Photo: Erik Hannemann | Text: Grethe Rønningen, s360
The Norwegian-developed app Izy has simplified the operation and rental of buildings for Höegh Eiendom.
"The app is easy to use and caters to most of the needs of both us and the tenants," says Lene Busund at Höegh Eiendom.
With many rental properties in Oslo, Ski, and Moss, it is important for Höegh Eiendom to make everyday life as seamless and simple as possible, both for itself and its tenants. The company therefore wanted a platform that could meet the need for communication, information, commerce, and booking in a digital everyday life.
"Previously, we had several applications and systems to solve these tasks, but with Izy we have brought everything together in one place," says Lene Busund, Head of Technology and Customer Experience at Höegh Eiendom.
Izy App is adapted to each building and tenants can use the app for many different purposes:
The tenants also report back that they are satisfied with the current solution, according to Lene Busund. The feedback tells of users who find the app easy to use, and they particularly appreciate that there are few taps to get to the payment solution. Here they can choose between paying by Vipps, card, or company invoice.
"The fact that the app is easy to use is important. If there are too many steps, you lose customers along the way," says Busund. She adds that it was also easy to install and put the solution into use.
"We have been using Izy 2.0 in a number of buildings for almost three years. Now we use Izy 3.0 in Parkkvartalet in Oslo, and this was a somewhat larger integration," she says. Busund mentions that Parkkvartalet was the first building to use the 3.0 version of the application. Together with Sodexo, Höegh Eiendom was also the first to become a canteen supplier on Izy.
"Then a completely new setup had to be configured in the accounting system of the canteen supplier. This was a larger operation, but we think it went very well," she says.
"Another thing I like about Izy is that the platform is scalable. It is forward-looking and flexible, and Izy is open to integrating with third parties," says Busund. She adds that there are naturally many solutions out there, but previous experience has shown that most similar solutions have some, but not everything one needs.
"For example, many other real estate applications do not have a full-fledged payment solution integrated with the canteen companies and their financial systems at the back end, while Izy adapts to everyone's financial systems. It allows us to integrate it into all our buildings in the long term. We want to standardize across the entire portfolio, and currently we are using Izy in eight of our buildings," she says.
The fact that they also experience the Izy solution as stable is another plus.
"It has very high uptime. In addition, since it was easy to implement and easy to use in everyday life, we find that Izy works very well for what we use it for," says Busund.
In the long term, Höegh Eiendom also wants to integrate more service features into the app, such as access control.
"For us, it's great not having to deal with multiple third-party systems, and for our tenants it's convenient to only have to deal with one app. Also, considering GDPR, it is positive to have only one place where data is collected," she says. With the app, Höegh Eiendom also has the ability to send out push notifications to everyone in the building, which Busund sees as a great advantage.
"That way we can reach everyone at the same time if, for example, there is a fault with an elevator or other critical infrastructure. Previously, this message had to go via a contact person at the tenant," she says.
