Creating environmentally conscious, sustainable buildings is more important than ever. Yardi client Aegis Living knows just how important, considering they’ve created the world’s “greenest” senior living community — Aegis Living Lake Union. Opened in 2022 and located in Seattle, Washington, Aegis Living Lake Union is completely emission-free, using no fossil fuels. Considering the dedication of Aegis Living in creating this spectacular community, we simply had to spread the word here on The Balance Sheet. A round of applause for Aegis Living in creating a sustainable place for residents to call home! Read more about the initiative at Aegis Living Lake Union below. Aegis Living creates world’s greenest senior living community Aegis Living Lake Union is no stranger to sustainability. Relayed by McKnight’s Senior Living, the community’s environmentally conscious design is a commendable achievement — and an inspiration to others in the industry. Impressively, standard electricity supports the entire 70,000-square-foot building at Aegis Living Lake Union, which offsets 105% of the structure’s total energy demand. The community implemented a variety of energy reduction measures to achieve this, including an onsite solar array and offsite solar energy farms. When compared with similar buildings, the community has reduced its total energy draw by 25%. “When we embarked on the journey to create the world’s greenest senior living building, our goal was to set a new standard for what is possible, bringing an equal commitment to sustainable buildings and exceptional senior living,” Aegis President Adam Clark shares with McKnight’s Senior Living. “We made this dream a reality and hope to be a model for others serving our rapidly growing aging population.” In terms of recognition (and well-deserved recognition at that), Aegis Living Lake Union is one of ten developments that’s been selected for the 2023 Urban Land Institute Americas Awards Of Excellence — and it’s the only senior living community to be recognized. It’s also the first assisted living community to meet the global green building standards set by the International Living Future Institute. About Aegis Living Aegis Living is a leader in senior assisted living and memory care. With more than 25 years of experience, Aegis is known for its deep expertise in supporting residents along the continuum of care, innovative programming, a focus on purpose-built design and an employee-centric culture. With every community, Aegis creates a living environment where residents can feel at home and inspired to live life to the fullest. The organization is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and operates 36 communities in Washington, California, and Nevada. Connect with us Once again, congratulations to Aegis Living for this outstanding achievement. Be sure to read more about the environment-first approach at Aegis Living Lake Union via McKnight’s. If you’re wanting to know how we support clients like Aegis with our senior living management software, reach out to our team! We’d love to show you around the Yardi Senior Living...

Yardi has been named to the 2023 Forbes Cloud 100, the definitive ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, published by Forbes in partnership with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. Yardi was a member of the inaugural Cloud 100 in 2016 and is the only company focused on the real estate vertical this year. “We’re honored that Forbes continues to recognize Yardi for our cloud technology and services,” said Jay Shobe, senior vice president of cloud services at Yardi. “Since the inaugural list, this inclusion has reflected the continual efforts of our employees and the unfailing support of our clients worldwide.” The Cloud 100 again reviewed submissions from hundreds of cloud startups and private companies. The Cloud 100 evaluation process involved ranking companies across four factors: market leadership (35%), estimated valuation (30%), operating metrics (20%), and people and culture (15%). “The companies of the Cloud 100 list represent the best and brightest companies in this crucial tech sector,” said Kenrick Cai, Forbes editor of the Cloud 100. “This year’s companies had to react rapidly to AI’s sweeping impact while contending with a market pullback. Their resilience puts them in elite company.” “This year’s Cloud 100 list is one of the most dynamic in history. While the industry faced macro headwinds, the 2023 Cloud 100 winners displayed the innovation and resilience of the cloud economy and the combination of growth and efficiency that prove the power of the cloud business model. 