The Company
Caddo Office Reimagined is an offshoot of Caddo Holdings, which was formed in 2009 by Justin Engler, Dustin Schilling and Tim Slaughter. “Office Reimagined” signifies the innovative solutions that Caddo continues to develop in the rapidly evolving flexible office space sector.
Caddo provides members with their ideal neighborhood office: a place to work that is near home, but not at home. Its standalone neighborhood office buildings offer private office suites with four hard walls and a lockable door with a 60-day cancellation, no-term lease. This unique model provides members with focus, credibility and balance. Caddo plans to continue expanding with additional locations across North Texas.
The Challenge
Disparate Systems, Manual Processes
When Caddo acquired its first three coworking office properties in 2019, they came with an in-house management system developed by the previous owner. The system couldn’t process automatic payments and required manual input for accounts receivable journal entries from Yardi Voyager. Caddo tried another software system, but it also failed to provide the data integration they needed to be efficient. Those limitations led Caddo to seek a new software solution that would integrate with Voyager and provide automated workflows for end-to-end operational tasks. With plans to grow their office operations from three locations to twenty in five years, Caddo sought a robust coworking platform backed by an established company that invests in its technology solutions.
The Solution
Yardi Kube
Yardi Kube is an all-in-one platform that delivers property, accounting and IT management for flexible workspaces. The platform eliminates manual billing and paperwork and helps companies grow and scale by streamlining member management, lead generation, IT needs, accounting and reporting. Members can access self-service options and prospects can access a marketplace, while operators gain comprehensive oversight. Yardi Kube works seamlessly with Yardi Voyager to address all accounting needs for shared space from accounts payable to real-time financial reporting. A mobile app further facilitates self-service for members including bookings, billing, door access and more to provide a superior experience.
The Story
Doing More with a Single Connected Platform
With the motto, “Get stuff done and be home for dinner,” Caddo’s office spaces are designed to help members work productively and comfortably with a range of easy-to-use services. Caddo also wants its staff to enjoy the same efficiency and benefits. Voyager and Yardi Kube work together seamlessly to make that happen.
As a Voyager client, having a flexible space management system that syncs with Voyager accounting in real time to deliver a single source of truth was a driver for Caddo to select Yardi Kube. “Yardi built an institutional grade platform with Yardi Kube, with a consumer-friendly front end look and feel,” said Tim Slaughter, president of Caddo Office Reimagined. Slaughter remarked on how automating processes — such as move-ins and move-outs, helps the company operate profitably with a “lean and mean” staff. “The real heavy lifting with tenants comes when they move in and move out. The more those processes are automated, the better, and Yardi helps us with that.”
Kelli McKnight, Caddo’s VP of finance, is a Voyager enthusiast. “I’ve been using Voyager for a long time. From a financial standpoint, it is by far the easiest system to use. That Yardi Kube integrates with Voyager is wonderful, because we’re able to get the same Voyager detail and avoid extra manual steps to get the information, as we did when we were using another provider.”
Slaughter also raved about the ease of implementing Yardi Kube. “Yardi has a really good implementation process. It was a great experience and it happened both quickly and thoroughly, it was very smooth.”
Growing Without Adding Staff
Caddo expects to add between 300 and 500 new members per year and is pleased to have a scalable platform that doesn’t require adding operational staff. During the pandemic, the company lost one of their accounting staff and haven’t refilled the position — but they haven’t lost productivity, thanks to Voyager and Yardi Kube.
Slaughter explained, “We hire building managers and maintenance personnel as needed, but at the corporate level we can maintain a small staff by automating processes with our software and being more efficient. Especially with move-outs, there are lots of tasks involved and we need to keep as few staff involved as possible. We’re going in the right direction using a single Yardi platform with integrated solutions.”
Slaughter elaborated that Yardi understands where Caddo is going as a CRE operator, managing multiple assets with the same corporate staff, and working with different partnerships. From an ROI standpoint, the win for Caddo is the ability to spread its existing corporate staff across many locations, thanks to its integrated Yardi platform. “Our corporate team could be just a few more people at 20 locations as it is at five. It’s not going to require linear growth of our staff as we add locations if we do it right by leveraging software integration and automation — to really marry our business processes with our tech tools,” said Slaughter.
Caddo also appreciates that numerous Yardi developers are focused on Yardi Kube. “As a Voyager client, it’s comfortable for us to use Yardi Kube, because Yardi supports its products very well. Yardi is really investing in Yardi Kube and sees it as having a great future. We see that as a true partnership because we can share ideas and help develop the product, so it goes the way customers ultimately want it to go, and it’s exciting for us to be part of that. That gives us confidence to grow, knowing that Yardi is keeping pace and continuing to invest in the solution,” said Slaughter.
Delivering a Great Member Experience
Caddo’s members have provided extremely positive feedback about their experience using Yardi Kube. “It’s a more stable tech environment and members using the app are happy that they can book conference rooms and make payments on the go,” said Slaughter.
Providing a branded experience for its members is also important to Caddo, including website portals and the reskinned mobile app, which they encourage all their members to use in order to take advantage of the online services they’ve come to expect as consumers in every other area of their life. “The app provides a familiar and friendly experience, like renting a storage unit rather than some stodgy real estate transaction,” added Slaughter.
