AMLI Residential Contracts With 1477 Wireless to Improve Property Maintenance  

Dallas, Texas – AMLI Residential (NYSE: AML) has contracted 1477 Wireless to launch and maintain a system that will organize management of work orders for property maintenance.

Chicago-based AMLI Residential, one of the country’s top 50 largest owners/managers of multifamily residential communities, is using 1477 Wireless Maintenance Management Server™ and its wGateway™ methodology to create a centralized maintenance management infrastructure.  With that system, AMLI can provide front-line maintenance, community management, and the home office with online service requests and real-time status reports.    The planned result is enhanced customer service and increased resident retention as well as better tracking of work orders and efficiency by management. 

Following the December, 2001 agreement, AMLI began implementing the1477 Wireless  Maintenance Management Server™ for five  communities. The rollout to AMLI’s  entire portfolio is scheduled for completion in May.

During a four-month pilot test late last year, 1477 Wireless excelled over other, larger ASP-based systems in ease of deployment, use, and training. 

"After reviewing numerous other maintenance software packages, 1477 was the best software we could implement to create value at AMLI." Robert Aisner, Executive Vice President, AMLI Residential Properties Trust

 “The 1477 Wireless Maintenance Management Server had all the features and the right price point,” said Phil Caldwell, AMLI’s National Director of Maintenance. Caldwell explained that a key feature requirement was ease of use. "Our on-site users have many customer interactions daily and need a simple yet effective interface.  One of the strong points of 1477 Wireless Maintenance Management Server was that the system could be configured to service a new location within a few hours, and the users trained and up and running within one day.  Some of the other systems had similar features but could not cover all of the required functions and were not as user friendly. With the complexity of what we were looking to do, the competitive systems would not have worked for us.”

Steve Blankenship and Les Garrett founded Dallas-based 1477 Wireless in 1999. They combined their experience in facilities management technology with input from multifamily owner/managers and apartment industry consultants to develop economical Web-based maintenance solutions. Under the improved and economical 1477 Wireless scenario, property management receives and enters work orders through the Internet.  The crew is then notified and dispatched to location through a text message sent to their wireless device.  Specific work order details are included and the crew is able to prepare for the upcoming task immediately.   After the work order is completed, the maintenance personnel close the ticket, enter time spent, and schedule a follow-up appointment, if needed. 

The result is a system that successfully eliminates paper-based tracking of all maintenance for the multifamily housing industry.  This improves response time by delivering an on-line work order to the crew as soon as it is input.   The system also provides complete information so crews will be better prepared for maintenance requests.   The data captured by the property manager and work crew provides real-time reports regarding the work order status and work crew utilization.

The 1477 Maintenance Solution’s goal is to improve resident satisfaction, which in turn will impact the bottom line through better lease conversions and referrals.  It also enables management to better control and monitor property performance, using consistent corporate policies and procedures that are difficult to enforce using a manual systems. Managers can benchmark vital statistics and have access to real-time information 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Management can also enforce and audit a better preventive maintenance program. Additionally, potential investors and buyers can access maintenance history instantly. 

AMLI Residential, a real estate investment trust, owns and operates 71 apartment communities containing 27,258 apartment homes, with an additional 2,937 apartment homes under development or in lease-up in eight locations.  AMLI is focused on the development, acquisition and management of Class A multifamily communities in the Southeast, Southwest, Midwest and Mountain Regions areas of the U.S. Prior to the 1477 Wireless contract, the AMLI maintenance operation was handled manually through a paper-based system. 

The multifamily industry, wanting to improve real estate valuations, has been looking for ways to increase profitability through better resident retention and better control of costs. A survey of owner/managers shows that maintenance accounts for approximately 40 percent of the operations budget at an apartment community. In the opinion of multifamily housing residents, work orders need to be handled faster and more accurately.  In fact, work order processing is identified as an important basis for customer satisfaction, which weighs heavily during lease renewals.

From the view of apartment managers, a more organized maintenance system is needed to free time for resident service and making leases.  At the home office, management needs to track staff utilization and portfolio site benchmarking, which are important factors in gauging maintenance performance at the portfolio level.  

Maintenance personnel can view new work orders, track the status of existing work orders, record their time, and enter work order completion information. Adding the wireless component, an inexpensive cellular phone enables a mobile work force of maintenance crews to participate in Web solutions without computers.  Community managers can use the system to view an individual property and obtain property specific reports.  At the corporate level, the system provides portfolio-wide benchmarking capability and application control, viewing the entire portfolio. The centralized management control provided by this Web-based/enterprise solution enables companies to implement consistent policies and procedures for each apartment community.

According to Steve Blankenship, 1477 Wireless’ co-founder and chief executive officer "One of our goals was to eliminate paper based tracking and decrease response times for   service requests.   Since local maintenance and property management staff don't have to spend their time looking for lost tickets and ineffectively responding to customer service problems, it's freed time to do value-added work for their site. Users have said it saves them two or three hours a week.” 

"There is accountability built into the system and anyone on site can instantly review the status of any work order. With this system, AMLI can measure their maintenance operations.   When you can measure something, reliably, you can then manage it profitably. Overall, the users are happy."