95 percent of the honorees are forecasted to reach Centaur status — $100 million of annual recurring revenue — by the end of the year,” said Mary D’Onofrio, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “It is further exciting to see so many honorees at the forefront of the AI revolution, which we believe will continue to transform the cloud and propel the next wave of growth for many of this year’s winners.” “The past year our industry has seen a generational step forward in innovation and with AI leading the charge, we are witnessing one of the most important platform shifts in decades,” said Paul Drews, managing partner, Salesforce Ventures. “The Cloud 100 list represents the best of the best and we’ve never been more excited about what the future holds, not only for the cloud but for the entire technology industry. We are proud of what these founders and their communities have already accomplished and look forward to seeing how they continue to transform the industry in the future.” The Forbes 2023 Cloud 100 is published online at forbes.com/cloud100 and will appear in the August/September 2023 issue of Forbes magazine. About Yardi Yardi® develops industry-leading software for all types and sizes of real estate companies across the world. With over 9,000 employees, Yardi is working with our clients to drive significant innovation in the real estate industry. For more information on how Yardi is Energized for Tomorrow, visit yardi.com. About Bessemer Venture PartnersBessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 145 IPOs and 300 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer’s global portfolio has included Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr, and Toast and has $20 billion of assets under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong, Boston, and Bangalore. Born from innovations in steel more than a century ago, Bessemer’s storied history has afforded its partners the opportunity to celebrate and scrutinize its best investment decisions (see Memos) and also learn from its mistakes (see Anti-Portfolio). About ForbesForbes champions success by celebrating those who have made it, and those who aspire to make it. Forbes convenes and curates the most influential leaders and entrepreneurs who are driving change, transforming business and making a significant impact on the world. The Forbes brand today reaches more than...

“I don’t get excited about change, per se, but I’m very comfortable with change. I fundamentally believe that change is an important part of the formula for business success.” That quote comes from Doug Dollenberg, Jr. — the final honoree in the 2023 Changemakers series by Senior Housing News (SHN)! It’s been a pleasure to sponsor the series for the fifth consecutive year, we’ve loved celebrating each senior living visionary recognized.   Keep reading for a snapshot of Doug Dollenberg, Jr.’s interview, which is packed with insightful stories and advice. Yardi client Doug Dollenberg, Jr. named 2023 Changemaker For Doug Dollenberg, Jr., president and CEO at Brightview Senior Living — a dedicated Yardi client — change isn’t just inevitable, it’s necessary. Since joining Brightview in 2017, he’s led changes that have positively shaped the organization to be what it is today — and he’s learned valuable lessons through it all.   In his interview with SHN, Dollenberg shares why he thinks change is essential in the senior living industry, and explains the importance of driving collaborative change. He also shares how his experience at Brightview has reinforced his passion for people and culture — and speaks to the organization’s plans for the future.   SHN: What are some ways that you think the senior living industry needs to change in the next five years? Dollenberg: Staffing is one. Two, resident experience. Three, embracing technology and innovation. And four, rebounding margin. On the staffing front, turnover is a huge challenge in the senior living industry. It is in plenty of others, but especially in senior living. And we need to attract more people to the industry and help people realize that senior living is a great industry and a great place to build a career. There are tremendous career opportunities in our industry, and we’re only going to need more and more people over the next decade. There’s already something like a million people who know it’s a great industry, but we have to attract more people to it. I think it’s going to require creativity and innovation and change to get more people to enter our great industry. We also have to figure out ways for Brightview and for the industry as a whole to figure out how to increase retention. Another is resident experience. Our resident needs and desires are evolving, and we need to be focused on addressing that for the residents of today — and also the residents of the future. The baby boomers, they’re not really entering our communities in the next handful of years, but as you go out 5, 10, 15 years, we really have to be thinking about them. As we’re looking at today’s residents and future, we have to be looking at what are the changes that impact our operations and the communities we develop for the future. The third area that I mentioned is embracing technology, innovation and process improvement with the goal of driving efficiencies. I think that’s increasingly important in our industry, as we’re focused on margin. We have to search for and create efficiencies in our business, and so much of that is going to come back to those things that I mentioned: Technology, innovative and creative ideas, and process improvement. The fourth big change in my eyes is margin rebound. Ultimately, our industry needs to get back to the operating margins that we had pre-pandemic, whether that’s getting back to or near those pre-pandemic margins. That’s something that needs to happen, and that is the function of building occupancy, driving revenue, and managing costs. I feel the industry is working on that, which is a good thing. And personally, I feel really good about the progress that our Brightview team is making on that front. SHN: How do you think about timing so that Brightview can innovate without getting so far ahead of the market that...

