The recent World Energy Engineering Congress (WEEC) 2018 in Charlotte, N.C., addressed factors that impact an organization’s energy performance. we asked Christy Cannon, an account executive for Yardi Energy, about her experience at one of the year’s major energy conferences and technology expositions. Christy, what did you gain from the conference? Cannon: The classes are very beneficial to me because it’s a conference by and for energy managers. This is my wheelhouse! I’ve been doing energy management for almost 20 years and attending this conference for almost a decade. I’m also proud that Yardi has supported the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), presenter of the conference, for years by sending attendees and serving as a corporate sponsor. Q: Why was this year’s WEEC special for Yardi? A: This was the first time Yardi Energy had a booth at WEEC. Also, all nine of our group are certified as energy managers by AEE: Kushal Shah, Rahsan Stewart, Ray Segars, Alex Gonzalez, Arturo Perea, Ankita Gupta, Dan Rice, Dan Cordero and me. When I joined Yardi in 2012 I was the company’s only Certified Energy Manager. The addition of eight CEMs reflects Yardi’s commitment to supporting clients’ energy management and sustainability needs. Q: What were the main takeaways from the conference? A: Presenters outlined three trends to watch for in 2019. One is the evolution of blockchain, whose potential application to the energy industry includes microgrids comprising multiple buildings, each of which having their own generation, that enable peer-to-peer energy trading with no utility involvement. Generation capacity, pricing, and transaction details could be shared with everyone in the microgrid in real time. It also has potential scalability and security advantages. Q: What was the second key trend? A: The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping energy demand management....

Along with learning more about property and investment management solutions, clients used the most recent Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference (YASC) to share experiences and best practices. Representatives from Streetlane Homes, Holland Partner Group and Legacy Partners discussed in a panel session the benefits they have gained from Yardi Utility Expense Management, which receives account information and utility data directly from utility companies serving properties and generates payments to those providers. Streetlane Homes: Got their weekends back Streetlane Homes, a Roofstock company, is a leading provider of property and asset management services for single family rental home portfolios and saved more than $100,000 in overhead costs and reduced late fees by 90% within eight months of implementing Yardi Utility Expense Management in November 2017. “The solution relieved our corporate office of processing 17,000 utility invoices per month. With our previous utility service system, we had to audit every bill. That’s a lot of paperwork and manual labor that Yardi has taken off our hands,” said Teresa Taylor, vice president, finance for Streetlane Homes. “Having Yardi Voyager internal systems already in place made for a seamless transition to Yardi Utility Expense Management.” She added, “We had nine people working Saturdays and Sundays working on utility invoices. Nobody does that now. I was signing 400 checks a day. Now I have all that time back for more important tasks, and only two people are dedicated to accounts payable.” The Yardi Utility Expense Management support team also tracks and resolves service disconnections, keeping Streetlane Homes residents happy. “If there’s a late fee, Yardi calls the provider and gets it reversed,” Taylor said. Holland Partner Group: Proactive customer service Joanne Bush of Vancouver, Wash.-based property owner and manager Holland Partner Group faced workflow and invoice management issues that were...

Does your company have a purpose? It might seem like a trick question, but it’s not. The concept of purpose has seeped into brand-building conversations thanks in large part to Jonathan Mildenhall, one of the world’s most influential CMOs, who claims his success at super brands like Coca-Cola and Airbnb are a result of the power of purpose. In this post, we’ll examine what purpose-driven marketing is and how it can help differentiate and propel your senior living brand. What is purpose-driven marketing—and how does it relate to senior living? Purpose-driven marketing is, as Mildenhall describes it, “a compelling brand purpose that transcends the business model and reaches into culture.” It’s looking beyond day-to-day transactions and committing your business, publicly, to a broader social mission. In the senior living industry, most companies are not operating on a global scale. They’re serving communities, and they thrive only when they create bonds with residents and locals. For this reason, operating with purpose is a competitive necessity. Purpose drives performance The concept of creating a purpose for your business can seem like marketing fluff, but purpose-driven companies outperform competitors financially, creating much more shareholder value. They also attract and retain top talent more effectively, a struggle for many senior living operators. Building a philosophy—one employees can articulate in just a couple of sentences—is even more important in today’s climate, where Millennials, who value socially-responsible brands, comprise the largest segment of America’s workforce. Let creativity and humanity be your guide In order to effectively bring about change and find your company’s purpose, look at things creatively. “Bring your eight-year-old self to work,” says Mildenhall. “Geek out like it’s your first time playing Legos.” Seeing things as a child would breeds curiosity. It allows you to view things with...

