For years, it’s been difficult for self-storage owners and operators to obtain high-quality industry data and statistics to gauge how their facility was performing in the vast sea of self-storage. The little data they did get came with a lot of work. While old-school operators are often reluctant to share data, in an attempt to safeguard key insights from competitors, many operators are also familiar with conducting secret shops. This is when an operator rents a unit from a competitor and uses their access to walk around the facility and count “yellow” locks or units. While effective on a small scale, I’m sure we can all think of less labor-intensive and time-consuming tasks we’d rather be doing.
With the rapid advancement of smart technology in the self-storage industry, the quality and quantity of data available is abundant, operators just have to be willing to share it. Looking at self-storage market data through a broader lens and sharing it anonymously can drastically improve self-storage industry statistics, overall insights, and benchmarks, and contribute to an array of industry-wide benefits that trickle down to independent operators and their facilities.
According to an article published by Harvard Business Review, “Organizations that are able to create a cross-sector view that goes beyond their own data set will be able to develop new understandings of their customers and the way forward.” Another article, published by Forbes, supports this theory and states, “When it comes to the B2B space, with fiercely guarded secrets and intense competition for sales and customer loyalty, it might be harder to convince business leaders that their market share will not decrease, and in fact, may become more solidified by sharing their resources.” All of this to say when more operators are willing to share data, we can obtain greater and more accurate insights that would otherwise be impossible to gather as an individual operator.
Self-Storage Market Data Can Improve Operational Decision-Making
It’s simple, the more data we have, the higher its value and the better we can understand and serve our customers. Self-storage operators can use the self-storage industry statistics and benchmarks to gauge operational performance and drive key business decisions that target customers better and influence revenue. For example, if your occupancy or rental rates fall below the market average, you can likely implement new and strategic tactics to attract more renters and increase your rates.
Self-Storage Market Data Can Improve Self-Storage Development
Not only can we use self-storage market data for operational decision-making, but we can also use this data to improve self-storage development, which benefits us all. Self-storage developers across the world are all looking for one common thing, and that’s the opportunity of unmet demand. Self-storage developers use data provided by the Self-Storage Almanac, published annually by MSM, to determine if there’s unmet demand in specific markets of interest. After all, developing a self-storage facility is no small, or cheap, task. With a lot riding on these calculations, the data must be as accurate and inclusive as possible. The more data obtained, the more reliable it is. As technology continues to improve, so can the accuracy of self-storage market data and the ease of sharing it.
Collecting Facility Data Has Never Been Easier
Implementing a data warehouse into your self-storage ecosystem can give you complete control and ownership over your data to drive smarter business decisions and greater success. The first and only self-storage data warehouse is integrated with your cloud-based property management system and automatically stores your operational data, organizes that data through hundreds of filters, and shows you comprehensive charts about all of your facilities. If you don’t know where to start with your data, you can check out premade dashboards to get you going. This will help you organize your facility’s data and make impactful decisions that propel your business forward.
How to Share Your Facility Data
While the data from your facility is most beneficial to you, the value obtained from facilities at scale holds significantly higher value. Cloud-based property management software and integrations allow operators to pull accurate data and share it anonymously in real-time which means no more wasting time, money, and energy on secret shops or digital crawlers.
To learn more about moving forward with sharing your facility’s data to propel self-storage industry statistics and benchmarks forward, read The Self Storage Data Sharing Dilemma or get connected with MSM here.
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