How Oakwood cut approvals from 3 to 4 days down to 5 hours

The challenge

Oakwood Management Company operates roughly 13,500 units across Ohio, a mixed portfolio spanning multifamily and affordable properties in markets across the state. The company recently ran a centralization overhaul across the entire business. As Kara Thompson, Vice President of Operations, puts it, “one of the things that we knew was a time-steal, was the application process.”

The time-steal was concrete. Ashley Block, Director of Process Operations, describes it plainly: “Before Findigs we were doing a lot of manual scanning, faxing documents to different property management companies trying to obtain employment verifications.” Every application meant chasing paper across companies, and every day of chasing was a day the applicant waited.

Leadership carried a second worry alongside speed. With properties and site teams across the state making their own way through applications, there was no guarantee every applicant got the same process. For a portfolio that includes affordable housing, compliance and fair housing consistency can’t depend on which property you walk into.

The approach

Oakwood made the application process part of the centralization overhaul and handed it to Findigs end to end. Findigs runs the rental verifications and the employment verifications directly, so nobody at Oakwood scans, faxes, or chases another property management company for a form. The decision comes back in hours, and it comes back the same way for every applicant at every property.

That last part is the point. Centralization only works if the process is actually one process. With every application running through Findigs, Oakwood got a single standardized path from applied to approved, across the whole portfolio.

• Moved the entire application process onto Findigs as part of the company-wide centralization push
• Findigs runs rental and employment verifications directly, replacing manual scanning and faxing between property management companies
• One standardized process for every applicant at every property, so fair, consistent treatment no longer depends on which property an applicant walks into

Now that we have Findigs, Findigs is the one doing the rental verifications, the employment verifications. — Ashley Block, Director of Process Operations, Oakwood Management Company

The results

The headline number is speed. Approvals that took 3 to 4 days now take 5 hours. But for Oakwood the win runs wider than the clock: “We can have all of our processes centralized and don’t have to worry about anything,” Ashley says.

• Approvals in 5 hours, down from 3 to 4 days
• One clear, consistent process for every applicant across all properties
• Site teams focused on residents and prospects, not paperwork

Three downstream effects show up in daily operations:

1. Speed. Applicants get an answer in hours, not days. The application process stopped being the time-steal Oakwood’s centralization overhaul set out to eliminate.
2. Consistency and compliance. “With the standardization, it is more compliant, it covers fair housing. Every applicant has the same clear and consistent process across all of our properties,” Ashley says. Leadership no longer has to wonder whether every property is running applications the same way. They are, by design.
3. Focus. “Our team can spend more time with residents, prospects, instead of more time on paperwork,” Ashley says. The hours that went into scanning and faxing now go into leasing and service.

For the executive team, the payoff is the confidence that comes with one process everywhere.

With Findigs I feel better as the vice president, knowing that all our compliances, everything is going through the same standardized process. And it’s fair. — Kara Thompson, Vice President of Operations, Oakwood Management Company