YASC Highlights

Santa Barbara, Fall 2014

By Leah Etling on Oct 10, 2014 in News

Friday, Oct. 10 – The Fall 2014 Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference concluded Friday with a final half day of classes and panel discussions, covering everything from advanced report writing techniques to the advantages of choosing a single solution stack for property management.

Representing both the commercial and multifamily industries, clients from Post Properties, Tribridge Residential and Arcadia Management Group spoke positively about the benefits realized when they transitioned from a disparate, multiple vendor approach to a Yardi technology stack.

“We replaced our numerous different vendors and eliminated the hassles that came along with that,” said Dan Ma Gill, Director of Information Technology for Atlanta-based Tribridge Residential. “It has been a really good experience.”

The switch made it possible for Tribridge to achieve a paperless business model, seamlessly access data housed in the Yardi Voyager 7S database, and achieve myriad other business efficiencies. Single sign-on, ease of implementation, and eliminating integration headaches were among the benefits Ma Gill singled out.

For Gary Shaw, President/Owner of Phoenix-based Arcadia Management Group, a commercial fee manager, mobility, enhanced reporting capability, and efficiency have been the major benefits of moving to a single solution stack for the 6.5 million square feet of retail real estate his company cares for.

“In 2013, I had an epiphany at YASC. I realized I was using maybe 1 percent of the software capability that Yardi offered me,” he said of his reasons for moving forward with new products. “(The change) has consolidated a bunch of different processes.”‘

Shaw uses Yardi’s CommercialCafe to allow tenants to make online  rent payments and markets available properties using the CommercialCafe ILS. He’s a big fan of Yardi PAYScan and estimates that it has reduced the cost of paying an invoice to a vendor from $3 to $5 per transaction to just 70 cents.

And being able to approve payables using a mobile app? Well, that’s practically priceless, in his view.

“It gives you the ability to be out in the world, and not be tethered to your desk,” he said, providing an example of how just the day before, he had quickly reviewed and approved an urgent invoice for one of his staff members back in Arizona.

At Post Properties, an Atlanta-based company with 22,000 units of multifamily real estate, Janet Ham and her team moved to the single solution stack after conducting a comprehensive review of their digital strategy.

“I had 40-plus products, pieces of middleware, and tasks that someone had to make sure were running correctly every day. All it took was one system upgrade, and it was time to check on every other piece to make sure they were still going to work,” Ham said of the pre-Yardi software landscape. The company’s technology stack includes Voyager 7S, Yardi Procure to Pay, PAYScan, RENTCafé (online leasing/resident services), Yardi Payment Processing, LeasingPad CRM, Yardi Energy Services, ResidentShield insurance, Maintenance for Mobile, Inspection, and VendorCafé.

Since the product suite has been implemented, “I’ve done the happy dance around the office about 10 times,” Ham said.

Both Ham and Ma Gill said that using a single solution stack has allowed them to eliminate drop boxes for rent checks and automate late fees when payment aren’t received on time. At Post, residents began signing up to pay rent online even before an official announcement of the service’s availability was sent out.

“Whether you have an A, B or C class property, the residents want to have electronic communication with the leasing staff,” Ma Gill noted.

Opening Session

Wednesday, Oct. 8 – Fall YASC 2014 kicked off with a full house for Wednesday morning’s general session at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara, Calif. Founder and CEO Anant Yardi announced, admittedly “with a little remorse,” that 16 years after its inception here, the conference is the company’s last to be held in its corporate hometown.

Requests to attend YASC have outgrown the capacity of hotel meeting space available at Santa Barbara venues, and several hundred hopeful attendees who were waiting for a spot were not able to attend this week’s events. Mr. Yardi apologized to the clients who were unable to add additional team members to their rosters. Next year’s Fall conference, he said, will be held in Anaheim, which hosted the 2013 event.

Mr. Yardi spoke to the volume change that has taken place between the first YASC and today, from Internet speeds to tablet adoption, selfies and social media, and the unique perspectives that Millennials are bringing to careers, real estate and purchasing decisions.

“We want to be sure that the things we do as company help you transition to the next generation,” he said. A robust slide show of Yardi’s latest product updates, streaming in the background, demonstrated the company’s intense commitment to mobility, business intelligence, digital marketing, cutting-edge resident services and saving money by streamlining tasks like procurement and maintenance.

Stressing themes of change management and preparation, he advocated smart planning as a best practice. “If you do nothing, chances are you might fall behind. Let’s plan for this change and make it happen.”

Procure to Pay Panel

Immediately following Mr. Yardi’s comments, the stage was set for a dynamic panel that included Shaw (Arcadia Management) and Ham (Post Properties) as well as representatives from three of Yardi’s major procurement partners: The Home Depot, Interline Brands, and Staples.

Procure to Pay, Yardi’s procurement solution for any kind of property management portfolio, recently announced a significant new partnership with Home Depot that provides access to all of the company’s catalogs.

Shaw and Ham, representing the commercial and multifamily sectors, respectively, spoke about how the Yardi Procure to Pay product has helped their businesses make tremendous strides in efficiency.

With 197 properties, Shaw said his “small” commercial company was able to secure significant discounts on products by utilizing Procure to Pay. It also revolutionized his approval process, transforming it from a bulky routine that even involved his office shipping checks to him via FedEx while he was traveling, to a simple touch on his smartphone that he can accomplish with ease – anytime, anywhere.

“If I can do it, anybody can do it,” Shaw said. He joked that when he’s wide awake in the middle of the night, his go-to activity is reviewing and approving payments.

For Post Properties, Procure to Pay was a preferred alternative to a previous electronic purchasing system they had been using.

“We selected Yardi because we wanted a single stack system that met or exceeded our requirements. Our maintenance engineers love the mobile app,” Ham said (For an example of how Post maintenance engineers use the product, check out our article on Wesley Fonseca of Post Properties).

However, she cautioned that the transition to an all-digital procurement work flow can be a challenge for some site level employees.

“You have to have your teams be part of the process,” she urged.

Save the date

Anticipated dates and locations for the next two YASC conferences are listed below, but please note they are subject to change. Hotel room blocks will be available approximately four months before each conference opens for registration.

Spring YASC 2015: Washington, D.C. – May 19-21, 2015
Fall YASC 2015: Anaheim, CA – October 7-9, 2015

Looking for course materials from a Fall YASC session? Find them on Yardi Client Central.