Not all IT managers are created equal. In fact, some are boys and some are girls. The girl IT managers more often than not have to use their IT manager skills to juggle a number of different responsibilities including being mothers. This is not an easy thing to do and there is no IT manager training that will show us how to do it. However, some women IT managers are able to pull it off. How do they do it?The Challenge Of Being A IT Manager Who IS Also A MotherI think that we can all agree that being an IT manager is a challenging and difficult job under the best of circumstances. However, it you go ahead and throw in the additional responsibilities of being a mother then all of a sudden things just get a lot harder to do. There are a lot of IT managers who find themselves in this unique situation.Being a mother brings with it a large number of additional responsibilities. None of these responsibilities are impossible to do, it’s just that they all require your time in order to do them correctly. These things include taking children to sports practice, attending meeting with teachers at the school, taking family members to the doctor, helping with homework, finding time for the family to spend time together, oh and also maintaining a relationship with your spouse. How hard could all of this be?It always seems to come back to being a question of time. The job of an IT manager can easily overflow the standard 40 hour workweek. We have all seen weeks where we’ve ended up working 60 or more hours. Its when things like this start to happen, or start to happen back-to-back, that all of a sudden and IT manager who is also a mother can start to run into some real problems.How Successful Female IT Managers Pull It OffThe good news is that a number of IT managers who are also mothers are able to pull all of this off. Now the big question is how are they accomplishing this? The first thing that we need to understand is that the “60 hour work week” is really pretty much a myth. Yes, they do happen – but infrequently. The average is about 44 hours of work per week.The next thing to realize is that as IT managers, mothers often have a great deal of both flexibility and autonomy in their jobs. What this means is that they can control when they work. Many of these mother IT managers choose to work what is called a “split-shift” where they’ll work for a while at work, come home and take care of the kids, and then once the kids are in bed, they will do some more work.Finally, working as an IT manager generally provides a working mom with a fair amount of disposable income. This income can then be spent on getting her help with common tasks. This can include getting dry cleaning picked up and delivered, having the house cleaned, and even having someone cook the family meals. All of these contribute to freeing up the IT manager mother’s time to do more things that she really wants to do.What All Of This Means For YouBeing an IT manager is a demanding job. Being a woman who is an IT manager and a mother is even more demanding when you consider all of the different roles that they potentially have to juggle at the same time including IT team building. However, some women are able to pull this juggling act off. We need to understand how they do it.When a woman becomes an IT manager she may have a number of different roles that she is going to have to manage at the same time: IT manager, wife, mother, personal hobbies, etc. On top of this, being an IT manager can require a great deal of her time: often 60 or more hours per week. The good news is that long hours are often more imaginary then real. Women often balance their required time by splitting their time between time at work and time spent after the children have been put to bed. Finally, because an IT manager job pays well many tasks can be farmed out to helpers.IT needs more women. IT needs more women IT managers. What this means is that all of the challenges of juggling multiple responsibilities is something that every women IT manager needs to be able to do. The good news is that it turns out that it can be easy to get the different roles to balance out. Follow these steps and it can be possible for a woman IT manager to succeed in everything that she does both on and off the job!

Technology is increasingly playing a critical role in helping property management firm compete better. Technology savvy firms are using technology to run targeted marketing campaigns, to manage operations minutely and to generate and understand their operating numbers better.A recent study done by an independent organization to find how property managers are using the vast amount of technology available to them threw up some interesting findings:Businesses using technology better grow fasterNearly half of the companies surveyed grew their business over the last few years, either by revenue or by number of units. The companies that were able to grow their business in a recessionary economy made extensive use of technology. Over 60% of those growing businesses use property management specific software system such as Buildium, Appfolio, Maxwell Systems or Spectra. In general, those that were successful were able to: automate tasks, track online leads well and provide their tenants with online options.Great Software Equals EfficiencyCompanies who used property management specific software managed an average of 102 units per employee. Those that using generic software or spreadsheets only managed an average of 61 units per employee!! An integrated software suite frees up property management employees to do more tasks.These specific software are helpful to track rentals and lease renewals better. They also help manage property level data and business information more efficiently and present it in a readable and accessible form. Also most property management software integrates well with accounting software or has an accounting module. They give everything you need to take charge of your payables and receivables, maintain customer agreements and relationships, track your financials, and proactively manage your cash flow. Web based software’s help property mangers connect offsite and report in real time.Companies are struggling to Track Online LeadsMuch of the discussion on property management web sites is centered on online marketing and lead generation. However surprisingly, about 36% of property managers don’t even use computers to track online leads. Instead they rely on the tenant to mention it on an their application forms. In addition, 19% of the respondents don’t track leads generated online!This statistic is surprising given that tools like Google Analytics and sites such as Stat-counter have made it easy for even small firms to track origins of online leads and website visits extensively. They also have multiple reports to help determine the effectiveness of an ad campaign and keywords. Even banner based advertising can be tracked by banner tags.Social Media Use Widespread but Is It Effective?Despite the evangelization of social media over the last few years, the survey showed no sizable growth in business between companies who are using social media and those who are not. Social and business networking websites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are being increasingly adopted and are fantastic for networking. For example, LinkedIn has various groups for property managers which they can join and network with people and generate business.In sum, there is a substantial difference in doing business now and even five years back. It is not only property management, but all facets of real estate from the buying to selling to renting to managing that is turning to technology for answers to different business problems!