tool’s functionality are easily defined. Users should be able to provide information, find information quickly and view histories, and employees should be able to send out information to the customer and generate correspondence. If something has to be changed in the course of a conversation, it must be possible to record and change data or store notes on the contact. This is where the PROMOS solution comes in.

If your property manager searches for the respective tenant during a call, the account report provides a quick in-app search help. To eliminate the need for annoying asterisks in SAP^®, a fully comprehensive Google search was developed. The combination of several keywords enables much more accurate search results, including hits that contain only components of the keyword entered. You can search directly for the contract number, the name of the contractual partner or rental property in the free text search as required. The results for the search text are displayed in a detailed view, but the search field remains reduced in size as a separate column in the image for quick navigation (Figure 1). The immediate display of the contract balance in the results list is particularly practical.

Selecting a contact takes you to the centrepiece of the app, where employees receive information on the name, contract number and balance in the header area. This provides an initial overview of the current contract status. The body contains all details, which can also be reached via four quick-access tabs in the header.

The four illustrious tabs

Which contract details does the PROMOS account report provide information about? As the name suggests, the Partner tab contains only the most important key data about the business partner, i.e. the person. A pop-up helps to keep the view lean overall while still showing gaps in the master data. Is the phone number or an e-mail address missing? The employee can then simply ask the contact person during the call and add the missing data. The business partner number highlighted in blue is also used to jump to the transaction.

Tabs number two and three provide information on the Contract and the Rental Property. When does the contract start and, if applicable, end? Is a dunning level stored and, if so, when was the last payment reminder sent? Is there a SEPA mandate? Employees will find answers to all these questions in this section and will get another opportunity to request missing information such as the bank account details.

In addition, a quick overview of contract balances is essential for property management. If the balance has not been settled over a longer period of time, urgent action is required in receivables management. The fourth tab therefore provides details on the contract balance (Figure 2). For a rough overview, the balance and open items from the last 15 months are visualised in a diagram. This period can also be adjusted individually for each customer via customising as required. If an employee needs more detailed information, they can simply use a button to switch to the list display, which shows the various open items.

Thinking outside the box...

In order to maintain the practical relevance for receivables management, our project team looks to a very special role model – namely Jan. Jan is a property manager who communicates with his tenants on a daily basis. The development team asked the question “What is important for Jan?” and incorporated the most important findings into the new solution. Agile project methods, such as the use of scrum boards, creative workshops, visualisation tools and regular consultations, delivered the ideal tool to virtually provide the development team with the perfect prototype on paper, thus filling the PROMOS account report with all the functions needed in property management.

That’s why our four illustrious tabs in the PROMOS account report come with various functions that can be particularly useful for our property manager Jan. Only with these functions does a complete picture of all application options emerges. They can be easily reached via the More Functions button in the header, which allows you to show and hide a third column in addition to the search and the contract details (Figure 3).

Notes such as the reason for initiating contact can be stored here. Previously entered notes can be viewed in the history, but they cannot be changed or deleted. This ensures complete documentation. Another function displays additional contracts with the contractual partner, such as the rental of a parking space. You can define which contracts associated with the main tenant are to be displayed via customising. This enables the customer to individually restrict whether only active or expired and future contracts should be output. The integration of a jump to the PROMOS correspondence solution OPCC, which generates documents in the editable DOCX format, is particularly helpful for communication. As a lot of correspondence sometimes accumulates over a long rental relationship, it is conveniently integrated into a list of attachments as archive documents.

A small tile with big goals

The PROMOS account report in SAP Fiori^® is not only optimised for Jan in his daily customer contact, but also for your property management activities. The few clicks required ensure a positive application experience and make the system easy to operate. This frees up time for employees to listen to your tenants.

1. One in four landlords stated in a survey that they had had negative experiences with unpaid rent or rent repeatedly paid late by their tenants. Source: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/70839/umfrage/vermieter-aerger-mit-mietern/