Why Work With a Technology Partner Rather Than a Software Vendor

When you make a significant investment in any operational improvement for your property revitalization efforts, it’s important to understand the difference between choosing a partner and a vendor.

While working with a technology partner is functionally the same as a software vendor, there are several crucial distinctions. A software vendor simply provides a product, whereas a technology partner develops an ongoing relationship with you and guides you to achieve the best results.

A software vendor’s main focus is to provide their product and collect payments. This can often create a disconnected experience for the client company – leading to issues like misusing the software, not leveraging all the features, or not getting team buy-in. A technology partner is fully committed to building and maintaining a collaborative relationship with you and your team.

It is wise to work with a company that acts as a technology partner for the long-term benefits it pays out to your company. Having an ongoing, iterative relationship that is based on the notion that “I win, if you win” goes much further than the most affordable software.

With the right technology partner, you will find they are actively supporting and guiding your team, trying to understand how best to accommodate your goals, and investing in listening to your input. While these values MIGHT be found in a vendor, it’s definitely part of the culture at eProperty Innovations.

A Technology Partner Actively Supports Your Team

When your team begins using a new software tool, they may run into occasional snags. This is especially true when first learning the system and integrating it into their workflow.

A software partner is actively available for your team to consult and seek guidance. Instead of leaving your staff high-and-dry as they struggle to take full advantage of the tool’s features, your partner is focused on enhancing your team’s ability to maneuver all of its features and ultimately put the software to its best use for your team and how you work.

A few ways that eProperty Innovations invests in our clients’ ability to use their software effectively include:

• providing easy-to-digest video training content for each feature
• proactively providing training for new features/updates
• offering support as a part of our service, instead of walling it behind higher pay tiers

Whenever we ask for feedback from our current subscribers, one aspect that keeps coming up as a favorite is the availability of our eProperty team. We have made it part of our mission to make sure we provide our subscribers the peace of mind that they aren’t alone while navigating the ePropertyPlus tools.

Shannon Snow, Executive Director of the Omaha Land Bank, describes her organization’s partnership with eProperty, saying, “one of the things that is so great about ePropertyPlus is that it can be modified to fit our specific needs…” and that she recommends taking “… advantage of eProperty’s consulting services to help plan out the best configuration,” for your land bank’s needs.

A Partner Is Invested In Your Goals

Your tech partner should help you to seize opportunities by helping you seamlessly leverage data. If your partner isn’t doing this, they may not be a partner at all.

To really invest in our client’s goals, the eProperty team provides our subscribers a plethora of guidance, strategy, and adaptations. Some of the most important ways we achieve this are by hosting monthly Q & A sessions and building a “community of practice” among our subscribers. In these sessions our users are able to get immediate advice from our support team and other eProperty users currently in the field for questions on anything from simple troubleshooting, to best practices, to strategies other organizations have used to find success in managing their revitalization initiatives using ePropertyPlus.

Additionally, our team shares a wide array of information about innovations and changes to the community revitalization landscape in order to give our clients the best possible opportunity for success. Beyond the software, eProperty Innovations extends its community of practice approach on social media. We share news items of interest, promote best practices and cool success stories, and help network people together. Our channels include LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook– we invite anyone in the field to follow us to share ideas or pick up some new ones.

A Partner Enhances The Product By Listening To You

The final benefit of a tech partner is that they continue to evolve by gleaning insights from your feedback. A partner will listen to your needs, concerns, and biggest challenges. This allows them to augment the software’s features to continue giving you a better and better experience.

While a software vendor gives you a static product that updates only as the vendor sees fit, a partnership gives you a say in how to improve the product’s features. By giving you greater agency and influence as the user, tech partnerships help ensure the product is fully meeting your organization’s needs.

Since the beginning of eProperty, we’ve engaged in continuous development and enhancements of ePropertyPlus based on user feedback, staff recommendations, and changes in the marketplace.

For example, the major updates we made to ePropertyPlus just in the first half of 2022 included:

• A new, simpler UI (theme) makes screens easier to read and simplifies the administrator experience
• A new document repository improves the ability to leverage ePropertyPlus to create, distribute, and store documents
• A major enhancement to Applications, so applicants can edit and resubmit applications when they make mistakes or need to update information

Chris Norman, Executive Director of the Metro Atlanta Land Bank, describes this as one of the main benefits of using ePropertyPlus. Norman says “the eProperty team has always been highly responsive, interested in our input, and willing to make changes/updates to the system to meet our needs.”

ePropertyPlus Is a Technology Partner Through and Through

Our team has a passion for partnering with local governments and land banks to help them transform the way they process, manage, and leverage their property data to support their community revitalization efforts.

If your own organization is in need of property management software or strategic consulting to help enhance your community revitalization efforts, we invite you to get to know us better by checking out our product demo videos or you can reach out to start a conversation!

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