Gabfocus Spotlight: What are the major software trends from the last 2 years

Wondering what's been cooking in the world of self storage software?

For most operators, you may not be paying attention to what's going on outside of the platform you use—and you may not even have a full understanding of how it has developed, either.

But things are definitely changing!

Tommy and Melissa sat down with experts from multiple prominent self storage management software providers to talk about what trends have popped up or strengthened in the last two years.

Question: "What are the major software trends from the last 2 years?"

Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:

In this Gabfocus Session: The Next Generation of Self Storage Software, Tommy and Melissa sat down with a whole panel of self storage software experts. Guests included Jack Colemanzo of Storeganize, Alyssa Winkelman of 6Storage, Steve Smith of Storage Commander, and Jason Palmer of Storable. The topic? All things self storage software.

Check out the full Session to dive deeper! 

Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what our guests had to say:

I would say just automation centralization.

I think a lot of operators are looking for all-in-one software platforms or partnerships. And you touched on it earlier, Melissa, about freedom of choice, partnerships, and integration side of things. 

I see a lot in just the last few years around automation centralization."

—Steve Smith

"Yeah, I think I can build on that.

What I tend to see is as we start to look at the whole tenant lifecycle and bringing a suite of solutions together, and how we now with a consolidated data structure can apply automation in ways that we haven't been able to before. Deliver intelligence.

Because we can see holistically through that tenant lifecycle. We can automate that experience, improve that overall experience, but also then use data and analytics in ways that we haven't in the past to be able to optimize both the tenant experience and the business."

—Jason Palmer

"Yeah, I was right there with them.

Like just having the data to understand who your tenants are, that never existed before. Right?

People showed up, they bought a lock, they moved their stuff in.

But with all of this technology and all the different vendors that we see out there, they all just help us garner a better understanding of who it is that rents with us so that we can cater to them better."

—Alyssa Winkelman

"And I think unmanned facilities is definitely like the automation part of that is key.

And then I think what we've started to see more of is a shift of like this kind of customer centric look at the online booking portal, for example. It's actually putting your customers or getting into the seat of the customer experience more so than what's it like as an operator to operate.

It's like at the end of the day, you have to service your customers. So what's their experience online?

And how can you learn from other platforms out there that are kind of doing something similar in terms of online booking and customer experience.

So that's kind of, we're seeing more of like a customer-centric look at designing software."

—Jack Colemanzo