Continuing our focus on the leaders of Yardi Canada, meet Dana Samargiu, senior software development engineer, and Kwok-Kin Wong, senior technical project leader. Both are part of the Yardi Canada programming team and joined the company with the acquisition of Newstar in 2003. Since becoming part of the Yardi Canada team 15 years ago, both have worked on a variety of Yardi products. And both have fully embraced the collaborative nature of the Yardi culture, with a focus on supporting clients, employees, and striving to grow. Dana Samargiu “Yardi Canada is my second/extended family,” said Samargiu (pictured, left). “My favorite part about working here is the spirit of camaraderie, the way everybody pitches in to help in need or to have fun together. It makes working here a real treat.” An immigrant to Canada from Romania along with her husband, the family came to North America in 2001 as part of the Skilled Worker Immigration Program in hopes of increased professional opportunities and a better future for their son. Samargiu had a degree in computer science and engineering and had been a developer and software consultant back in Romania, where she and her husband owned their own small firm. But when she arrived in North America, the dot com bubble had burst and opportunities were slim. She took a client support role when she was hired at Newstar, but hoped for more. “My skills were recognized at Yardi. I moved from a customer support position to a tech analyst role, and then to a development position the next year,” she recalled. “Today, my favorite part of my job each day is when I manage to help a client, QA or CSD with any technical issues they have, or when I manage to find solutions...

Leading executives will head to Washington D.C. this November to attend one of the senior living industry’s preeminent annual events, the Argentum Fall Symposium. The conference is set to take place November 8-10 at the Courtyard Washington Downtown Convention Center. The event program features three areas of focus for attendees to choose from: sales and occupancy, quality and operational efficiency, and workforce development. Sessions will focus on generating powerful business ideas to improve operations, including the importance of developing an organizational culture that will attract and retain top talent. Yardi is the sponsor of the conference keynote presentation given by Dee Ann Turner, vice president of sustainability for Chick-fil-A and corporate talent expert. Turner brings more than thirty years of experience hiring and developing talent and transforming organizational culture. She works with companies around the globe, helping transform businesses with an “It’s my pleasure” service model. According to Turner, two of the most important differentiators of a business are its talent and its culture. She believes businesses are built by growing relationships with customers and culture is created by the stories those relationships tell. When companies recognize the value of individuals, they succeed not only ethically, but financially as well. “We’re not in the chicken business, we’re in the people business,” says Turner of Chick-fil-A, which was named the number one fast food restaurant in America. “For us, in our quest to impact lives, selling chicken is only a means to an end.” She learned all the wisdom she shares from Chick-fil-A’s founder, Truett Cathy, who was known for recruiting top-tier talent and cultivating and nurturing a culture rooted in integrity, loyalty, generosity and excellence. “A company’s culture is its soul. It will define the way employees interact with one another and guests and has the potential to reach...

The global wholesale leasing model is under pressure, as technology-enabled coworking gains both momentum and market share, says Neal Gemassmer, vice president of international sales for Yardi. Shared workspace is not new – but advancing technology, the growing gig economy and cost-cutting strategies are driving the coworking trend into the mainstream. Increasingly, corporations are turning to coworking to accommodate remote employees, attract talent, promote work satisfaction and reduce leasing costs. “Technology-enabled coworking is undoubtedly putting pressure on traditional leasing models,” Gemassmer says. “Developers of A Grade office buildings have traditionally acted as wholesalers of whole or half floors of space to occupiers who must make long-term leasing commitments, and then fit out their own offices. “But technology-enabled coworking operators are using online marketing and leasing systems to efficiently offer office space to tenants at competitive rates. This is beginning to encroach on the territory of office developers. “Changes to technology does more than change behaviour. It changes the environment itself.” Gemassmer points to a recent report from Asian market intelligence source Mingtiandi, developed in partnership with Yardi, which found the growth rate of coworking in Asia had hit 40 percent in 2017. Starting as a single coworking space in New York in 2010, WeWork is one lease away from being the biggest landlord in the Big Apple. With 280-plus locations in 20 countries, WeWork is rolling out roughly 185,000 sqm of new office space every month. Around a quarter of WeWork’s clients are enterprises with more than 1,000 employees. WeWork only launched the enterprise service in 2016, and has since amassed an impressive list of clients including Facebook, Airbnb, Microsoft, Adidas, Amazon, Starbucks and LinkedIn. WeWork is just one of several coworking companies taking the region by storm, but it is the biggest. In...

