Growing a Community of Practice

Looking back on 2022, two words come to mind: teamwork and collaboration. Teamwork because of the great team we have at eProperty Innovations. Collaboration because of how we approach each other and our community partners and subscribers.

At the start of 2022, we consciously committed to lean into customer support and to update ePropertyPlus’ user interface and functionality to enhance the overall user experience. We wanted our work to embody the culture of our company. We have a culture of “yes” and a culture of listening, learning, and sharing. We see ourselves as part of a larger community of practice, so sharing knowledge across and in between our partners is a big part of what we do. We also recognize that we only exist because of our community partners, and serving their needs is our top priority.

Here’s a summary of what we’ve been up to in 2022:

Customer support and customer success were at the top of our list of priorities. In the spirit of helping ePropertyPlus users leverage our software to drive their business operation, our team reviewed and updated more than 200 knowledge base articles, rolled out dozens of new video tutorials, and held six free User Q-and-A sessions throughout the year. In 2023, we’ll be rolling out an ePropertyPlus “bootcamp”, which will help new users get up to speed on ePropertyPlus (and give experienced users a chance to catch up on all the neat things ePropertyPlus can do).

User feedback and requests were the driving force in updating ePropertyPlus and our service offerings. In 2022, ePropertyPlus got a major UI update – the first in 6 years. We also rolled out a slew of minor enhancements and updates, affecting services, applications, document generation, the mobile app, and more. There were nine updates released this year by our development team, all at no additional cost to our partners and with no disruptions. A big Thank You! to our wonderful subscribers whose suggestions help us keep ePropertyPlus the #1 software product for land banks and public sector organizations tackling vacant property challenges.

We also started work on a new service offering for limited resource organizations with temporary staffing needs – keep on the lookout for more about that in 2023!

All in all, we feel pretty good about the enhancements, and it seems our subscribers do too – all but one of our current subscribers renewed for another year, and we added five new ePropertyPlus subscribers, including South Suburban Land Bank and Development Authority (IL), Rome Floyd County GA (GA), Shelby County Land Bank (TN), Navigate Affordable Housing (AL), and Hartford Land Bank Authority (CT).  One of ePropertyPlus’ strengths is its flexibility, and you can see that in the wide range of ePropertyPlus subscribers.

In the realm of strategic consulting, we helped the newly formed Waterbury Land Bank Authority conduct and complete a national search for its first Executive Director. We continue to provide guidance to the land bank and its new director as they seek funding support, define their strategic vision, and build on a close collaboration with the City of Waterbury and key stakeholders. Some other exciting consulting projects this year include developing a new Vacant and Abandoned Property targeting strategy with one of our subscribers and helping a long-time subscriber digitize and modernize its property application process. We love to leverage and share our deep domain expertise through projects like these!

The Path Ahead  is a Community of Practice

To continue to support our community of practice, eProperty Innovations sponsored and participated in statewide land bank association conferences in NY, MI, and OH, as well as the national Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference. RVP was held in our new home town of Chicago, and hosting dozens of our subscribers and allies at our 2022 RVP reception was a real treat. We also rolled out 12 articles sharing information and tips for redevelopment on our new blog and through our various social media channels.

As we look to 2023, we will continue to settle into our new home in Chicago. We expect to ramp up our development efforts and continue tweaking ePropertyPlus to push, prod, and stretch its functionality. We’ll continue to lean into supporting customer success and building our community of practice approach. And hopefully, we’ll bring on new subscribers and experience new opportunities to collaborate as a strategic advisor to organizations looking for more impact, more efficiency, and more data leverage.

We appreciate your participation in our efforts this year and look forward to continued collaboration in 2023!