Building Smarter Storage Businesses Through Technology | Self Storage Explained

And how do you grow revenue? So dynamic pricing, price optimization tools, there's so much stuff that we're working on around that. I think that's where the next generation of software products in this industry should be focused and I think that's where the expectations will increasingly move. Hello and welcome to the latest edition of our self storage explained podcast where today I am joined by Mark Dawson.

Hello.

Welcome back to store Mark. Great to have you.

Thank you. It's good to be back.

So Mark, we're going to talk about, we're going to get your thoughts on just actually self storage software. You've been in self storage software now for four years roughly.

Yeah.

And just wanted to sort of pick your brain for the listeners on what to think about when you're looking to choose a self storage software platform. I thought you might have some good insights into that when you look at self storage software. So you do know it pretty well now in Europe and further field as well. What are some of the, the trends you see happening at the moment?

What I find interesting, I think, I don't know, I was thinking about it the other day, I must have spoken to a thousand plus operators now of various shapes and sizes and stages of their journey and I think whilst it's sort of a one size fits all in terms of the high level stuff actually a lot of the requirements are very, very different. What people need, I think what's fundamental now is that it's modern, it's not server based, meaning you don't have to sit at a fixed computer in a room somewhere to access it. You can access it from, you know, the sun lounger on the beach etc. So obviously integrations with access control systems and I think more and more people, they want that passive income as passive as possible really. So they want it to run itself and I think that's what the general need was. When I spoke to people it was usually we want something that looks good, we want something that's easy to train our staff on.

Yeah.

And we want something that allows seamless automation.

And do you think the. So if you, in the past four years then in self storage software do you think the expectations have changed?

I think as technology's evolved people have become more needy but their expectations are higher. So they're seeing someone with dynamic pricing for example and so they think oh, dynamic pricing, that sounds good, how does that work? But actually there's a whole different, whole different levels of dynamic pricing, how advanced you want it. So, so like you know, simple occupancy Based dynamic pricing. Competitor based pricing as well.

Yep.

But most of the smaller companies will just have more simplistic need I suppose for dynamic pricing and revenue management tools. Whereas as you get bigger to the multi site operator they're perhaps using someone like prorise in which case they might want the software product to integrate in with that Prorise system.

Yeah, yeah.

To offer far more advanced dynamic pricing.

Yeah. Because we have some dynamic pricing in store but I, I would sort of refer to it as like supply based. So it's more around like how much supply do you have? I don't have that money that much left. So let's change the price or you know if, if you're down to your last three of a certain unit you can put the price up. If you've loads them, you can put the price down to help drive demand. But the interesting bit is demand based. Yeah, dynamic pricing really which is, which is the sort of, I would say the next step for us as well. It's what's the demand and things that drive the demand are competitor pricing. So you got to bring that into the product time of the year, you know, the weather, there's all sorts of stuff that could affect the demand.

Yeah, I mean I think what obviously the data you've got in store, you're seeing what times of the day people are booking as well. So it might be that between six and seven in the morning on a Monday you get a spike of activity in which case up prices by 10% or whatever.

Yeah.

And I think as I know another really good feature that store have is the automated price increasing tool as well. I think that's another thing people look for with software. You want it as hands off as possible. You want it to be making recommendations to you. Actually if you do these price increases you can make X amount extra revenue.

And how do you grow revenue? So dynamic pricing, price optimization tools. There's so much stuff that we're working on around that. I think that's where the next generation of software products in this industry should be focused and I think that's where the expectations will increasingly move.

See I look at everything both as somebody works for a software company but also with an operator hat on as well. You know I've been open about this. It's my goal to you know, run my own self storage business at some point.

Yeah.

So I'm constantly thinking what would I want as an operator? And I think possibly it's very easy to overthink stuff as well and not keep it simple. I think if you're starting up.

Yes.

You want a modern, clean website. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to book and pay online.

Yeah.

You know, we've always gone on about as few button presses, mouse clicks, etc as possible.

Yeah.

You want everything really optimized for mobile. And I think that's another good point as well. Because if your website and online booking system isn't optimized for mobile, I don't know what this, the the data is, but I would think 80 or 90% of people now are booking through mobile.

It's well over half across store. Yeah, it's well over half the bookings come through mobile.

Yeah. So I think that's, I think people sometimes maybe over complicate like what the issue is or hang on, why am I not getting bookings? Possibly it's because my booking system isn't optimized for conversions as much as it could be. And I know at store it's always been a huge focus to actually increase that conversion rate on the booking flow.

So, okay, so if you're an operator and you're not using any software yet, or you're thinking about getting started into self storage, or you're using a piece of software and you kind of think it's time to update this, whatever you're looking at, you're assessing self storage software. What are the two or three most important things do you think to look for?

