By Mike Mueller
How difficult is it to move to the Barefoot system? I have heard that moving to new software is going to be extremely difficult and disruptive to my company.
Are you one of these managers, who knows that the software you are using is out of date, and not providing the functionality you would like to have, but are afraid of the difficulties of changing software? Well, you are with so many others who have had terrible experiences in the past as you moved from one software to another. We’re sure you have heard the horror stories of people who never got their rental bank account balanced, or accidental double bookings, or running dual systems for a year or more, before giving up, and going back to the old system.
Well, why was that? What was the problem? We would suggest it was because the staff of the software company didn’t understand your system, your needs, or more importantly how to get data from one system to the next. If you look at it conceptually, all you really have to do is to identify information in one system, and transfer it into another system, whether it is the name and address of a tenant, or owner, or the information on your reservations. It seems easy enough, but getting that information out of one system, can be very daunting. And very often, the software company that you are moving to doesn’t have the experienced staff to help you with your details. So you end up manually entering all the data, and this takes time, and is very prone to mistakes. Remember, all you need is one mistake in either system, and you have bad data. And you know the saying: “Garbage in, garbage out”.
So how can Barefoot make this transition to new software easier for me?
Barefoot Technologies has always been concerned about moving data into our system. We have the largest team of development and support of any independent company in our industry. With help from your staff, we can move data digitally from your system to ours with much less time and effort than any other system today. The key to this is what we call “digital mapping”. This means that as long as we get the information from your system in a file that can be “mapped” to our system, we can import the information relatively painlessly. In almost all cases, you can get the information out of your system in what we call a “flat file” (.CSV, or and Excel spreadsheet). This can be tenant, owner, vendor or property information, as well as reservations. We take the information, match it to the Barefoot system, and digitally move it. Even pictures, if “mapped” properly, can be imported.
What about reservation information? Can you get that information into your system also?
The answer is YES!! Sometimes it makes sense to put reservations in manually, and no matter how you get the reservations into the Barefoot system, you have to look at each reservation, to make sure the information is accurate. But the Barefoot team has developed tools and templates where you can get reservation data into the system digitally. Information gets into the system quicker, and much more accurate, with much less potential for human mistakes.
Does it make any difference what system I have now?
Not really. It is not so much what system are you using, but how to get the data out of your system so we can use it. We have experience in just about every software used today, and those that we don’t have experience with, we can help you get the data out of your system in a format that can be used by our development team to get it into the Barefoot system.
Why is Barefoot so different? Why can you do this, when everyone else seems to have such a difficult time?
The simple answer to this is the Barefoot team is far more experienced in this than any other company. We have a complete development team that knows how to extract information from a spreadsheet, and get it into the Barefoot database. The training team has more experience than any other team in our industry. We have a project manager who has come from property management, and has been involved in Barefoot installations from both sides of the process. Our processes are tried and proven, and our staff second to none.
So what if I were interested in looking at this? What should I do?
Give us a call. Let us talk to you about your needs, and if we might be able to be of some assistance. Barefoot’s goals have always been to help companies grow their business. This can be done in many different ways, but it starts with a conversation. Let us find out what is important to you. Allow us the opportunity to show you our system, and if Barefoot would actually meet your needs. And we can explain in much more detail just what it takes to move from your system to Barefoot, and how to begin the process. You can reach us at 877-799-1110, or email us at sales@barefoot.com.
