The workflows and business processes of property management (PM) companies are relatively standardized and fragmented. Hence, the potential for the digital transformation of these business processes should be relatively high compared to dissimilar real estate service providers, e.g. project development.
The aim of my dissertation project is to assess the gap between the current technological possibilities and the status quo in the PM industry as well as to explore the reasons underlying this gap:
- Identify main business processes of PM companies and divide them into sub-tasks
- Analyze the current potential of digitalization for each sub-task from a technological perspective (i.e. the “technological barrier”)
- Identify other innovation barriers
- Survey the status-quo regarding digitalization of main business processes and innovation barriers in Austrian PM companies
This contribution to ERES’ PhD workshop summarizes the outcomes of the first phase of my dissertation project and sketches a standardized model of the main business processes in Austrian PM companies.
Although the model developed focuses on Austria – necessarily so, because the scope of business processes in PM companies is partially linked to national (real estate) law – it can be used in and adapted to other legislative contexts. Therefore, the workflows derived from it will be made available as open access files in an editable format.
Methods:
- Expert interviews applying gamification elements with executives
- Analysis of documents provided by companies (e.g. process flowcharts, contracts, tender documents)
- Observation of employees’ work tasks (where necessary)
- Design of flowcharts using BPMN 2.0
- Discussion of extracted workflows with experts