The Shelter Group

Solution Focused

By Cutright Elizabeth on Jun 27, 2016 in People

For the Shelter Group’s LaTonya Lawson-Jones, Yardi’s suite of products provides enhanced operational efficiency and a personalized customer experience.

“Time is money.” It’s an old saying, but for LaTonya Lawson-Jones, effective time management is key to a robust bottom line. As Business Systems Manager for the Shelter Group, LaTonya helps oversee a robust portfolio of 50 affordable housing properties, including 35 senior housing communities. LaTonya supervises a team tasked with tracking expenditures and providing support for a variety of electronic medication administration ad electronic health records applications.

Multiple Tasks, One Solution

With a roster of multifamily and senior living communities valued at $2 billion, the Shelter Group’s affordable and senior living properties cover a vast swath of the eastern seaboard, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. In order to coordinate its multi-state operations, the Shelter Group relies on a whole host of Yardi products.

“On the affordable side we use Yardi for our entire workload, from the prospect to resident screening to move in,” explains LaTonya. “On the senior housing side, we also use Yardi for marketing and in the business office for billing, managing services, and for all of our reporting needs.”

With Yardi Voyager Affordable Housing doing a majority of the heavy lifting, LaTonya is eager to incorporate CRM, EHR, and EMR.

“We are looking forward to using these products,” admits LaTonya. “We are working towards getting all of our employees on eLearning, and I found out that will be out soon, so I’m excited. We really can’t wait for the implementation to start.”

No More Paperwork

Most business managers agree the invoice process can be time-consuming and fraught with error. Submittals and approvals create lag, and hours are wasted tracking expenses and waiting for the right signature. Three years ago, the Shelter Group began using PAYscan, and the decision has resulted in huge dividends for the company, including reduced costs and quicker turnaround.

“We use PAYscan, and we absolutely love it!” declares LaTonya. “It has made the process of handling our invoices seamless.”

Prior to adopting PAYscan, the LaTonya’s team followed the typical approval process, with invoices sent via FedEx to Baltimore for approval by a regional manager before the AP department could proceed.

“They actually had to wait for the transit between Rhode Island and Baltimore,” remembers LaTonya. “The regional manager was required to physically sign off on those items and then send them back to the AP department. It was a huge, cumbersome process that just didn’t work.”

Transition to PAYscan not only eliminated the need for physical signatures, it significantly reduced the wait period between submission and pay out.

“PAYscan saves so much time,” says LaTonya. “The staff is able to get an invoice through the system in the same time it would have taken one person to prepare the FedEx box.”

“In the same amount of time it took to mail the FedEx box, the payable has been approved, and the check has been cut and sent to the vendor,” she continues. “You can’t imagine the value that adds, and now you have time available for all the other millions of things you have to do on a daily basis.”

Building Relationships

For LaTonya, Yardi’s suite of products has proven invaluable not only because of it’s ability to track and manage a multitude of data points and other valuable information but also due to Yardi’s customer support team.

“Operationally, the benefit of work with Yardi is the relationship you build with the people who create this software,” says LaTonya. “They listen and pay attention to what we’re asking for.”

LaTonya believes firmly in forging partnerships based on open communication and a free exchange of ideas.

“The account management teams that assist us are phenomenal,” she says. “Really, really smart people who are solutions oriented and work extremely hard to make sure your needs are met. If there’s something new coming down the line, they let you know it’s coming and help you incorporate the changes into your business.”

“Those are the things that invaluable: where you listen to me, and I listen to you, and it’s a give-and-take rather than a take-take-take.”

“Yardi has a whole culture of building interpersonal relationships, and those relationships help foster incredible customer service.”

Looking Ahead

The Shelter Group is currently in the process of incorporating additional Yardi products into their overall platform, including CRM and EHR.

LaTonya anticipates the addition of incident tracking will prove especially useful for the company’s risk mitigation strategies.

“We have a specific need in the area of incident tracking,” admits LaTonya. “Our risk management team came to us and explained they needed a way to track information more effectively because the processes they are currently using are not working well.”

“We identified that Yardi’s incident tracking module, which is part of EHR, would be helpful, and we knew it needed to happen quickly. So EHR incident tracking will be our first step before we move on to full EHR implementation.”

“We’re super excited about EHR implementation and have everything in one centralized system,” she added. “We really can’t wait for it to start.”