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Remanage Inc., a software company that specializes in property management software, has quietly been servicing a small, but satisfied group of customers for the last four years. But recent developments have the company poised to start making a lot more noise in the multi-housing industry.
For one, the company received this spring a $3 million infusion of venture capital funding that will enable it to substantially expand its marketing activities.
"This is what I call acceleration capital," said Dan Hooper, CEO of Remanage. "For the four years we`ve been in business, we have marketed mostly by word-of-mouth and been in a gradual, national rollout. But this money will let us really bulk up the size of our sales staff and expose a much larger audience to what our software can do."
Also, not long after the company secured the funding, a leading provider of real estate management and accounting software, Micro Management Ltd., announced that it would deploy Remanage`s software to its clients in the greater metro New York City and Boston markets.
"We spent the last two years researching property management and accounting software providers in search of a suitable upgrade path for our clients," said Nat Rothenberg, Micro Management`s founder and CEO. "Remanage has the functionality and flexibility particularly suited for the unique requirements of our market," Rothenberg said, including the ability to manage rent-controlled apartments, condos, co-ops and electronic lock-box receipts.
Hooper pointed out that the vast majority of property managers still use a DOS-based software system--and that essential data at most companies still resides in disparate locations and is difficult for managers to collect and analyze in real-time. So a major point of differentiation for Remanage, according to Hooper, is that it is the only property-management system built entirely on the Microsoft.NET Platform, providing clients the option to deploy the software on a single PC, on a server or over the Web.
"Substantial cost and management gains are available to those who upgrade their systems to a more centralized, real-time platform, such as Remanage," Hooper said.
Hooper said that most of his competition is upgrading their DOS products with browser-based solutions--an approach that, in his view, has serious drawbacks. He argued that these systems require substantial broadband access to function properly. "And if you lose connection to the Internet at a remote site, you`re done until it`s restored," Hooper said.
Another major advantage to the Microsoft.NET platform, Hooper said, is that the Windows system is "multi-threaded" meaning that users can work on multiple tasks simultaneously--for example, they can have a guest card and a vendor file open and navigate seamlessly back and forth between them. "In a browser-based system, you can only do one thing at a time; basically, these browser-based systems are like DOS programs on graphic steroids."
Hooper added that there was "a widespread misconception in the industry that the only way to get the advantages of centralized database is with a browser-based system. That is incorrect; we can provide it as well--without having to depend on Internet stability and connectivity," said Hooper. So why take that risk when it`s totally unnecessary? In other industries, where people had a chance to move from a Windows solution to a browser one, many are now moving back to Windows again."
Another selling point of Remanage, Hooper said, is its ease of use. "One of the first questions prospective clients ask, `Will my people adopt this product and find it easy to use?` I tell them that if their people are familiar with Microsoft Outlook and can send email, they`ll have no problems."
Hooper said that owners also like that Remanage can handle multiple leases in a single unit, which makes it popular with those who manage student housing. Remanage also offers a money-back guarantee that clients will be satisfied with the product and the implementation process.
Within a year, Hooper predicted that Remanage would be used by 400 clients (with about one million units). Currently, 70 percent of its existing clients only manage multi-housing properties; the other 30 percent manage a combination of multi-housing and other commercial properties.
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