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Happy to be Hosted
By Leah Etling on Dec 14, 2015 in People
Moving to a cloud-b
ased commercial property management and accounting platform typically sounds like a daunting transition. Kim Mann, CPA/property controller for Kansas City-based Block Real Estate Services LLC, makes it sound more like a walk in the park.
“Going from self-hosted to hosted was the easiest conversion that I have ever done,” Mann said. “When you have change, people tend to get cranky about it. But I didn’t have any push back.”
And when it came time to flip the switch to the Yardi cloud, the transition was fast and easy.
“I simply sent out the new URL, gave everyone a half day off, and said, do not enter Yardi until tomorrow, and we went back live within 24 hours,” Mann said.
Block Real Estate Services LLC converted to Voyager 7S in June of 2015, and Mann anticipated that the customizations and intricate property structure set-up would complicate the transition. That turned out not to be the case, an impressive feat considering that her team tracks 700 financial entities using Yardi software.
Preparing for the change with extensive testing, Mann also enlisted 12 of the company’s Yardi users to become “champions of the change.” Testing took four weeks, with the entire conversion time frame lasted two months total.
Both of the transitions – a cloud-based platform and use of the new Yardi Commercial Suite, have created enhanced efficiencies and time and cost savings for Block Real Estate Services LLC.
“Going to the cloud freed up a massive server and saved us from having to buy another server, so we did not have to incur that expense. Our IT department loved that,” Mann said.
Use of the Yardi Commercial Suite has changed the way Block Real Estate Services LLC processes invoices, and while the switch to Yardi’s PAYScan for electronic invoice processing required some major adjustments, the end result has been tremendous employee time savings.
“Our AP department is seeing a lot of free time. We are actually thinking about how to repurpose part of their work week. That gives us an employee and a half to do something else,” Mann said. “They can help out in other areas, or they can help me implement new stuff.”
She plans to continue to expand the reach of the Yardi software platform going forward, Mann said at the recent Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference in Anaheim, Calif.
“My eyes have been opened here. There is so much more that we can do.”
Learn more about Block Real Estate Services LLC: http://www.blockllc.com
Learn more about Yardi: http://www.yardi.com/
