Smarter than Ever

Yardi Business Intelligence

By Lee Ann Stiff on Jan 30, 2017 in News

By consolidating portfolio-wide data and automating reporting, Yardi Orion Business Intelligence makes life a lot easier for property managers and executive decision makers. Instead of manually compiling spreadsheets that can be difficult to analyze, Orion users can instantly view a single dashboard with comprehensive performance data on their desktop or mobile device. Now, with updates made available in V10, there are more advanced tools, enhanced features and simplified ways to get the powerful data you need, precisely when you need it, wherever you happen to be.

Lisa Kolb, consulting systems analyst at A.J. Dwoskin, summed up the efficiency of Orion, “People get stuck in ‘analysis paralysis’ when they review too many reports. With Orion, we’ve cleaned up the dashboard and focus on our KPIs on a screen with drilldown capabilities — instead of sending out a bunch of reports. It’s been well accepted in our organization from day one.”

Here are some highlights of what’s new in Orion:

Tiles: For both administrators and users, tiles have been completely redesigned to display more information. Along with the primary measure selected, now tiles can show up to four additional measures, with KPIs and optional trend comparisons. You can also control and link timeframes to the dashboard filter. With a new customization capability, you can add subcategories to your tiles.

Widgets: A simplified widget toolbar features icons for each option. Enhanced widgets now allow you to filter through specific KPIs and manage by exception. New grid widget functionality includes a reference point to date controls, and allows you to view up to 50 rows per page. Newly added widgets show KPIs for multiple measures.

KPIs: KPIs have evolved as well, and can now vary by just about any attribute you select including property, regional manager and metropolitan statistical area. KPIs can also take into account seasonality and lease-up conditions — and these more sophisticated KPIs are displayed in easy-to-interpret graphical ways. Easily view different thresholds for various scenarios. You can also use a Data Analysis Expression (DAX) to create even more specialized KPIs. New “Dimensions” capabilities include a marketing sources page with an array of out-of-the-box widgets. Marketing vendors can now be linked to marketing sources, so you can view the marketing cost per approved application, as well as expenses per marketing source.

Filters: Now admins and approved users can create filter favorites. Create a favorite to save a group of properties you view often, and you’ll no longer need to reselect those property attributes each time you want to see a particular listing.

Browser Support: Great news! Improved support for browser back buttons means you can click to return to the previous page/screen you worked in. And you’ll also have a chance to save your work before your session times out.

Messages: Admins can now easily send broadcast messages. Users will be alerted to new messages by their notifications icon on the dashboard. And once you’ve viewed a notification, no need to click on it anymore to delete it — just click the “x” next to it in the drop down list to remove it.

If you’re already an Orion client and want more details about how to access these great new features, contact your sales rep or visit https://clientcentral.yardi.com for videos on the new administrator and user functionality in V10. Not using Orion yet? Learn more about Yardi Orion Business Intelligence.