The California Assisted Living Association (CALA) 2018 Fall Conference and Trade show is set for November 5-7 at the Renaissance Palm Springs & Palm Springs Convention Center. The event theme is “Elevate,” inspired by senior living professionals continually seeking to improve clinical care while enhancing residents’ quality of life. The three-day conference focuses on several important issues facing the senior living industry, including: dementia care best practices, legal and regulatory awareness, sales and marketing strategies and leadership and staff culture. Yardi will sponsor the conference luncheon featuring Jennifer Powers, coach, mentor, trainer and author of best-selling book “Oh, Shift!,” which illustrates how making small changes can be life changing. Powers is a leading expert in helping professionals improve their confidence and competence, so they can live and work at their full potential. “What I have found is executives and leaders are the most siloed. They’re the people that have the fewest outlets for sharing their fears, their concerns, their limiting beliefs. They have to put on the face that people need to see in a leader. And what happens is that it perpetuates a low level of confidence, more fear, and something called impostor’s syndrome. It’s the condition that a person finds him or herself in where they don’t believe they’ve really earned the position they have. They feel like they’re a farce that’s soon going to be found out. That any day now, they’re going to be discovered as incompetent. And they just don’t feel like they deserve to be where they are. It’s truly an epidemic,” Powers explains. The coaching she offers provides concrete tools to make positive changes that improve effectiveness in the workplace. “What I do in the world of self-development is really have a strategic conversation built around inquiry. It helps...

Drones have been increasingly popular in recent years, disrupting various industries with their aerial perspective. Until recently, the more professional models were prohibitively expensive, unless being purchased for a specific business venture. This summer saw the launch of a new drone that’s designed for the masses—Yuneec’s Mantis Q, a small, relatively powerful drone with a semi-reasonable price tag (about $500). Weighting a little over one pound, its in the sweet spot between budget drones like DJI’s Spark, and higher-end models like DJI’s Mavic Air. It holds in its 9 x 7 x 2 inch body (expanded) some of the features usually reserved for more sophisticated drones: 4K video recording, voice control, face detection, speed of up to 44 miles per hour and a lengthy 33-minute flight time. What’s more, it’s also equipped with infrared- and sonar-based stabilization and foldable arms that make it easy to shove in a backpack. The little drone has three automatic flight modes: journey mode—which flies on a straight, designated path; point of interest—which circles an assigned object; and return home—which automatically returns the drone near its takeoff area. In addition, sonar and infrared detection allow the drone to avoid obstacles and achieve stabilized flights indoors, without the aid of GPS. The face detection feature is said to recognize faces from up to 13 feet away and can take photos either through gesture control mode if the user waves their hand or through a voice command such as “Take a selfie.” Voice control can also be used to wake up the drone. We’re not sure how close one needs to be in order for the drone to hear the commands and how much environmental noise affects it. The range for video transmission is between 0.5 miles (800 meters) and 1...

Some believe that solar panels require direct sunlight to work. Those same people may believe that the UK is the world’s most unsuitable place to harness the sun’s energy. Well, they are wrong. More than 880,000 people in the UK use solar panels and Nissan has taken note.   In mid-March, the car manufacturer joined the ranks of Mercedes-Benz, Renault and Tesla and launched their take on a complete home energy management system, which they named Nissan Energy Solar. For now, only UK residents can try it in their households.   This idea of utilizing the most valuable part of its electric vehicles—the batteries—after they’ve lived their first life in one of the vehicles (or have been declared terminated post some accident) is new and golden. Nissan is making a bullish push into the energy storage industry, and it does it on three fronts at once: using homes as powerhouses; off-grid power storage; electricity generator park.   The storage system Nissan proposes, the xStorage, is the result of a collaboration with Eaton Industries. The xStorage can have three power options: 3.6 kilowatts, 4.6 kW or 6kW. There are two battery options, 4.2 kW or 6kW. The average unit weighs nearly 300 pounds (135 kg).   Benefits of the system include:  Increased independence from the national grid and electricity providers  Cost reduction on your electricity bill of up to 66 percent  The ability to generate, store and manage energy for use overnight (despite cloudy weather) and charge Nissan electric vehicles.  A six-panel system costs about $5,383 including installation. Full solar and storage systems start at roughly $10,589. This solar plus electric vehicles is clearly a match made in heaven. According to CleanTechnica, about 32 percent of the electric driving respondents have also installed rooftop solar power. In addition, this type...