At 2023 Apartmentalize powered by NAA, Yardi Vice President Richard Malpica led a panel with multifamily executives about how staffing challenges are driving the need for automation and centralization. Meet Berkshire Residential Investments Vice President of Marketing Justin Wald, Fogelman Properties Vice President of Shared Services Kim Young, ROSS Companies Vice President of Marketing Taylor Blades and Westdale Asset Management Technology Director Jaymz Yates. What do these leading voices in multifamily have in common? They’re all leveraging technology to maximize staff satisfaction, enhance customer experiences and improve efficiencies.  Session panelists at the 2023 Apartmentalize education conference. From left: Yardi’s Richard Malpica, Berkshire Residential’s Justin Wald, ROSS Companies’ Taylor Blades, Fogelman Properties’ Kim Young and Westdale’s Jaymz Yates. Read on to learn about their challenges, strategies and how they’re taking on automation and centralization to automate routines and humanize exceptions.  Richard Malpica: What kind of staffing constraints is your company experiencing, and are there any new expectations the industry needs to adapt to? Justin Wald: Expectations have changed for our onsite employees. They now expect being able to work from home in addition to a higher salary. On the other hand, our prospects and residents have the expectation of immediate gratification. So, we’re really taking a step back and thinking about ways to provide the right tools for everyone’s satisfaction. Kim Young: One of the biggest things for us is onboarding. We now know to ensure that our tech is in place before a turnover occurs so the transition is as smooth as possible. Taylor Blades: Today’s employees don’t want to spend hours working leads, handling maintenance tickets or paying invoices. I think we could improve retention if we move them away from these tasks and give them more time to make an impact with prospects and residents. Today’s employees want to be involved in higher levels of thinking, not necessarily just leasing apartments or responding to emails and answering the phone. Jaymz Yates: I think we also need to be mindful and recognize that what we’re expecting out of our staff is different from what it was 10 years ago. We could look at it in a way where we’ve given them tools for success, but we’ve also put an additional burden on them to learn those new tools. It’s hard enough to hire staff, but now we expect them to manage multiple lines of channels and communications. Richard Malpica: Today’s workers place a bigger emphasis on their wellbeing. How is your company providing a work experience where employees are invested, participate in more than just rudimentary tasks and feel supported by automation? Kim Young: Our industry has a reputation of creating a pipeline where someone can start out as a leasing agent then become an assistant manager, property manager and possibly a regional vice president. But the problem is that those roles each require a different skill set. It’s not a natural progression, and that’s always been a problem. With automation, you can take a skilled leasing agent and help them deepen their practice, or help an entry-level employee excel in their field. It can be a tool to guide career paths. Richard Malpica: Everyone is interested in what automation can do. How are you utilizing automation to attract and retain the best employees? Taylor Blades: We might be in a position now where employee turnover is almost more costly than resident turnover. Some of the things we’re doing to add value to our employees’ work lives is removing the high-volume, low-value tasks out of their daily routine. We successfully implemented a bot that could handle leads from any channel. This helped our staff focus on building a connection with our residents, hosting events and making meaningful interactions. Our residents’ needs are aligning with our employees’ needs. Kim Young: We’re trying to highlight the fact that automation improves our workflow. Our leasing teams are not going to suddenly...

We hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s Changemakers series to date, a series full of inspiring interviews with leaders across the senior living industry. As sponsor for the fifth consecutive year, we’ve enjoyed sharing the interviews and highlighting how each honoree is building a better tomorrow. Today’s featured Changemaker is Jodi Guffee, owner and chief operating officer at Radiant Senior Living, one of our amazing senior living clients! Read on for a preview of Guffee’s interview, then head to the Changemakers site to read her full conversation with SHN. Yardi client Jodi Guffee named 2023 Changemaker With over 20 years of experience leading Radiant Senior Living, Jodi Guffee has spearheaded initiatives that have changed the organization’s operations for the better. While she’s faced challenges throughout her career, it hasn’t stopped her from pushing boundaries in order to make Radiant — and the industry as a whole — a better place. In her interview with SHN, Guffee shares what her journey has been like over the years — and reveals more about her initiatives at Radiant and what’s inspired them. She also shares her perspective on the senior living industry today (and her outlook on where it’s headed). SHN: As you look across the rest of the senior living industry, do you think that it’s changing fast enough to keep up with the times? Guffee: No. That’s a short answer, I know. There are several layers to that. Probably one of the biggest ones is funding: funding for staffing and funding for a generation that’s going to have a hard time paying for what we have to charge. We have a huge middle market segment that needs to be served, and we have models that are unaffordable for the most part. There are some genius people out there really doing some cutting-edge stuff that I’m really looking into. I think it’s fantastic, but I don’t think that there are enough companies that can pivot quickly enough for us to be able to serve this baby boomer “silver tsunami.” We just don’t have the people to take care of them, and the people who are going to need our services may or may not be able to afford them. Where are we going to see some government subsidies for lower-income, reimbursement rates? Our home offices are in Oregon. We have a very lucrative reimbursement rate for memory care, but not for assisted living. They aren’t very different [residents], but we have an extremely good reimbursement rate for memory care. We’re also pioneers here in Oregon. There are very few states that have good reimbursement for the private sector to be able to take some state or federal funding for residents that are low income because it’s not affordable. SHN: Can you talk about a time when you tried to execute a change and things didn’t go according to plan? How did you pivot, and what did you learn as a leader? Guffee: Gosh, there are so many. I’ll say that the ability to turn and pivot and see through different lenses is probably the key. [For example], when we were at the beginning of COVID and then in the middle of COVID and then coming out of it, we see the statistics are scary. We lost 40% of our women in the workforce. In our setting, that’s a lot of the people. They had to either stay home to take care of children who were online schooling, or they couldn’t afford childcare, so it was more affordable for them to stay home. That was and still is a very scary time in that everybody has a staffing shortage. What are we going to do about that? It kept me up at night for a long time. We were trying so many different things and being flexible, and things just weren’t working. We weren’t getting people back into the workforce. Our entire industry,...

If you’ve been following this year’s Changemakers series, sponsored by us and presented by Senior Housing News (SHN), you’ve seen the range of inspiring honorees recognized so far. Each leader has been selected based on their ability to spark innovation, drive positive change and strategize ways to make the senior living industry a better place. The next batch of three honorees is no different, which includes Earl Parker — an inspiring trailblazer and Yardi senior living client! We’re excited to share a snapshot of his interview below. Yardi client Earl Parker named 2023 Changemaker Earl Parker is the CEO of Commonwealth Senior Living, a Virginia-based organization with 37 senior living communities to date. With three decades of experience in the industry, Parker knows how to pivot and grow in order to keep pace with the ever-evolving nature of senior living. And with that knowledge and expertise, he’s reached innovative new heights during his time at Commonwealth. In his thorough interview with SHN as part of the Changemakers series, Parker shares how he’s leading important changes at Commonwealth today, and explains why he believes driving continuous improvement across their communities is essential.   SHN: Do you see yourself as a changemaker, and are you always excited to drive change? Parker: My first response was, no, I don’t see myself as that. My first reaction to that word, changemaker, is probably a dramatic, earth-shattering kind of change. But as I gave more thought to it, I could see it. My first mentor when I started working in hotels was a GM who I’m still in touch with, and they introduced me to the concept of continuous quality improvement and it’s been a key part of my life — work and personal — ever since then. It’s really a consistent leadership mindset that I have and try to bring to the organization, but it’s really continually focused on how we can try to make our communities a better place to live and a better place to work. I try to spend a lot of my time digging in on that, and I believe that if we can stay focused on that as an organization, that we can’t help but be successful. It’s a little bit of change every day, and ultimately that does create change. I certainly have changed a lot over the last 20-plus years. SHN: As you look across the rest of the senior living industry, do you think that it’s changing fast enough to keep up with the times? Parker: I may seem like a contrarian based on what a lot of I read other people saying, but I think it is. I think the industry evolves along with the demand. The markets that we’re in especially, we’re regularly engaging our residents, their families, associates, prospects, and getting feedback. I’ve been here at Commonwealth for 10 years, and there are many things that we’ve changed over the last 10 years: Dining, programming, physical plants, we’ve added hydroponic gardening, we’ve got a farm-to-table dining program, we’re using virtual reality with seniors. We’ve got robust Wi-Fi in all of our communities for residents and families to take part of. We have quartz countertops and stainless steel appliances. I think we have adapted and changed a lot over the last 10 years, and I think we’ll have to continue to do it. I’m not really sure what’s going on in San Francisco, or L.A., or New York City, but I think in the areas that we operate, we’ve changed a lot over the last 10 years, and I think we’ve got a product that’s appealing to the seniors and their adult children that are here today. We’ve all got to be responsible to continue to look at and monitor and evaluate where we think that demand is coming from in the future. As an industry, we’ve adapted pretty well. You could say...

