Altus is a privately-held real estate investment management firm with over 4.3 million square feet of Class A and Class B office, industrial, retail and multi-family properties in select secondary markets, including Denver, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Kansas City.
Altus has a proven 60-year history of achieving investor objectives in all phases of real estate investment–well-researched acquisitions, bottom-line focused management, and ultimately, the disposition of assets. The Altus team offers investors and partners a balance of decades of experience and a rigorous data-driven approach.
VTS Activate now powers Altus’ tenant experience in 29 properties. The Altus Properties branded app creates a singular connection to tenants and centralizes their work orders, preventative maintenance requests, amenity reservations, communications, and tenant engagement.
VTS spoke with Rod Schultz, Senior Property Manager at Altus Properties, on the company’s decision to implement VTS Activate as their new tenant experience solution across their office, industrial, and retail portfolio.
Why did Altus decide to invest in VTS Activate? How did it stand out among the other available options?
Schultz: Our previous vendor was up for renewal, however, they were making some changes that would have been a learning curve for everyone. We found them to not be as user-friendly as we’d hoped and wanted to make a change to something more than just a work order system that would deliver a more robust experience.
I was tasked with finding other potential solutions and assessing if it was worth rolling out something new across our entire portfolio. Various teams had been asking for changes, and I took responsibility for going through the tenant experience evaluation process. Ultimately we felt that VTS Activate offered the most flexibility and potential for growth that we need to better serve our tenants. We believed that the quality of the end product was going to be significantly better than other solutions.
Ease of use was the biggest consideration for both the company and our tenants — VTS Activate is not only user-friendly for property management for work orders but is a simple, all-in-one solution for access control and our tenant engagement needs.
Another reason we selected VTS Activate was that it’s a high-value amenity that our leasing agents can use to entice prospective tenants and retain current tenants by delivering a top-notch experience.
What’s the tenant experience you aim to deliver, and how does VTS Activate help you achieve it?
Shultz: We chose VTS Activate because it powers not only our operations, from work orders to preventative maintenance and more, but also creates an elevated user experience.
VTS Activate helps us to shorten the time it takes for us to respond to operational requests with the right resources. I’ve seen an increase in the number of tenants using the VTS Activate app’s photo capability to report issues and put in work orders on the spot, which gives us a better sense of the requirements for addressing an issue immediately.
It also makes it easy for tenants to know everything that’s going on in their building. We can now send out tenant announcements, questionnaires, or even emergency messages from one source — everyone has access to what they need and we can easily collect feedback. We even used VTS Activate to set up a resale marketplace for tenants to sell office furniture to each other. It allows us to create community and drive that personal connection.
Our Minnesota market is very hands-on, our tenants are looking for a more high touch and personal interaction. We can more quickly address any requests they have and let them access what they need, self-serve, from the app. Plus, if an occupant from Minnesota is visiting St. Louis, because they're using VTS Activate, they’re connected to our network and could, for example, come in and use our fitness centers. The ability to do those types of things is what we were looking for and helps to set us apart.
What value has the VTS Activate platform brought to your role as a property manager specifically?
Shultz: One of the biggest benefits of VTS Activate is that it saves my team a ton of time because it’s such a solid communication platform for tenants.
I don’t know if you’re like me, but I receive about 300 emails a day. I don’t always get to them, or sometimes I glance at them and I miss them. To be able to capture everything within VTS Activate and have one central location for all our building’s information is invaluable. Tenants can easily submit a maintenance request. They can check for a vacancy and book reservations. They don’t have to send me or anybody on my team an email. I don’t have to answer another email asking me, ‘can you send me the form to get keys for a new tenant moving into the building?’ It’s all on VTS Activate — they can go get it. It makes my life so much easier.
As a property manager, I also appreciate all the integrations VTS Activate has with our other building platforms, and even other systems we’d like to use in the future. VTS Activate is broad enough that we can meet and exceed tenant needs as they evolve. Any time our team thinks of an idea to make our experience better, we can start researching it in partnership with the VTS Activate team to deliver the best experience for us and our tenants.
Can you highlight specific capabilities of the platform that you’re excited about?
Shultz: VTS Activate has been amazing in streamlining communication and delivering a more personal experience so we can have a better connection to our tenants. I love how the VTS Activate platform is now our ‘one source of truth,’ where all communication comes together, even across our multiple markets. Everything our teams and tenants need is in one place.
Longer-term, the use of beacon technology (proprietary, Bluetooth-enabled hardware that senses occupancy, and provides analytics and proximity-based alerts to occupants) will allow us to track tenant usage of spaces and amenities in the building. With that tech, it will be simple for me to see exactly who is in the building at any time, without sending multiple emails out to tenants every day.
We’re also cross-marketing to drive traffic to our retail tenants. If we have an office building that’s in close proximity to a retail center, we can offer a perk to incentivize occupants to visit our retail tenants and increase their discoverability.
What’s your initial take on the platform 5 months in?
Shultz: Our main goal was to find a platform that is extremely user-friendly, and one that provides value for our tenants. VTS Activate is so much more than what we had before, which was basically just a place to put in a work order.
In fact, we have already received a number of compliments from the tenants that they like this platform better. It's more user-friendly for them, which is really our primary focus.
We now have access to real-time, tenant-specific data on building usage and engagement — and we intend to use this data when making future investment decisions.
Looking forward, the integration potential seems endless. We even have been brainstorming all the possible integrations we can connect to VTS Activate. We have been pleased with the transition to the platform so far and the VTS team has been really supportive as well. I’m really excited to see it all come together!
