Driving Profits

For Condo Management

By Lee Ann Stiff on Jun 1, 2018 in People, Technology

“The ROI using Voyager has been huge,” said Jason Hoffman, COO and vice president at Alliance Property Systems, about running its business on the mobile Yardi Voyager platform. Led by a father-son team, Alliance provides comprehensive HOA and condominium management services along with commercial real estate management throughout South Florida.

A longtime Yardi client, Alliance has always invested in technology and started with DOS-based Yardi Professional in the early 1990s. To meet new challenges in a changing industry and move its business forward, Alliance switched to the cloud-based Voyager platform in 2015. As a result, Alliance has gained automated workflows for tasks that previously required time-consuming manual processing, and accommodates a business model of “roving property management” with integrated online services and mobile tools.

Winning in a tight market

Alliance has a portfolio of 70 properties and 6,000 units in South Florida and only 13 employees. To succeed and be profitable in a competitive market with tight margins, the company must streamline and optimize internal processes, according to Leigh Hoffman, Alliance’s president and CEO (and father half of the father-son team).

A key way Alliance achieves this is by leveraging Yardi’s leading-edge technology across its business. For a true end-to-end solution, Alliance has added products from the Yardi® Condo Suite to its Voyager platform. Integrated online services and simplified workflows for payments, procurement, invoice processing and more increase productivity and reduce costs for the company.

When asked if Alliance’s investment in technology sets the company apart, Jason commented that the Voyager platform “100% helps us win business.” And according to Leigh, “We are more competitive and succeed because we’re offering options to our customers to do more things online, including payments.”

Empowering a lean team

This biggest line item in Alliance’s budget is employee costs. “We can grow exponentially while keeping our general and administrative costs down, even with more properties added, thanks to Voyager. Doing more online and automating workflows serves our customers better and drives our profits,” Jason said. He elaborated that the company’s entire staff is more on top of everyday tasks and can focus on key initiatives that enhance and grow the business.

The Voyager platform also includes mobile tools and apps that enable managers on the move. Using a tablet or smartphone, managers can access real-time property information, financial data and reports, and complete tasks including approvals.

Serving clients better than ever

Alliance currently has one property using CONDOCafé, with plans to roll it out to other communities. CONDOCafé is a condo services platform that integrates with Voyager to provide owners with online account access and payments, document downloads and certificate purchasing.

Jason said, “CONDOCafé provides information right at our owners’ fingertips, and they love it. Self-service access to documents, notices, everything they need, they can get online. They like submitting service requests online because they’re tracked and date-stamped through the system and we get an instant notification about it. The board really appreciates that functionality.”

Another benefit of rolling out CONDOCafé is that it will help Alliance’s clients  meet a new Florida statute that mandates every community over 150 units (which Jason noted is the majority of Alliance’s portfolio) has an online presence by 2019. Jason said it will be “an easy flip of the switch” to provide a website for every client.

Jason also mentioned another thing Alliance is doing that its competitors don’t typically offer: completing online invoice approvals and automating payments using Yardi PAYscan. Previously, the company manually processed invoices, cut checks, got them signed and mailed them. “It’s a huge advantage for us to go paperless with PAYscan, and now we control the entire invoice-to-payment process,” Jason said.

Looking to the future

Doing business in South Florida means being ready to respond to the needs of several generations — including retirees and millennials. Leigh said, “We’re serving a growing population. There is the busy younger generation accustomed to doing business from handheld devices, and there are the retirees — which South Florida is famous for, who have the time and leisure to serve their communities on association boards. We still have people who like to hand-deliver checks, so we must be prepared to meet all of our customers’ expectations.”

With a proactive approach to implementing technology, Alliance is ready. “We have always sought to be leading edge, and for us, the Voyager platform represents that. When we go out for new business we show our prospects that Alliance is a state-of-the-art operation,” Leigh explained.

Jason added, “A lot of what we do is administrative, and my goal is for every manager to be as productive as possible out of the office as they could be in the office. In the next year we’re going even more mobile, and that’s why we went with Voyager.”

With streamlined operations, an empowered team and happy clients, the future is looking very bright for Alliance. “Our investment in Voyager extends the useful, profitable life of Alliance Property Systems. It is an investment in the now and an investment in the future for sure,” Leigh said.

Read Alliance’s client success story and learn more about Yardi’s single integrated solution with mobile tools for condo property management.