Creating Value

Client Success with Yardi Orion

By Lee Ann Stiff on Jun 7, 2018 in People, Technology

“Yardi Orion is the tool that helps us create value for our clients,” said Jeanette Ruscitti, vice president of operations for The REMM Group. REMM is a third-party fee manager with more than 5,000 multifamily units and 1.5 million square feet of commercial space across Southern California. REMM takes a hands-on approach, working with its executive and onsite teams to go “above and beyond” for its clients — and investing in technology is key to the company’s success.

Yardi Orion Business Intelligence is a mobile-enabled platform that combines financial, operational and ancillary services data from Yardi Voyager to deliver holistic portfolio insight. With configurable dashboards and more than 200 key performance indicators, Orion provides flexible reporting that enables REMM and its clients to make fast and informed business decisions.

Shawn Conerty, REMM’s chief financial officer, said, “We have used Yardi Voyager software for years and find it is the most advanced property SaaS platform available. Our teams are empowered by the centralized source of data and automated workflows that simplify operations from leasing through move-ins and move-outs, work orders, purchase orders, check writing and more. Yardi’s marketing and leasing tools, including RentCafe, make life easier for our prospects, residents and staff with online leasing, rent payments and maintenance requests.”

Conerty commented that REMM came to the table to analyze Orion with these previous Yardi successes in mind. “Orion draws from all the flows of information that go through those Yardi systems: occupancy, delinquency, exceptions, marketing, financials, etc.,” he added. Built right into its Voyager platform, Orion has proven to be the right choice for REMM to serve its clients and meet business goals, with mobile access that makes it easy for REMM’s executives to utilize the system on the go.

Real-time tracking of rental revenue and year-over-year as well as month-over-month performance graphs for trending analytics are just two of the many features Ruscitti cited as true competitive advantages for the company. According to Ruscitti, “Orion enables us to review portfolio performance at a high level with drilldown to real-time data as needed. We can customize dashboards for an optimal user experience, and develop custom reports featuring only the relevant data. We can share specific information with our clients and notate variances and significant data directly within the system. Plus, we can manage users and groups with different levels of access to reporting.”

When asked to elaborate on internal efficiencies REMM has gained using Orion, Ruscitti said, “We can benchmark using key performance indicators on identified measures. The KPI feature is vital to our regional meetings, identifying where we can deliver higher results. Our meetings have become more effective, allowing our teams to quickly strategize plans on actionable items.”

Ruscitti noted REMM is also leveraging Orion as a tool to develop and track the effectiveness of new policies and procedures. For example, vacant make-ready days are monitored closely and have significantly decreased. The marketing reporting dashboard in Orion shows REMM how traffic is being tracked and how leads are attributed. As a result, REMM has developed new procedures for its teams to monitor traffic in order to quickly know its strongest and weakest lead sources.

Conerty said that with the first year of using Orion, “The results have been outstanding. Our multifamily management teams and the owners find it helpful in making business decisions. They are able to see the metrics and key performance indicators drawn from the Voyager platform in easy-to-access charts, graphs and spreadsheets. This allows owners to mitigate risk and improve business decisions by leveraging the Yardi data that was not previously available.”

And REMM’s clients aren’t the only ones benefiting from Orion: its employees are, too. Conerty added, “Seeing the results of their extra efforts in clear reports motivates onsite teams and lets management quickly acknowledge their success.”

REMM is dedicated to providing excellent service to its clients, and appreciates that Yardi shares that commitment. Ruscitti commented on the exceptional customer service REMM gets from the Yardi team. “We cannot stress enough how important the customer service from Yardi has been. Antonio, our primary contact at Yardi, has been very responsive and instrumental to our success using Orion. Software tools evolve and change over time, and it is the human element Yardi delivers that truly shines.”

Launching in the fall of 2018, The Yardi Elevate Suite will combine Yardi Orion Business intelligence with the new Asset Intelligence solution for in-depth predictive and prescriptive analytical insight into operations and your competitive environment. Powered by Orion Business Intelligence, this new suite will elevate asset performance by making machine learning recommended actions, forecasting and bench-marking available to the multifamily industry for the first time. Watch a short video to learn more.