Is it cloud based? First off, is the online booking flow really optimized for online bookings and payments? Because I think as the market becomes more and more competitive, which it clearly is becoming, more and more people are also looking for modern software with optimized booking flows. And I think if you haven't got an online booking flow that's, I guess, you know, the shopify of the world, then you're not gonna get as many new customers as your, you know, competitor up the road.

Yep.

And then I think as an operator, processing fees is a huge thing now. And I think that's become more and more important because, you know, profitability wise, depending on what your goal is, whether you're looking to sell down the line, whether you're looking to grow, it comes straight off your, the bottom line. And that could be potentially 1%, 1 1/2% of dead money, effectively you're giving away. So I think that's also really important. And then. Yeah, just revenue optimization tools.

Yeah, yeah, that was a little fourth you snuck in there.

I know I could sneak in a few more, but I'll keep it four.

So to recap then, so the three you're saying are cloud based.

Yeah.

Make sure you've got a really good online booking flow that converts people at as high rate as possible. And it's, it's another point we were probably going to come on to is about just ticking boxes of features. Like don't just look at, do you have an online booking flow? Look at the booking flow.

Yeah.

Get some data about the conversion. Because we, the data we see suggest that there's a big difference between different products and how they, how well they convert. The third thing you said then is processing fees, which is a really good point because you know, some of the, some tools have additional fees that you're kind of stuck with for, for life kind of thing, but you have processing fees, important one too. Then you snuck in revenue optimization. Okay, what about for an operator who's trying to grow quickly what sort of, what features matter most for them?

So I guess easy, easy addition of new sites on the software. So it shouldn't be a tricky process to add new locations, sites. I think in terms of cost as well, it should be quite clear at the outset what the pricing is going to be for the software. And as you, as you grow again, I think that's another really important point when you're looking at software, it's just future proofing the business as well. Yeah, don't look at, don't look too short term because I think in an ideal scenario you choose your software and you stick with it. Doesn't always happen, you know, but I think if you do your, do enough research, talk to lots of customers using the software too.

Yeah.

I think, you know, you'll know you'll be able to scale with that company.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's an, a really interesting point there about when you're looking at software, don't just look at the software costs as well. You've got it because when you pick a software product, it's often coming with a payment like a processing solution as well.

Yeah.

So that's what the case with us. So with Stora, you're going to use our store, a pay solution which is built on top of stripe. You got to use it. But because we've got quite big and we were able to get great pricing, we can actually, we can pass on lots of savings on that. Yeah, but you've got to like when you're looking at software, you got to see are there any limitations around that? What fees do I have to pay to the processor as well? Are there any other Fees, is it just processing? Sometimes there's a stripe billing fee of 0.7% depending who you're with. But the other stuff as well. So it's always important to compare the pull package, the software and the payments together. If you are just looking at price, that's important really. Any operator moving to Stora, we can either match or beat their current processing fees in almost any case.

Certainly if you're looking to grow, you need to look at those ongoing costs. You know, five years down the line, if you're turning over 2, 3 million of revenue, you know, 2% of that. Significant. Yeah, significant amount of money.

Yeah. One of the things that I would when I'm talking to operators who are thinking about scaling sometimes depends on how they're planning to do it. But generally what we'll see with operators who are trying to grow quickly is in the UK at least, there's often an element of I'm trying to automate as much as I possibly can here with this business because I know that long term that's going to help me operate this business in a cost effective way and give me advantages over competitors. So we'll often be talking to customers who are really trying to dig into how do I keep costs down at the site, how do I automate? Like what's the process for a move in? How can I have nobody at site so people can move in? How do I still get contracts signed, how do I still get ID checked, how do I make sure all that stuff happens? Like that's an important thing I come across for operators looking to grow because they might be thinking, I've got a couple of sites and I want to get five satellite stores. That's quite a common thing we'd see. I think you've already talked about it like revenue growth, how do, how well are you working with a company who's thinking about how do we grow your revenue for you?

Exactly. I mean ideal scenarios, you want that happening in the background, don't you?

Yeah.

You don't necessarily want an extra task of having to do all the price increases and revenue management manually.

We do like to think that like there's a stat from last year our average customer grew at 32% on the top line. Now much of that was down to Stora and much of it was down to the fact that, you know, they're, they're opening new sites and everything else and, and so like we're not taking full credit for that growth obviously. But I do like to think that some of the stuff that we do around freeing up time frees up time that they can then put into growing their business and finding new sites.

Yes.

