Technology may not be the driving force behind the phenomenal growth of the self-storage industry, but it sure complements the activity, adding to the capacity for generating a return in the business and expanding the possibilities in customer service. Long a dream for many self-storage operators, the technology to operate an unmanned facility leads the list and stands as an example of technological innovations that offer solutions. These electronic systems provide efficient service assistance to customers, freeing time for management staff members, and allow owners to generate a healthier net operating income.

The impact of the gains in technological improvements to the practice of operating self-storage may be hard to measure for each individual location, but a bird’s-eye view shows the contrast between the “have’s” and the “have not’s.” Go to the intersection of highways 24 and 28 in Anderson, South Carolina, a county seat just about halfway down Interstate 85 between Charlotte, NC, and Atlanta, GA. From that intersection take each of the main roads—north, south, east, and west—and you’ll find no less than six storage facilities within two miles. That’s about average for most towns, it seems.

Expectedly, the oldest ramshackle building has an office in another business building on an adjacent piece of property, not even a hint of security, and little curb appeal. The newest, Westside Storage, right beside the area high school has great visibility for the store that has one first-phase building complete and two additional building pads ready to be poured. Great signage calls attention to the features of available storage with state of the art security features. In between, there are the fenced and unfenced stores that feature “Boat and RV Storage,” especially the ones on Highway 24, the most direct route from downtown to Lake Hartwell to the south and west.

The results of your short ride will readily reveal why one or two of the properties show up on brokers’ lists, ready to be sold. As in many lines of business, new competition and demographic shifts in the neighborhood dictate new approaches. In this neighborhood, the more industrial side of the town known as The Electric City, changes come as giant corporations decide whether or not their Anderson branch will stay or go. This southern city, within 20 miles of Clemson University and the research infrastructure it attracts, still holds onto names like Michelin and Honeywell, but has lost facilities and jobs for many of the old-line big names in textiles. The changes are apparent as witnessed by the contrast of new sub-division signs right alongside those that indicate “This Industrial Site is Now Available.”

For the owner or prospective investor, the answer to how to make a go of it rests on the ability to compete. Technological innovations and improvements in the way we do things open the door to generating profits more efficiently. The changes cover the scope of all we do, even from the initial evaluation. Market survey methods, architectural and engineering processes, building materials, construction procedures, security systems, accounting and management systems, and customer services all see innovation and change that make operating a business different. We save time and money. We make operations easier. We make our services more convenient and easy to use.

In a recent Self Storage Developer’s Seminar, one of the industry’s popular consultants showed maps of recent site surveys and commented, “We used to concentrate on the three-mile radius around each site under consideration. Now, with neighborhood transportation transitions, we look at a ten-minute drive. People are more mobile and the traffic management design for each area of the city has a significant impact on the proposed business and its ability to attract customers.”

Paul McElreath works with architects, engineers, and owners to depict all the features and support infrastructure of wiring and conduit for the sophisticated security systems furnished by Digitech International, specialists in security for the self-storage industry. “Each architect used to draft drawings by hand. We would get them and have to manually add our system information to the mechanical drawings, and then move them along to the general contractor. Counting the mailing time, that was a process that could easily take three weeks or more.” Pointing to his computer screen, he adds, “Now, it just takes a few seconds for an architect to e-mail a set of prints. We use a CAD (Computer Assisted Drawing) program to add a few lines, attach symbols, and drag’n’drop a few icons onto the drawing and we’re ready to send them out again within a few hours, depicting a complete system layout. It’s amazingly fast to use the tools that computers make available to us.”

What he says is true in moving information as well. Practical web-based management software solutions have appealed to early adopters who want to leverage the power of the Internet to make operating information available instantly and at virtually any computer terminal or laptop wherever they might be in the world. “The technology involved in parking vital information on a remote storage archive in somebody’s corporate server farm seems alien to some owners who think they still have to maintain local control of their operating data,” says Markus Hecker of SMD Software of Raleigh, NC. “Others, including some of the large real estate investment trusts that own multiple properties, and are gobbling up more through consolidation purchases, see the value of having all the data available instantly for evaluation back at the home office.” His counterpart at Centershift, one of the first software development companies to embrace the model, says that issues of security and redundancy were part of the original design, so that they would never need to be a worry for owners and operators, offering full time operational reliability. These firms, along with many of their competitors, now offer some form of remote information gathering, processing, and delivery.

Timely and convenient customer service and the age-old drive to conserve operating capital by reducing overhead influences the rapidly evolving business of ATM-like kiosks, self-service rental stations, appearing at storage centers in neighborhoods around the country. Notables like Shurgard and Public Storage join the few early adopters in adding the devices and processes in at least a few stores. Robert Chiti, President and CEO of Open Tech Alliance of Scottsdale, AZ, says, “The self-service rental station includes a method for each prospect to initiate a conversation with the home office call center, if they need to, but the tools are built in to allow each step of the process to be automated on the spot. With prompting and on-board video instructions, a customer can go through the steps to complete a lease and be accepted for an immediate move-in.” Positioned more as a manager’s assistant, rather than a management replacement, self-service kiosks offer hope to owners who want to cut away overhead.

Jefferson Shreve, the principal in Storage Express, owner operators of more than 65 storage locations dotting the Midwest, built an original business model around operating unmanned sites. “We started out in secondary markets, challenged to support the cost of operation for smaller facilities. Our average investment gave us about 22,000 rentable square feet, not enough to pay a lot of overhead. We had to find ways to compete effectively with the other properties.” Shreve says they are beyond the testing stage. They invest in the DSL or TV Cable connections that give them high-speed access to the Internet at each site. “We have about five sites now that have the kiosks in place, with orders for another five. That complements what we have been doing with access control and security for each location. Now we can lease properties and keep an eye on them with remote video across the Internet. The innovations have given us tools that allow us to do a better job and still keep the overhead under control.”

Shelly Gibson serves as Training Coordinator for Universal Management of Atlanta, GA, a firm fielding more than 100 employees to staff the more than 40 stores that make up its current roster of contracted clients. “When we’re recruiting, all the new technology at the store level puts more pressure on us to hire right to begin with. We have to be much more careful. Computer skills are an absolute, and we need people who can roll with what comes, because change is constant.” She details her experience, “I…