Scalable and Cost-Efficient Property Management Software for an NPO

About the Client

The Client is a Canadian non-profit organization of 30 employees that provides education, housing, social development, and other programs.

Manual Property Maintenance Was No Longer Efficient Enough

The Client provides housing services for 5,000 members of a local community. The challenge it wanted to resolve was manual property maintenance management, which was no longer efficient enough. The Client decided to streamline maintenance activities through automation with the help of a tailored property management solution.

A From-Scratch Property Management Solution on AWS and OroPlatform

Knowing INNERLUXES as a mature software development company with a 33-year background, the Client turned to INNERLUXES to design and implement a property management solution.

INNERLUXES started by analyzing the Client's property management needs and creating an optimal feature list. The system was meant to handle household, inventory, maintenance, and rent management.

No off-the-shelf product offered the required functionality, so it was agreed with the Client to develop the solution from scratch. For the project, INNERLUXES assigned a team comprising a business analyst, two developers (a front-end developer and a back-end developer), a QA engineer, and a DevOps engineer.

INNERLUXES helped the Client select a technology stack that included AWS and OroPlatform to meet the functional goals, ensure the solution's flexibility, and optimize development costs. OroPlatform, an open-source platform, enables the use of universal components, which optimizes development and simplifies further support, so INNERLUXES recommended it as the basis for the future solution.

INNERLUXES cooperated with the Client for two years, and the project included the following phases:

Phase 1

Duration: 5 months (April – September 2021).

Activities: discovery and MVP development.

The discovery phase covered creating a high-level feature list, building wireframes, planning UX, creating the solution's architecture, and a project implementation plan. During the MVP development stage, the team created a working prototype of a property management system that enabled member profile management, property management, and accounting.

Phase 2

Duration: 6 months (February – August 2022).

Activities: development of a full-featured web solution.

INNERLUXES's team delivered a solution that consisted of the following functional blocks:

• Household management — storing and tracking information about addresses, house IDs, number of rooms, rent due, and more.
• Member profile management — storing data such as names, birth dates, and addresses of community members. The solution enables establishing relationships between tenants and their dependents (for example, spouses and children), which helps define the most suitable houses for them.
• Inventory management — linking inventory items (for example, lawnmowers, drills, and perforators) to households, tracking serial numbers for each item, and generating automated notifications about upcoming maintenance works.
• Property maintenance management — for residents: guided creation of maintenance tickets via a customer portal, attaching pictures (for example, damaged stairs, leaks, wall cracks, peeling paint, or mold); for maintenance workers: confirming and tracking tickets, scheduling maintenance activities, and more.
• Rent management — automated rent calculation and notifying residents about due dates.

Besides developing the property management system, INNERLUXES's team provided the Client with:

• Testing. To verify the proper operation of the solution, the team performed functional testing, including regression testing, and provided detailed reports on the results.
• Deployment to the cloud. The DevOps engineer configured the solution on AWS and set up a continuous deployment pipeline to introduce updates to the production environment without causing downtime.
• Training. To ensure high user adoption, the team created user guides and video tutorials for the Client's staff and the community members.

A Tailored, Scalable Solution for 30 Staff and 5,000 Members

The Client received a tailored, cost-efficient property management solution that streamlined inventory, property maintenance, and rent management activities. It improved the productivity of the Client's maintenance staff and increased residents' satisfaction. The solution currently serves 30 employees and 5,000 community members, but it is scalable and can be adjusted to the property management needs of other communities.

Technologies and Tools

OroPlatform, AWS, PHP, Symfony, Selenium, Docker.