For 44 years, Santa Barbara-based Surgical Eye Expeditions (SEE) International has been providing restorative eyesight care around the globe. The non-profit organization, founded by local ophthalmologists in 1974, relies on volunteers, grants and donors to make its important work of reducing preventable blindness possible. And as it heads toward 50 years, SEE is endeavoring to treat more patients than ever before. “There are 36 million people in the world who are blind, up to 75 percent of those are blind from preventable conditions,” said Matt Wheeler, vice president of communications for SEE. “One of the major problems is that 80 percent of these people are living in areas of the world where access to care is not available.” Cataracts, one of the leading causes of blindness, can often easily be treated – but patients must have access to qualified ophthalmologists who can perform a simple surgery. Partnering with local ophthalmologists in every region where they work, SEE volunteers made 250 trips to over 40 countries this year, and performed 40,000 sight restoring surgeries. Volunteer doctors pay for all of their own travel and housing expenses and receive no pay for their work. By 2020, SEE aims to perform 100,000 surgeries a year. In the course of the organization’s existence, volunteers have conducted 4 million eye exams and performed a half million surgeries. Other work includes training regional doctors on cataract surgery techniques, providing supplies for clinics that don’t have access to proper materials, and conducting preventative eye exams in impoverished areas. In assessing the support it has received from corporate sponsors over the years, SEE staff realized that one Santa Barbara-based company was unique in terms of longevity and generosity of support – and happened to be a close neighbor, too. “Our leadership was...

Dennis McCarthy, chief information officer at Florida’s SRI Management, knows that nurses are critical to providing quality care for residents. Keeping clinical staff happy means making sure they’ve got the tools they need to do their jobs as easily and efficiently as possible. That starts with ensuring they have access to the most accurate, up-to-date patient health records. “Satisfying nurses is the number one thing. You don’t want them on a separate system; once you have people on two systems you have all sorts of issues—nurses are trying to figure out which record is current and things like that. Integration to the core software is critical,” McCarthy explained. That’s why SRI, already successfully using several modules in the Yardi Senior Living Suite, adopted Yardi EHR and eMAR last July. “We just had nurses watch it in action,” said McCarthy. Once the staff got their first look, they were hooked. The team began using EHR right away to record resident incidents. Documentation was simple and everything that was logged was immediately appended to residents’ files in the database and kept as part of their permanent record. But the best part was that all the information was readily available after the fact, said Casey Polk, chief nurse and director of resident services. She finds that feature indispensable. “At my fingertips in the Yardi platform, I have easy access to what nurses wrote and charted about each incident and how it was handled. I can quickly pull up the chart and read the notes and have all the information on hand. And I love that the software also has reports on resident activity, new orders and missed medications. It allows me to follow up with my staff based on what has or hasn’t been charted that week,”...

Nearly four decades after President Carter adventurously installed solar panels on the White House, America’s energy transition away from fossil fuels has seen only modest progress. 2007 marked the first year in history when more than half of the world’s population lived in cities, and the U.N. estimated that, by 2030, urban settings will be home to nearly two thirds of the global population. However, it was just in March 2017 that monthly electricity generation from wind and solar exceeded 10% of total U.S. electricity generation for the first time. As America’s vibrant cities grow at an unprecedented pace, so does the importance of sustainable urban planning, power generation, transport systems, water and sanitation, and waste management. We set out to gauge how U.S. cities fare in terms of sustainability, and how the commercial real estate industry has embraced green building to support these efforts. We ended up with a ranking of 40 ‘sustainably powered’ U.S. cities. Read on to see how we did it and what the results show. Methodology: Our Scores, Explained For the purpose of this study, we looked at data on U.S. cities with a 100,000 population minimum, and present the 40 that achieved top scores: Arlington, Va.; Atlanta, Ga.; Austin, Texas; Baltimore, Md.; Boston, Mass.; Boulder, Colo.; Chicago, Il.; Cleveland, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colo.; Detroit, Mich.; Durham, N.C.; Eugene, Ore.; Hayward, Calif.; Houston, Texas; Indianapolis, Ind.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Lakewood, Colo.; Lancaster, PA; Las Vegas, NV; Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Oakland, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Reno, NV; Richmond, VA; San Antonio, TX; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Savannah, GA; Seattle, WA; St. Louis, MO; Tucson, AZ; Washington, D.C.; Yonkers, NY. The starting point of our research was to learn how each of...

