At the SMART Estate Security Conference earlier this year, SMART Security Solutions was introduced to My Estate Life when it took a sponsorship at the event. Launched by two South Africans from a small base in 2016, this resident management app has grown significantly and now boasts a large user base across South Africa.
According to the company, My Estate Life is a mobile app for residents and managers in housing estates and buildings. Its core aim is to be an easy gateway for residents to manage visitors, staff, communication and general property administration in a simple interface. SMART Security Solutions reached out to Luke Rasmussen, CEO of My Estate Life, to find out more about the app and how it works.
SMART Security Solutions: Please briefly describe the My Estate Life app, what it does, and how it came to be. Is it only an app, or is a desktop version also available?
Rasmussen: My Estate Life is a resident management app for housing estates and buildings. It creates a turnkey environment between management, the residents, and security on site. Our users, from a single interface, have access to estate contacts, communication, visitor control, staff management, ticket management, and a multitude of other features. The app reduces the time to onboard and deliver information to any resident in the estate; My Estate Life also reduces administrative needs and improves access to information, which improves the quality of life in a community.
The app is mobile-based and available on all the major app stores, but the PC interface is kept for administration and management needs.
SMART Security Solutions: Does the app focus on security and estate operations and management? What would you say are the benefits to the estates using it, and also, what benefits do users (homeowners or tenants get from it)?
Rasmussen: Yes, the app was created to take all the operation functions of a residence in a housing estate or building and automate as much as possible.
Starting at the beginning, onboarding a new resident: In an estate or building environment using My Estate Life, onboarding is as simple as getting the resident on the app. From here, we automate enrolment in the access systems for the resident, their vehicles, and staff. The resident then has access to all the information they would need at their fingertips, from the basics of communication and access to information, all the way down to private folders for ERF owners and private resources.
Where we dominate is offering this in a simple-to-use cloud solution at a surprisingly accessible cost.
SMART Security Solutions: Has integrating security and operations in the same app proved valuable? Is app access controlled, so that maintenance, for example, doesn’t get involved in security operations, and so on?
Rasmussen: Yes, it’s all about roles and responsibility. If the role of the manager/operations on site is to evaluate and approve applications, then the role of the resident can be to initially create and ultimately maintain approved records. This means the manager reduces the administration of day-to-day maintenance and focuses purely on improving the initial vetting process.
We follow this model for all aspects, from access control to staff management. All roles in our app are content and function-controlled to ensure we are fulfilling our mission of reducing the administration and back-and-forth between operations and residents without compromising security.
SMART Security Solutions: Is it all cloud-based, or is there a self-hosting option available? For the cloud system, what have you done to ensure the security and integrity of the data captured? Is the system PoPIA compliant
Rasmussen: My Estate Life is 100% cloud-based. Because of this, we can onboard a new site in less than 24 hours. We have invested in world-class hosting solutions, data protection, data silos and encryption to protect information. We also control access rights to data, limiting exports and specifically tracing who has seen private data, and when, for reporting. My Estate Life is also hosted within South Africa’s borders.
SMART Security Solutions: Visitor and contractor management is essential in estates to ensure that only the right people gain access. How does your visitor and contractor management work? Do you have built-in checks that warn if a contractor hasn’t left by the end of the day, for example?
Rasmussen: My Estate Life operates based on identity, so if a resident invites ‘Joe Soap’, our protocols look to ensure that it is, in fact, ‘Joe Soap’ who is granted access. This differs from the traditional code-based system, where identity is only attached to the code on arrival. With My Estate Life, the code is bound to an invited person for the two-factor authentication (2FA).
We track all persons on site under their category, such as visitor, taxi, delivery, company, etc. This allows us to generate specific live reports on who is onsite, and allows the site to operate different rule sets for different types of visitors.
SMART Security Solutions: Can the system integrate with other security technologies (access control, cameras, perimeter systems, etc.)? Does it support LPR?
Rasmussen: My Estate Life has a wide variety of integrations available. From turnkey access control syncing, where My Estate Life is the master record that maintains and keeps the access system accurate, to automated ‘guardless’ building solutions, where we integrate into aspects like the lift core, automatically guiding visitors to the correct floor.
We have integrated various access systems, offering ANPR for automated processing. My Estate Life is not looking to be the hardware solution; we are looking to supercharge what a client has onsite, improving the turnkey experience with our world-class interface.
SMART Security Solutions: What features and functionality will you include in future app versions?
Rasmussen: We have already implemented AI solutions to help managers write quicker and better communication notices to residents; we are looking to continue to improve our AI offering. Every month, we also add to our integration partner list – which offers exciting new plug-in options for the application. We are also looking to continue to offer more internal toolsets. Some recent additions are a full booking management tool for sporting facilities and management toolsets for managing agents.
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