Software Soundoff: What Self-Storage Operators REALLY Want

The benefits realized are quite significant in terms of increasing the customer base, reducing labor costs, improving reach and service, and decreasing the cost per transaction, thereby propagating better internal controls. The focus is now slowly shifting toward building business intelligence software with in-built revenue management and competitive pricing modules. It is no surprise that there is already talk of creating unmanned storage sites in the distinct future.

What Do Customers Really Want?

With the goal of presenting ISS readers with numerous industry perspectives, we have invited a cross-section of self-storage management software users to provide thoughts on the intrinsic value in today’s products, and what users really would like to have in future product releases. Here’s what they had to say ... .

Andrea Hughes, General Manager of Mini-Pac

Persiano: You operate one of the biggest self-storage businesses in California and Hawaii. How critical is management software and support for a business as large as yours?

Hughes:With more than 1,800 units, our day-to-day volume of transactions is very high. For an extremely busy facility like ours, the self-storage management software must be flexible, easy to use, and allow us to rapidly perform transactions. We have found Windows-based management software to be perfect for our business.

The software is critical but the software provider needs to have responsive support to keep my management solution running at peak performance. There is no such thing as a management-software solution that does not require support and maintenance. We have found chat-based remote support to be extremely easy to use, virtually instantaneous, and able to resolve almost all of our needs. Onsite support is generally reserved for major rollouts of software at new locations.

Persiano: What other factors did you take into consideration when choosing management software for your business?

Hughes: Ideally, we preferred going with a total-solutions provider who, in addition to offering a great piece of software, also provided data conversion, onsite implementation, customizations, and training services so that we could hit the road running. The other aspects we took into consideration were 24/7 software support, since we are open seven days per week, and remote data-backup services for offsite storage as a disaster recovery measure. Entrusting our data, essentially our business, to a solutions provider is a big deal, so we had to be certain we were partnering with the right outfit.