Eric Matulka

DEI Communities

By Leah Etling on Apr 29, 2013 in People

Eric Matulka has a simple yet solid foundation from which to build technology strategy and policy: He believes that good technology should make life easier.  From that baseline, when he chooses vendors and platforms for DEI Communities, he’s looking for solutions that are time and efficiency savers for all users.

Matulka, Vice President of Information Technology for Yardi client DEI Communities in Omaha, Nebraska, applies business acumen and a wealth of IT experience to his role. He’s a dedicated student of social media, experimenting with social engagement services on an in-depth personal level to determine how they can bring value to DEI Communities’ residents and employees.

“We want to be able to tell our story, and allow people to learn more about our apartment communities. We want to be able to say to people – this is how to find us, this is how to communicate with us, and if you have more questions, here’s a variety of ways to find out more about us,” said Matulka. When he assesses new software offerings, he looks first at how they might improve life for residents. Next on the checklist is how the product being considered could improve things for employees.

“I also seek ways to make life easier for our staff. If we can make it easier for them to do their job, whether it is communicating with residents, or doing some of the back-end tasks, or working with the corporate office, banks, vendors, that’s an exciting development,” he said.

An expert on social media and online engagement, Matulka has watched how different types of multifamily communities are using social media services. He’s concluded that there is no “one size fits all” solution when it comes to the relationship between social media and the apartment industry. If your resident demographic isn’t engaging online, then putting extra time into social marketing may not always be the right move for you.

On the other hand, every manager should always be aware of their properties’ online reputations and ready to respond appropriately to positive or negative reviews.  To that extent, DEI Communities is prioritizing strategic reputation management so that all of their onsite property managers can be confident about how to respond to online comments and criticisms.

Because social presence – a space in which multifamily firms increasingly focus on ratings/reviews and word-of-mouth referrals – may not necessarily appear to be a direct revenue source, it has sometimes been a question mark during the budgeting process. That’s not necessarily always the case, but has been observed by Matulka and others who observe industry-wide spending on technology products and services.

“Social media is a tool. It’s not the end unto itself, but it’s a tool to communicate, a tool to understand what our residents want; what they’re looking for, what they like, and what they don’t like,” said Matulka, who was also a panelist at the 2012 Apartment Vendor Marketing & Sales Conference. “It is very important to understand different mediums of communication with residents. Social is a huge part of that and it’s just going to continue to grow.”

With that growth will come change.  Don’t expect the social lay of the land to stay the same – three to five years from now it could be drastically different from what we know today.

“Ten years ago there was no Facebook, Twitter, or things like that,” Matulka notes. “Recently, people are in some cases leaving or taking a break from Facebook or other social networking tools. Who knows that what the next thing is going to be?”

Already heralded as one of the next big things for IT is using “Big Data” to solve business problems and make smarter decisions. DEI Communities is already headed down this road.

“We’re a very analytical company. We try to look at the information that we get from running our own business and from operating our communities and make use of it,” Matulka said. Such data has helped DEI Communities with resource allocation and determining spending priorities.

“What I’m personally excited about as an IT guy, is that in this day and age, it’s getting easier to use various types of ‘big data’ without having a zillion spreadsheets running around.  As more and more companies are able to see the benefits gleaned from using this type of information, I think that more companies like Yardi are going to help bring that data to companies in a usable format.” (Editors note: Yardi is currently offering clients big data analysis options through the Yardi Orion for Sharepoint platform.)

Tapping into big data means that better business intelligence is available to companies of all sizes, and mining this knowledge is likely to change multifamily into a more responsive, nimble industry than ever before. It’s a perfect example of technology making life easier.

About DEI Communities 
Overseeing more than $600 million of multi-family assets, compiled of 10,000+ apartment units across the Central United States, DEI Communities is a recognized leader in multifamily property management. DEI Communities has received the Accredited Management Organization® (AMO®) credential from the Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM). The AMO accreditation recognizes excellence among real estate management firms. Only those firms that achieve the highest level of performance, experience and financial stability and have a CPM in executive position can earn the AMO credential. For more information, please visit http://www.DEICommunities.com.