Fall YASC 2017

Welcome to San Diego

By Leah Etling on Sep 13, 2017 in News

The first ever Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference (YASC) to be held in beautiful San Diego, Calif. kicked off on Wednesday, welcoming 1,800 clients and 400 employees to the Hilton San Diego Bayfront resort for three days of product demonstrations, user classes, networking and fun.

After being held in Santa Barbara and Anaheim for previous events, the fall user conference moves to San Diego for the next several years. Clients and employees alike expressed approval of the new venue, adjacent to the city’s waterfront, conference center and Gaslamp District.

Yardi president and founder Anant Yardi welcomed clients to the largest ever YASC event with a 40 minute talk about the company’s development plans for the future. But he opened and closed his remarks with a focus on the recent hurricanes that hit the U.S. As many as 200 clients are attending the event from the states of Texas and Florida.

“Thank you for being here. And thank you for what you have done to help your neighbors,” Mr. Yardi said. His remarks closed with a moving video about the company’s efforts to help clients and residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas on Aug. 25. The poignant imagery brought many in the audience to tears.

“The thing that really stood out for me (during the hurricane) was people helping people,” Mr. Yardi said. The company developed a housing registry website to assist those who need to relocate, and donated $1 million to the rebuilding effort.

Turning his focus to the Yardi software suite, Mr. Yardi touched on cloud security, role based applications, product development and more.

“There has been tremendous investment in the Yardi Cloud and making sure that it is always secure,” he said, describing some of the innovative firewalls, specialized response teams and other methods that Yardi utilizes to make sure client data is protected. “Our focus is to make sure that you are not affected at all by what is happening in the cloud.”

For multifamily clients, the marketing universe continues to evolve, and a relatively new Yardi product offering, RENTCafe Reach, helps clients optimize their search engine marketing. Mr. Yardi said he anticipates that the future of finding the perfect apartment will rely more on very specific targeted search terms than the ILS model we have come to know today.

For commercial clients, a robust marketing and leasing platform from Yardi continues to improve. COMMERCIALCafe, a marketing and tenant service offering, enhances leasing, renewals and service requests. Yardi Deal Manager, Leasing Manager and Facilities Manager are specialized solutions for brokers and property managers that enhance any commercial real estate workflow.

While a new version of Yardi’s flagship program, Voyager, is not expected in the next couple of years, the company will focus on development of future-focused applications that will help clients save money, Mr. Yardi said.

“We are accelerating development on a number of other platforms that we think will have value to our clients,” he said, such as energy monitoring, machine learning and predictive analytics.  “The next stage for us is to provide programs that allow you to reduce your costs.”

YASC concludes Friday afternoon. Follow the conference on social media using the hashtag #YASC2017.