We’re constantly evolving our solutions in the Yardi Senior Living Suite, whether we’re enhancing workflows or creating new functionality altogether. And we recently released an exciting feature in RentCafe Senior CRM, our mobile-friendly sales and marketing solution — a feature called competitive analysis. Our senior living clients are seeing major successes with this dynamic new feature, but in case you haven’t explored it yet (or if you’re new to RentCafe Senior CRM), we thought we’d share what it does — and what the benefits are. Meet competitive analysis Senior living operators know all too well the importance of assessing competing communities. It’s crucial to understand why one community may be attracting new prospects more successfully, or even enticing your current residents to make a switch. Unfortunately, assessing this information is challenging when you don’t have the data you need — or if your data isn’t organized, easy to retrieve and error-free.   That’s where our competitive analysis feature comes in. We offer the ability to input the data you’ve collected on your competitors — including things like community amenities, care-level incentives and reputation — then view your own community’s attributes in comparison. All data is presented in an attractive, easy-to-analyze format. And once you’ve entered competitor data once, it stays fixed in one secure place, making it easy to access and edit in the future. Something particularly exciting with the competitive analysis functionality is the ability to track specific competitors in your lost lead analysis. This centralized, detailed information can help your future market efforts by highlighting what the major differences are between you and your competitors. The competitive analysis workflow is also completely configurable, allowing you to customize fields based on which categories you prefer to grade competitors on (we used client feedback to drive the customization options we created). Introducing self-competitor functionality Thought the functionality above was great? There’s more! RentCafe Senior CRM also gives you the option to view how your own communities stack up against each other. And rather than inputting data like you would for competitors, your own community’s data is automatically drawn from Yardi Voyager Senior Housing since RentCafe Senior CRM is a fully integrated solution. That means you’re always viewing the most up-to-date, accurate information when doing competitive analysis, and you’re not devoting hours to pulling information from multiple sources. However you choose to use competitive analysis, the feature helps you centralize important information, streamline reporting and compare communities with ease. With organized and centralized data at your fingertips, you’re equipped to make faster, informed decisions for your community’s benefit — decisions to help your community stand out from the crowd. Discover more and connect with our team If you’re new to RentCafe Senior CRM and would like a personalized demo, including a closer look at competitive analysis, reach out anytime. If you’d like to start with a high-level overview of the solution, explore our product...