You know, like they're not, they're not getting sucked into admin and you know, hopefully. Hopefully like what maybe used to be three hours of time on a phone call, on the phone every day taking bookings is down to half an hour and you know, there's two and a half hours a day back hopefully as well for them or their staff. And it's then about putting that time into, like you said, the valuable stuff that only people can do, which is thinking about growth, thinking about, I don't know, new ways to market the business, talking to customers to show them, I don't know, to do things that, I don't know, AI or a chatbot can't do, like show empathy and help them with their move in if they have to, whatever it might be, those sort of things that, that only a person can do. So do you see sometimes your role in sales when you're talking to operators, that it's not just about selling the software, it's often about helping maybe advise. Do you see that as part of your role?

Definitely, yeah. I mean it's a definite consultative sale. I suppose A lot of roles are in the self storage industry. I think a lot of people are coming in completely new.

Yeah.

So as a software provider, I think if you're placing your trust in that provider, it's good that they can open other doors for you as well and make introductions.

And sometimes on that you might come across situation where somebody has opened a self storage software site or software, a self storage site about a year ago.

Yeah.

And have maybe put in some sort of a lock system for the gate that like a local git supplier has recommended. Yeah, that's nothing to do with self storage. That can be a problem then because what, what will happen then? What will happen then is, okay, we've got 100 customers now. I need to get a piece of software to help me manage this or I've installed like XYZ gate system. Like. Well, we don't support that. There's maybe 10 in the self storage industry that we support. And you know, they tend to be ones that you know, work well. Um, but they've maybe spent ten grand installing some other system. Yeah, it's some stuff like that that if you can get talking to them early enough, maybe you can, you can help kind of avoid some of those potential mistakes.

That's it. Now I think a lot of people don't realize when they come to you with. If I've been speaking to someone in Poland or Czechoslovakia or wherever, they've got a very specific requirement for an access control control system which never heard of. It's not self storage specific.

Yeah.

And then they've got two choices. They either rip it all out and put something else in. They run independently.

Yeah.

Or potentially they can use the API which I know store very soon to launch, which can do bespoke integrations as well.

Yeah, yeah that's true. Yeah. But it's just more money and more expense. Probably cheaper to rip it out and put anyone in on the ones we support. Probably. Okay. What about for suppliers? What do you think suppliers as a whole, not just ourselves but sort of everybody together. What, what can we do to better help operators? Do you think you can sort of touch there on like.

Yeah.

Knowing people and like being able to do introductions? I don't know. Is there. What's what, where's the role? Are there opportunities to work better together as a supplier base?

Yeah, I mean I think as a business store are very good at that. I'm constantly speaking to, to people in the industry. Obviously we all see each other at events. Yes. I guess you got to, you got to keep it fair as well because you can't necessarily favor every supplier. So you just, you know, you let whoever you're speaking to know that they. There's a number of good suppliers in different areas and then point them in the direction of people that, that you know, offer that particular service.

Yes.

I think as suppliers we just need to, we need to, I think we need to do better at making each other aware of the advantages the systems, the different systems offer. You know, why, why is store potentially a better solution? And then I think every supplier should be doing that because it might be that we don't have as good good as understanding as we should do other suppliers as well. So yeah, I think it's just working, working together as closely as we can.

Yeah.

For the benefit of the end user.

If you'd won just to finish up then if you'd. One piece of advice to someone looking at self storage software platform, just one piece. What would it be? Apart from call you.

I think do your homework. Don't necessarily be completely happy in the first instance when you get answers to the questions you're asking, really dig deeper. Do proper research. Ask that software option what their product roadmap is because at the end of the day it's a big investment. As I said before, you don't want to make A decision and then find yourself changing six months down the line ideally. So I think look at it as a 2, 3, 4 year decision. Where is that company going to be in next year's time? What is their roadmap? And I think most modern software solutions now should be fairly open about giving you what their product roadmap and the direction. And also I know store's got they call a change log and that's visible on the website. So anyone can go on, they can see all the previous changes to the product and I think it's just having that transparency and seeing how fast the product is developing.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point because so much is changing in software now. Like so much. Not just like AI is enabling us to move more quickly and do more as a team and you know, just the pace of development of our product and whatever product you're going with, it's important to look at the pace like are they investing in this thing? Are they putting a lot of money into making this develop over time? Because that's what's going to affect where it'll be in five years time. And you know, if they're not, if it's not something that's being invested in, it's kind of static and you're going to be left behind.

Yeah.

Because you've tied yourself to that piece of software. That's a really, really important point. Like what is the pace of investment? Cool. Thanks a lot Mark. Welcome back again and good to have you here.

Thank you. It's been, it's been a three month break from working so I've been able. My wife is very happy because I got to spend lots of time with the kids over the summer holidays.

Is a gardener good shape as well?

Yeah, the garden's getting better. There was a bit of work to do so it's been useful.

Thanks very much.

Thanks.

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