Akshai Rao

Yardi Leadership Spotlight

By Joel Nelson on Oct 1, 2018 in People

Akshai Rao’s path to Yardi wound from Austin, Texas, where the vice president of Procure to Pay earned his bachelor’s degree before taking a job in Northern California. He then went to Michigan for business school and Boston for another job before landing back in Austin as a Yardi employee in 2013. Today Rao oversees client services for Yardi Procure to Pay, an end-to-end procurement, vendor management and electronic invoicing platform. He shared highlights of the platform with us in a recent interview.

Q: What matters most to property managers who deal with goods and services procurement?

A: They want to perform their back office tasks, especially procurement and accounts payable, more efficiently. That lets them spend more time on front office duties, such as building compliance and customer services.

Q: Can you describe how the elements of Yardi Procure to Pay meet those priorities?

A: We provide one platform for the entire procure to pay process—approval workflows for purchase orders and invoices that are consistent with the client’s process, plus online purchasing, vendor management, outsourced invoice management and vendor payment services. All of these processes are accessible in real time and built into the Yardi Voyager^® property management and accounting platform.

Yardi has documented client savings of up to 80% on per-invoice costs and 75% on per-invoice processing time. A single connected procurement solution makes day-to-day purchasing, payment and vendor management as simple as possible.

In addition, we’re building a robust analytics package to help clients pinpoint areas in which they can make process improvements.  We can compare our clients’ processes to industry benchmarks, and make recommendations to improve their current processes.

Yardi Bill Pay, which is part of both Yardi Payment Processing and the Yardi Procure to Pay Suite, outsources check, ACH and credit card payments to Yardi. And our newest offering, VendorShield, gives insight into the vendor base so property managers can be sure suppliers meet their standards and requirements. That’s important because some properties have thousands of vendors.

Together these products comprise a single connected solution for procurement and payment.

Q: What’s the essential value of Yardi Procure to Pay?

A: At the highest level, it helps both our clients and their vendors be more transparent and efficient in their relationship with each other. Freeing up employees to work on higher value activities helps both property management companies and vendors.

The countless hours spent by property management companies on manually scanning and keying invoices and printing checks can be spent on tenant satisfaction and property upkeep. Same with the time vendors spend on accounts receivable, which is better invested in improving their services.

Q: What makes Yardi Procure to Pay unique?

A: All of these operations are built into Yardi Voyager, which meets procurement managers’ needs in a way no other solution can match. Our clients can use all of Yardi Procure to Pay’s functionality in real time and make the best decisions with the best possible data.

Q: How has the suite evolved over the years?

A: Yardi PAYscan, Yardi Marketplace and Yardi PAYscan Full Service were available as separate products for some time but weren’t packaged together. Over the past three or four years we’ve put them and the other products into a suite. In the past few years, we introduced VENDORCafé and VendorShield to enable automation of vendor management, and Bill Pay to automate vendor payments.

Q: What’s the Procure to Pay Suite’s maturity level?

A: We’re at the point where we have a robust product suite, and more clients see the value of each element. In May 2018 Yardi reported year-over-year client and transaction growth of 30%, 30 million annual PAYscan transactions worth billions of dollars, 100% growth in the Marketplace client base over 12 months, 400% client base growth and a 350% increase in vendors participating in VENDORCafé, and 1,800 Procure to Pay clients to that point.

Q: Can you elaborate on the vendor management aspect of Procure to Pay?

A: Property managers want to know about their vendors—are they who they say they are? So the risk management element of VendorShield is very important. VENDORCafé lets suppliers check invoice and payment status themselves. With VENDORCafé, suppliers can log in and do anything from compliance to payments.

Q: What makes the strongest impression on prospective clients?

A: The fact that we can show every element of Procure to Pay in a 15-minute demo. The intuitive conclusion—that focusing the full procure to pay process in one unified platform rather than using different websites and platforms—is a great value proposition. We tend to start each conversation looking to understand our clients’ issues with their current procure to pay processes, then work with them identify improvements. When we can demo an end-to-end use case in 15 minutes, it really brings to life how our solution can help our clients generate value for themselves and their tenants.

Q: What are some of your team’s recent highlights?

A: One initiative was completing implementation faster so clients can benefit from Procure to Pay as quickly as possible. We cut the average implementation time by 60%, and that has helped Yardi client satisfaction. We also see significant interest in Yardi Bill Pay—just as you don’t want to deal with paper on incoming invoices, you don’t want to deal with it for outgoing checks, so we’re seeing a lot of clients use Yardi Bill Pay to pay by ACH or credit card. Yardi Bill Pay has a new virtual credit card option that we’re excited to help the Payment Processing team introduce to the marketplace.

Q: What was your pre-Yardi life?

A: I went to the University of Texas and majored in Electrical Engineering. My first job after graduating was as a product manager for Cypress Semiconductor, located in Silicon Valley. After four years I left to get an MBA from the University of Michigan. I then joined Bain & Company, a management consultant company focused on topics like growth strategies and operational effectiveness.  I spent five years at Bain and focused on the tech and telecom spaces. My first two years were in the Dallas office and my next three years in the Boston office.

Q: What are your strongest memories of your earlier jobs?

A: Lots of airplanes. Early on at Cypress, I made trips to Japan and Korea to meet with clients. I took 120 flights for Bain in 2009, and about 75 per year over the next three years. I really enjoyed the travel, and it was incredibly educational, both professionally and personally.

I remember one specific instance of a meeting with Panasonic in Japan for Cypress. Panasonic was upset with us and their program manager was raising his voice at me—but he was speaking Japanese, and I obviously don’t speak Japanese. So he would raise his voice at me, and then I would look at our sales person who would calmly translate the frustration. I would then respond in English, and our sales person would translate that to Japanese. This continued for a few minutes, and then I think all of us saw the comedy of the situation, which helped cut the tension in the room.

Q: What did you do first at Yardi?

A: My initial role at Yardi was to work on integrating Yardi Marketplace into the broader Yardi Procure to Pay framework. Eventually, we merged the Yardi Procure to Pay functions into a single-team.  I have been very lucky to work with an incredible group of people across several parts of Yardi, including development, client services, sales, marketing, finance and human resources.

Q: Are you still flying?

A: Definitely still flying, but not as much. Typically my trips are day trips or overnighters, not leave-every-Monday-and-return-Thursday as with Bain. Much of the travel is visiting other Yardi offices or joining sales for on-sites with clients. I find these trips to be very educational, and it’s great to build relationships with folks across our vast organization.