Kerri Davis is the CEO of Fortress, an end-to-end operations platform for the property management industry.
For most of us, there is at least one moment that we can look back on in our careers when we realized things just weren’t working—a moment after which everything changed.
My moment was when I realized that the software my property management company was using couldn’t support our business strategy, size and growth. After some additional research and even rolling out some of the top incumbent property management solutions on the market, I realized that no one was solving this problem.
In these moments of realization, we usually have two options.
1. Carry on working within the restrictions. Accept a limited framework, work harder, push more and try to find workarounds with the limited tools available
2. Build a new solution.
It isn’t easy to go with the second option. In fact, it takes a massive amount of commitment, courage and maybe even insanity. But, sometimes, the pivot just makes the most sense.
The First Step
The first pivot was the decision to step away from the status quo and start building. Before beginning to build, we honed in on how we could do it exponentially better. We didn’t start with what was; we started with what we needed. What did our industry need? A solution that focused on the necessary workflows designed for and by the people who were using them, a solution that made jobs easier, people successful and assets valuable.
Because proptech solutions often aren’t created alongside on-the-ground teams, users find themselves scrambling for data and creating piecemeal processes. For example, the teams I supported spent every Monday compiling Excel sheets with information from 10 different reports to send to 60 different property owners.
I realized how important it was to identify these areas of inefficiencies and optimize the system. Our main findings:
• One system that does it all means mediocrity. The incumbent systems were trying to solve everything rather than focus and integrate.
• Complicated access and lack of usability means missed data and lack of visibility. For instance, I knew my property managers were the ones who used the PMS and owners rarely logged in. And yet, at the same time, owners were the ones that often were the decision makers.
• Starting with people gives you an understanding of the key roles that will be interacting with your technology platform. This includes those who haven’t used a similar solution before. You’re, therefore, constantly asking yourself, “How can I best enable their success through their experience?”
Small Steps Versus Big Changes
The second pivot was in deciding what to build.
We started by building an overlay dashboard that aggregated data from key sources. While very helpful on the surface, I quickly learned that it ultimately caused problems down the line. Developing and depending on someone else’s infrastructure is inherently risky and limits how your solution can expand because it is based on outputs that can shape and shift without the developer knowing its future. Our team constantly asked for more, but we couldn’t deliver more within those restrictions.
So we asked ourselves, “What is technology doing if it’s not truly enabling speed and success?” When I started to look beyond the surface of the tools that weren’t working for me and my team, I realized the inefficiencies went way deeper.
For that reason, we pivoted and decided to invest in the long route: an enterprise solution. We spent our time streamlining not only the dataflow but also looking into a customer-focused UX journey first.
Continue Versus Pivot
Having made the hard decisions, I thought I was on the path to success. I hired a CTO and engaged a full-time remote team to start building the database, and we were off…only we weren’t.
For weeks, I couldn’t “see” anything. Then, weeks turned into months, and I realized I had two options: Continue with no visibility, little trust, and nothing to beta, or reset and start over. This was probably the hardest decision I have ever made in my entire career, but I knew, in my gut, that I wasn’t headed in the right direction. Ego bruised, I admitted to my partners that I had wasted about $350,000 and that I wanted to scrap it and start over.
I did a lot of research and engaged an outsourced technology company that came highly recommended by several other startup CEOs. I then began an extensive course of working with highly technical and creative engineers and designers, and the product came to life.
Within four weeks, I could use prototypes, understand the functionality and feel the value. This pivot, the pivot of all pivots, was the true beginning of an incredibly successful company, and I couldn’t be more grateful for it.
This hard-earned realization continues to inform almost every decision I make: There’s a lot to be said for knowing when to pivot, no matter what costs have been sunk.
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