Two of the world’s aluminum giants—Alcoa Corp. and Rio Tinto Aluminum—have announced a revolutionary process to make green aluminum, and we’re not talking colors here. Instead, the joint venture has come up with a new smelting method that produces oxygen instead of direct greenhouse gas emissions.  The project is called Elysis—a reference to the process at the center of aluminum smelting, the electrolysis of alumina. It will be based in Montreal and plans to make this revolutionary method commercially available by 2024. Aside from the environment friendly feature,, the technology is also expected to reduce costs by roughly 15 percent. Apple has partnered with the two companies, and the Governments of Canada and Quebec, to collectively invest a combined $147 million to future research and development. The research and development phase of the technology has spanned decades. Apple joined in 2015 when three of its engineers—Brian Lynch, Jim Yurko and Katie Sassaman—went in search of a cleaner, better way of mass producing aluminum. Aluminum, also known as solid electricity, has been mass produced the same way since 1886, having Alcoa’s founder, Charles Hall as a trail blazer. A strong electrical current is applied to alumina (refined from bauxite) which removes oxygen. In Hall’s experiments as in today’s largest smelters, there is a carbon material that burns during the process, producing greenhouse gases. The new method replaces that carbon with an advanced conducive material. Instead of carbon dioxide, it releases oxygen. This major discovery promised a huge environmental impact. To speed things up, Alcoa realized they needed a partner. Here Apple played a big role: David Tom, Maziar Brumand and Sean Camacho of Apple’s business development department introduced Rio Tinto to Alcoa. What follows that meeting is history unfolding. The future looks greener thanks to...

In a perfect world, you’d create all of your own content. It would all go viral. You’d burst with success. All the content creation would all be completed in less than an hour per week. Unfortunately, that’s not how life works. You likely excel in real estate, not content creation. Time minimizes how much original content that you create. Sometimes you have difficulty getting readers to engage with your posts. Piggyback marketing may be able to help. Piggyback marketing describes the use of recycled, trending content on your social media feeds and blog. It allows users to borrow and benefit from the popularity of someone else’s content. Sometimes piggybacking is sharing a video, meme, or post. Other times, it’s referring to a trend within your original content. There are advantages and disadvantages to piggyback marketing. When used wisely, it can build engagement and improve the reputation of your brand. When abused, it can erode trust and water-down your brand identity. The dos and don’ts listed below will help you use viral piggybacking to your advantage. DO supplement your content with piggyback marketing.Viral piggybacking of relevant content allows you to tap into what’s already successful. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, which is great when you feel creator’s block or you’re pressed for time. DON’T rely on piggybacking. Limit how often you use others’ content to market your brand. Keep the percent of borrowed content in the single digits compared to your original content. There is no substitute for content that reflects your brand, your objectives, and the unique tastes of your audience. DO stick to content that is relevant to your brand, market, and clients’ interests. Use tools such as Buzzsumo and Scoop.It to identify relevant content. Those tools allow you to...

In September, Yardi reaffirmed its longstanding commitment to Australia’s property industry by supporting—for the tenth year—the highly successful Property Congress in Darwin, Australia. As Principal Sponsor, Yardi was proud to join the Property Council of Australia in hosting nearly 800 delegates from across the property industry. The attendees discussed the latest challenges, trends and opportunities facing the industry—and the future for Australia that the delegates are helping to build. The event began with celebrations. On the conference’s eve, Yardi hosted a party at Darwin’s bustling Mindil Market that featured a spectacular sunset, sumptuous food, a fire dancer, a didgeridoo player (for those who might not know, that’s a wind instrument developed by indigenous Australians) and lots of good fellowship. With the party successfully wrapped up and new connections established, it was time for the main event. This year, The Property Congress was focused on major issues driving property development and investment in Australia and globally. With established and emerging leaders in the commercial, residential, retail, industrial, development, retirement living and investment sectors in attendance, it was a unique chance to hear from a wealth of thought leaders about the fundamental issues affecting our industry now and in the future. While all guest speakers from the two-day lineup were remarkable in their own right, highlights included: Headline keynote speaker Sir John Key, a former New Zealand prime minister, who touched on a range of current topics including leadership qualities, American tax and trade policy and housing issues. Noting the high growth rate of Australian urban developments, he urged a thoughtful planning process that integrates communities and connects them with transport. He also didn’t miss the opportunity to discuss the constantly-changing Australian political landscape, commenting that by the end of his political tenure he would ask...