Scalable Growth

Wallick Chooses Yardi

By Mike Sederholm on May 29, 2019 in People

During the recent Yardi Forum for senior living and affordable housing, we sat down with Brandon Carter, director of information technology at Wallick Communities. Brandon has a wealth of knowledge about products from the Yardi Senior Living and Yardi Voyager Affordable Housing suites, and we were thrilled to speak with him in person.

Wallick owns and manages affordable housing and senior living properties across the Midwest. More than 20,000 residents live in Wallick units. There are always more units on the way, as Wallick has experienced an average 23 percent growth annually. Wallick has worked with HUD tax credit programs for more than four decades, and has even been ranked first in the nation in affordable housing preservation.

To put it plainly, Wallick is a big deal. Read on to learn how Yardi software helps Wallick achieve its mission.

Q: Describe the value that Yardi products bring to your company?

BC: Yardi has been a great partner for Wallick. Whatever the need, we can almost always find a Yardi product to help us fulfil it. We trust that Yardi is continuously working to develop new and exciting products to help us fulfil our responsibilities towards owners, staff and residents.

Q: How does Yardi help to position your company for growth?

BC: Having only Yardi software to manage makes Wallick extremely nimble and quickly scalable with growth. The Yardi platform allows us to focus on our associates and residents as we grow, instead of worrying about bringing on new technology.

Q: What software challenges did Wallick face before adopting Yardi?

BC: Before moving to Yardi, we used multiple pieces of software for our different business needs. That required us to spend additional time and resources bridging data gaps. It also created confusion for new associates because they had to learn several platforms for daily activities.

Q: How did Yardi mitigate those challenges?

BC: We saw savings in time and resources as soon as we implemented our Yardi software platform. Because Yardi software can scale in scope, we have found that we can roll out new company initiatives without adding staff hours. The efficiency gained with a comprehensive Yardi software has helped us redefine associate roles to better focus on areas of opportunity within the business.

Q: Can you describe a specific process that works particularly well with Yardi?

BC: The very first Yardi product we implemented was accounts payable through Yardi PAYscan, and we saw benefits very quickly. We average approximately 20,000 payables a month which require more than 12,000 checks and ACH payments. Having all of this data on one software platform means we can quickly pull reports and see exactly where each property is financially. Before the transition to Yardi, we’d spend several days pulling data from several pieces of software.

Q: Talk about your senior living solutions.

BC: We have implemented Yardi Voyager Senior Living for operations, Yardi EHR for healthcare services, RENTCafé Senior Living and Senior CRM for marketing, leasing and client-facing services. Having the entire company within the Yardi software umbrella creates efficiencies throughout accounting, operations, marketing and IT. At any point of the tenant lifecycle our staff can see upcoming move-ins and make the necessary preparations, instead of not knowing and just reacting as leads or residents make plans for residency.

Q: How does Senior CRM make your staff more responsive to your residents?

BC: Understanding where your leads and referrals come from is very important to senior living providers. Yardi Senior CRM has helped us understand the significance of yearly trends in applicant submission. It also has reporting tools for insight on our current residents. We feel we are just in the infancy of this growing part of our business strategy.

Q: Does your staff take advantage of the mobility features?

BC: Yes. The Senior CRM mobile app is gaining traction with staff. Our marketing team travels to meet prospective residents, and being able to take a small device keeps them in tune with other prospects and leads. Traveling no longer means an out of office sales/marketing person, and possibly missing a lead due to lack of presence.

Q: How does integrating electronic health records with resident records help your organization gain efficiency?

BC: Yardi EHR is extremely valuable for our senior living communities. Having a clear process where the assessment is built-in and driving the billing provides both Wallick and our residents with clarity on the monthly statements. This also ensures that we do not have fundamental breakdowns where residents are re-assessed, and billing not changed or updated. This type of automation allows our nursing team to focus on patient care instead of data entry.

Q: Speaking of pharmacies, tell us about your experience with Yardi eMAR.

BC: Pharmacy integration has been a huge win for the Wallick team. It’s given our nurses time more time to focus on patients. With that time, they’ve changed their day-to-day routines to streamline care processes outside of the Yardi system. We’ve also reduced time spent on manual entry of orders, phone calls, and faxes sent back and forth with the pharmacy. Yardi eMAR has also helped us prepare reports for audits with improved data consistency.

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Want to learn more about the Yardi Senior Living and Yardi Voyager Affordable Housing suites? Log on to Yardi.com or call 800.866.1144 to schedule a demonstration. If you’re a Yardi client, keep an eye out for an upcoming Yardi event in your area to connect with industry leaders like Brandon.