The Company
Boxer Property (Boxer) is celebrating over 30 years as an innovative commercial real estate investment and management company. Boxer Property Management Corporation is a privately held firm based in Houston that manages, leases and administers retail, medical, hospitality and office properties comprising over 15 million square feet across more than 140 locations nationwide.
The Challenge
Connecting solutions
Boxer sought an integrated technology approach that would seamlessly combine its Yardi platform with other solutions used by the company including Microsoft Power BI. The company also wanted to incorporate its Yardi data into AI and machine learning models for more reliable predictions.
The Solution
Yardi Data Connect
Yardi Data Connect unlocks a new level of data connection with a secure feed from Yardi Voyager to Power BI, enabling infinite customizations and incorporation of third-party sources. The solution allows you to collect and configure data from sources you use every day and helps you understand patterns with visualization tools to drive data-driven decisions. You can aggregate data from multiple Voyager databases and combine with other sources to establish one source of truth.
The Story
Integrated technology
Using Yardi Voyager as its foundation, Boxer has achieved a technology stack that includes all the tools the company values including AI and emerging technologies. Justin Segal, president, explained that when Boxer was looking for ways to connect their tech solutions, “There were some tangled sets of options, but we wound up solving that problem with an integrated suite that started with Data Connect.” Segal added that the company struggled with artificial intelligence until they found Data Connect.
Connected to Power BI including Azure machine learning, Data Connect provides much better data visualization to the company’s workflows. According to Segal, Boxer has successfully combined operational data, building system data and complex financial data through Data Connect. “We’re getting much more robust data visualizations and process automation,” said Segal.
A bridge to data and smart outcomes
Before Data Connect and AI tools, Segal commented that an experienced property manager could look at a few properties and come up with some reasonable ideas about what might happen. But to ingest an entire portfolio of information and find patterns of activities or financial outcomes that map to specific things can that happen in the future, you can’t do that without technology like AI and machine learning. Further, you can’t fully utilize those solutions without including data for your entire portfolio. “You need an infrastructure that behaves like a neural network to train against known outcomes,” said Segal.
Segal thinks of Data Connect as a bridge to valuable information that leads Boxer to better outcomes. Plus, bringing other sources of data in is easier than ever and provides a single source of truth for the company. When it comes to leveraging artificial intelligence, Segal commented that without information from Data Connect, their models and forecasts would be much less powerful. Now they can use all kinds of data points in various ways including rent forecasts. “Data Connect gives you the ability to punch in a bunch of factors that represent complex financial data sets, which is probative of potential outcomes for the portfolio,” said Segal.
