The estate
A 180-unit residential estate in Lekki Phase 1, Lagos, managed by a third-party facility management company. The estate has three buildings (A, B, C), two diesel generators, a central water treatment plant, a gym, a swimming pool, and a security team of twelve guards across three shifts.
Before Haag
Service requests were handled through a WhatsApp group. A resident would post a complaint, the facility manager would forward it to a technician, and the resolution would be tracked through a series of messages that nobody could easily search or audit. The average resolution time was 4.5 days. Residents complained about lack of visibility — they never knew the status of their request without calling the manager.
Billing was equally manual. The manager generated invoices in Excel, sent them via WhatsApp, and collected payments via bank transfer. Reconciliation took three days at the end of every month, and 15-20% of payments could not be matched to invoices.
The implementation
The estate migrated to Haag over a two-week period:
- Week 1 — facility setup: buildings, floors, units, common areas, and equipment were modelled in the system. The 180 units were imported via CSV. The two generators, water treatment plant, and gym equipment were registered as assets with warranty information.
- Week 2 — resident onboarding: residents were invited to download the Resident App. 142 of 180 residents (79%) activated their accounts within the first week. The remaining residents were onboarded over the following month.
The results (3 months in)
- Service resolution time: 4.5 days → 1.8 days (60% reduction)
- Collection rate: 72% → 94% (digital payments + automatic invoicing)
- Reconciliation time: 3 days → 0 (auto-reconciliation via wallet)
- Resident satisfaction: 3.2 → 4.4 out of 5 (survey score)
- Disputed charges: 12 per month → 0 (full audit trail on every transaction)
What made the difference
The biggest impact came from the service request workflow. When a resident submits a request through the app, the system automatically routes it to the right vendor based on the issue category (plumbing, electrical, structural). The vendor receives it on their Service Provider App, updates the status in real time, and the resident gets a push notification at every step. No more WhatsApp groups, no more phone calls to check status.
The second biggest impact was billing. With the wallet system, residents pay before the billing cycle, and the system auto-allocates payments to invoices. The manager no longer spends three days reconciling at month-end — it is done automatically.
Lessons learned
The technology was the easy part. The hard part was changing habits — getting residents off WhatsApp and onto the app, getting vendors to update job status instead of calling it done over the phone. But once the habit stuck, there was no going back.
The facility manager's advice to others considering the switch: start with service requests, not billing. Service requests show immediate value to residents (they can see status), which builds trust in the platform. Once residents trust the app, moving billing onto it is much easier.
