The Feature you Never Knew you Needed

If you’re a member of Sam’s Club or Costco, you’ll understand the many cost-saving joys that come with buying things in bulk (the free samples they give out are a definite win, too). The main purpose of purchasing items in large quantities is usually to save either time or money (or both). But in addition to the aforementioned, there are other ways in which incorporating the ‘bulk’ approach can be used to increase the efficiency of a process – like making changes to multiple smart devices simultaneously, for example.

Supposing you’re a property manager that does not currently have a Facilities IoT Management solution deployed across your community, you may be interested to know what kind of situations would call for making bulk changes to smart devices. If so, it’s your lucky day.

In student housing communities in particular, there are periods of high-vacancy that occur around the same time each year – typically during summer, winter, spring break and “turn.” During these intervals, most students tend to flee home to the comfort of their parents home-cooked meals (can you blame them?), leaving their apartment sitting empty.

That’s at least four times a year that the majority of an entire housing community will be vacant, and I’m sure you know that 99% of those students will not take the care to make sure their thermostat is set accordingly before they go away. Needless to say, it’s almost a guarantee that the AC units in most of those empty apartments will be left running… for weeks, sometimes even months at a time. That’s a lot of wasted energy and a recipe for one very high utility bill. Not to mention any malfunctions that could surface as a result of prolonged, unattended equipment usage.

A not-so-quick fix for this common problem would be to have your maintenance staff go door to door to make sure each thermostat is set to ‘off.’ But in a community of 400+ apartments, that’s neither efficient nor cost-effective.

So let’s say you did have a Facilities IoT Management Solution installed across your community. As a property manager, you’d have the ability to oversee all smart devices from one centralized dashboard. Customization tools would allow you to create individual Profiles for each device, including the option to assign each one to a particular Group. You’d be able to define the settings for each Group to ensure optimal unit efficiency, and all devices added to the Group would then automatically be assigned those settings.

For example, as summer approaches you could create a Group named “Summer Break.” The temperature for all thermostats within that Group could be set to hold at 78 degrees. Not completely off, because in the heat of the summer you don’t want an apartment to become too humid (hello, mold!) – but also not set too low so that the HVAC unit ends up blowing cold air to an empty room all day to try to keep up with it being 90 degrees outside. As soon as summer break hits and you know that unit #’s 201-305 are officially unoccupied, they can all be added to the “Summer Break” Group. The defined ‘Hold at 78 degrees’ setting would then be applied to every device within that Group. Better yet, any adjustments you make to the main settings of the Group would simultaneously be reflected to all devices within the Group. No need to go through and apply settings to individual devices. Effortless and efficient.

That’s just one of the many ways in which making changes in bulk can be a huge benefit to property managers that are managing multiple smart devices. A Facilities IoT Solution is purpose-built to streamline operational processes and reduce costs, helping to optimize expense management. But don’t take our word for it, contact us now to learn more about how the TrustHab solution can help you to increase your NOI.

The evolution of Facilities IoT is coming… is your community ready?

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