How We Built the Property Management Calculator

The challenge with valuing digital tools

When you replace windows in a building, the return is straightforward to calculate. The U-value is known, the energy price is known, and you arrive at the same answer as everyone else without having to take the supplier's word for it. Digital tools have no equivalent to the U-value. No table tells you what it's worth to stop searching for a drawing.

If you want to put a number on it, you have to start by asking.

There's also an uncomfortable side to this kind of calculation. The most direct way to convert saved time into money is headcount reduction, and that is almost never anyone's ambition. Our customers do the opposite: their portfolios grow without the organisation scaling at the same linear rate. Time doesn't disappear — it shifts. From searching and asking, to managing.

How we asked the question

We could have asked directly how much time Vyer saves. The problem is that no one knows. The question invites guesswork, and the guesses tend to be generous when the supplier is the one asking. Instead, we isolated specific activities: retrieving information and documentation, navigating to spaces and technical equipment, onboarding colleagues and contractors, describing work tasks, following up on completed work, documenting from drawings, conducting surveys and measurements, and travelling between properties.

We asked about hours before and after improvement — and per activity rather than in aggregate, because a combined figure obscures what's most useful: which processes actually change.

How we adjusted the figures

We then reduced the average by 50 percent before it entered the calculator. Primarily for three reasons. The activities overlap — the hour spent locating a drawing is often the same hour spent documenting from it, and a straight sum counts it twice. The responses also describe an ideal state: full onboarding, complete documentation, up-to-date drawings. Reality is almost always some distance from that. And freed-up time comes in small increments — five saved quarters don't automatically become one productive hour.

Who we asked

Responses came from twelve organisations, across the full range of roles: operations technicians, facilities network managers, technical property managers, safety coordinators and heads of technical operations. The number of hours varied between them, which is expected when comparing a project manager with an operations technician. But the direction was almost unanimous — nearly every respondent described a reduction in nearly every activity. The clearest pattern was around finding information and coordinating work. That's where most time is spent today, and where most time is freed up.

The point was never to produce a large number. It was to understand where in the working day a system like Vyer actually makes a difference.