3 Ways Land Asset Managers Use eCommerce Platforms to Streamline Their Leasing Business

The introduction of eCommerce platforms has had a dramatic impact on land asset management – beyond just facilitating lease transactions. Here are three ways land asset managers are using eCommerce platforms to transform their recreational business.

The History of Recreational Leasing Payment Collection

Land asset managers that lease their land for recreational use need a method for collecting revenue. For decades, the industry has used checks and physical methods to collect payments, including cash, personal checks, and certified money orders. This process has been time consuming, cumbersome and prone to errors for accounting, operations and the end users themselves.

As a result, there has been a shift in the industry towards e-commerce, adding e-checks, debit cards and credit cards to the payment collection process. While the end user now has multiple options for obtaining their lease in the most efficient way possible, the assets manager is left with a new issue. The challenge now lies within the difficulty and confusion of identifying all of the necessary components of e-commerce that are compatible with one another, including:

• Merchant accounts
• Payment gateways
• Processors
• Issuing banks
• Business accounts themselves

Not only does this complex process create friction for a transaction, it leaves the asset manager confused regarding fees, service charges and reporting. Without a centralized management system, the responsibility of coordinating all these components falls on different asset manager departments.  

Online payments help speed up the process, but they cut into efficiencies. This is because they use decentralized technology, involving multiple components, each with its own processing fee. 

To streamline this, many asset managers are using eCommerce platforms to consolidate the entire process, one that is tailored to our industry needs, like ONEConnect. A centralized platform replaces your usual unpredictable costs and mountains of fees with one flat rate. The result is simplified transactions between landowners and land users that make managing assets easier through direct payments, reduced administrative work and faster turnaround times.

Direct Payments into Investment Accounts

A core responsibility for land asset managers is managing and reporting investment earnings, including that from recreation leasing, to investors in a timely manner. This process can become highly complex with multiple components involved. 

There are many players to account for, such as the different investor banks, credit card companies, the processors, etc. And all of these parties have different fee structures. Additionally, these different entities do not always work or communicate properly. 

Savvy investors are using their own eCommerce platforms like ONEConnect to simplify and complete these transfers. This gets investors their earnings faster and with no need for checks or complex payments. Each transaction also incurs fewer fees, reducing operational expenses. 

Reduced Administrative Work

When you send payments through multiple channels, it can create mountains of paper trails and paperwork. Each touchpoint in the process – your bank, the investor’s bank, the payment gateway, the processor – adds more administrative burden and more opportunities for mistakes in the transfer of funds.

eCommerce platforms help asset managers consolidate payment methods, processors, gateways and merchant accounts. This produces fewer touchpoints and transaction records. When you only have to worry about the two ends of the transaction and the platform in between, everyday administrative work becomes much simpler.

Increased Efficiency and Improved Reporting

Today’s asset managers are under pressure to report accurately, quickly and more often to stakeholders and investors, making the speed of management processes and reporting abilities critical. The multiple steps involved in typical online payments create inefficiencies that often times slow down this process.

So, like the other areas we’ve reviewed, many asset managers are using the centralized nature and reporting abilities of eCommerce platforms to accelerate these processes. By eliminating multiple steps and parties involved, a centralized payment platform enables you to reduce manual consolidation processes, take control of your data and access the information you need quickly to optimize your resources and reduce costs.

Conclusion

eCommerce platforms are transforming the land asset management industry. By adopting this technology, asset managers are able to conduct recreational leasing business faster while increasing efficiencies and reducing expenses for their investors.

Interested in integrating eCommerce to your business model?  Contact us to learn more about Orbis’ ONEConnect payment platform.