“I think as human beings, we have some built-in resistance to change. I think as businesses, we owe it to our customers to never become extinct. We have to change and be both proactive and reactive to all that internal and external forces that impact our business.” Yardi client Rod Burkett — a 2023 Changemaker — recently spoke these words in an in-depth interview with Senior Housing News (SHN). Burkett’s interview, much like all the interviews in the annual Changemakers series, features motivational stories, insights and advice applicable to senior living. We’re pleased to share a highlight of Burkett’s interview below, but you can head to his full interview with SHN for more insights. Yardi client Rod Burkett named 2023 Changemaker As chairman of Gardant Management Solutions, the 25th largest senior living operator in the country, Rod Burkett is an expert when it comes to driving strategic, effective change. He’s led the organization since its founding in 1999, and through his interview with SHN, Burkett shares what he’s learned along the way. SHN: Can you talk about a time when you tried to execute a change and things didn’t go according to plan? How did you pivot, and what did you learn as a leader? Burkett: Yes. The one example that really jumps out at me is maybe like a lot of management companies, as we got bigger, we added more resources. Like most companies, we have a regional approach, with regional ops, regional marketing, regional clinical, and so forth. We added all these resources as subject matter experts. The whole intention is to create more resources, more support for our communities but I think we didn’t create clarity because where is the decision being made? Are these people that are here to help? Are they making the decision? Is the local ED making the decision? Was all with good intentions, but the unintended consequences of confusion in decision-making. We talked about empowering that decision to be made at the local level. We talked about a good game. That was the change is to not let the gray area, lack of clarity who’s truly making the decision. We talked about it, but the talk didn’t work. I think where we failed was we didn’t truly embed that in our culture and so as we added more people, I think it just, we very often weren’t on the same team. It was them and us, corporate versus at the community level. We really had to take a step back and pivot and we truly had to embed this in our culture and it’s still a work in progress. We’ve been working at it for a couple of years. When I’m dealing with this local community, I’m on their team and we’ve created questions that we pose to all of our staff at every staff meeting. Little wristbands that talk about being on the community team. Regardless of how I identify myself, especially what subject matter expert I am, when I’m working with that local community, I’m on their team. Not only did we talk about it, we truly had to make it embedded in our culture and have each individual talk about it and what it meant to them. I would say that’s the one that really we spent the most energy and time truly making a change where we would create the decision-making at the local community level and have our staff truly saying, “We’re here to support you.” You’re the ones on the ground at the local community, and it’s taken a lot of effort to create that change. SHN: What is a word of advice for managing resistance to change? Burkett: I think as human beings, we have some built-in resistance to change. I think as businesses, we owe it to our customers to never become extinct. We have to change and be both proactive and reactive...

Today’s seniors have more clinical needs than ever before, which means medication management is more challenging than ever — and medication errors are more likely — in senior living communities. That is, when communities lack the integrated technology (such as Yardi EHR) needed to optimize coordination with pharmacies. Our latest white paper with Senior Housing News (SHN) covers more — exploring the vital connection between pharmacy and resident care and sharing why an integrated EHR solution is critical in optimizing pharmacy coordination. The resource was created to help operators navigate the ever-evolving world of senior living as it relates to medication management. We put together a highlight below with key points covered in the white paper, but we encourage you to read the resource in full for more insights! New white paper: Navigating pharmacy partnerships in senior living   While the need for pharmacy integration is related to a variety of factors, the pandemic has been the most significant. Specifically, since COVID-19 delayed many prospective senior living residents from moving into communities, a resident population already rife with clinical needs has grown more vulnerable. And with that higher acuity comes a host of new challenges in medication management, and thus the urgent need for pharmacy integration. That’s why we joined SHN to publish this pharmacy-focused white paper. It examines the medication-related challenges present in senior living today and guides operators on how to maximize pharmacy relationships and streamline medication management. It stresses the importance of implementing a single connected EHR solution. The white paper looks at: Key reasons operators are switching to digital record keeping Why electronic pharmacy coordination matters through 2023 and beyond Top benefits of a single connected pharmacy solution What makes Yardi software a differentiator Yardi EHR in action at Senior Lifestyle   In sharing the power of Yardi EHR, the white paper includes insights from Fil Southerland, our director of healthcare solutions, as well as Diane Dayne, director of clinical informatics at Senior Lifestyle — a dedicated Yardi client.   Read the entire white paper Be sure to read the white paper — Navigating the New World of Senior Living & Pharmacy Partnerships — for a closer look at Yardi EHR and its role in pharmacy coordination. If you have any questions for us about Yardi EHR or the Yardi Senior Living Suite in general, fill out the form listed here to schedule a personalized...