Yardi Client Q&A

Geji Masilela, Red Sea Markets

By Joel Nelson on Mar 22, 2019 in Global, People

Yardi client Red Sea Markets Company (RSMC) owns Red Sea Mall Jeddah in Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia. Red Sea Mall is an iconic shopping and leisure destination and one of the largest shopping centres at Jeddah City. We interviewed Geji Masilela, the company’s CEO. He shared how the company’s use of Yardi Voyager helps them overcome business challenges.

Q: What is your company’s background, heritage and history?

A: RSMC has been existence for more than a decade. It was initially formed for the development of Red Sea Mall and other properties. Our aim for the next several years is to grow our assets under management.

Q: Can you give a flavour of your company’s business culture and philosophy?

A: It’s a happy and informal company culture. While we adhere to corporate norms of running a company, our leaders remain down-to-earth and approachable to our employees, customers and tenants.

Q: What is your company’s brand in the current market?

A: Red Sea Mall is an iconic shopping and leisure destination and one of the largest shopping centres at Jeddah City. The mall has 242,200 square meters of built area and includes a five-star hotel, a seven-story office building, and external and undercover parking areas. The mall blends international and local brands with a variety of restaurants, cafes, diners and entertainment options.

Q: Could you give some understanding of the number or value of the assets involved?

A: We’re still in the formative stage in terms of assets. We current have one operating asset and another asset under development. We’re actively looking for growth opportunities.

Q: What’s your role?

A: I’m primarily responsible for identifying and executing those growth initiatives.

Q: What motivates you?

A: I have a love of shopping malls, serving mall customers and retail partners.

Q: What is most important to maintaining your company’s brand identify and desired position in the market?

A: Defining who we are and pursuing those ideals to exceed our customers’ expectations.

Q: How would you describe the retail market in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in particular?

A: It’s fast-paced with many challenges and rewards. Saudi customers sophisticated and well-traveled and expect global standards and quality.

Q: What prompted RSMC to select Yardi Voyager as its property management and accounting platform in 2017?

A: We needed better data accuracy and analytics to understand changing trends and speed up decision-making. We also liked the system’s reporting and analysis capabilities and its workflow simplification.

Q: How has Yardi Voyager helped you overcome challenges?

A: At the most basic level, it’s important to start using data to shape the future in contrast to being reactive or, even worse, working with obsolete data. Yardi Voyager makes all relevant information available at our fingertips, without having to ask anybody or wait for reports to be prepared. It has improved our reporting with auto-reports and tailor-made dashboards. We can also use analytics generated by Voyager to predict trends.

Q: Has Yardi Voyager helped develop collaboration within your team?

A: Immensely. People are talking to each other much more and they’re very excited about the system. Also, as we work more efficiently, Voyager takes manual tasks off our hands and helps our team achieve that elusive work-life balance by having more personal time.

Q: How do you see your partnership with Yardi evolving going forward?

A: Along with consolidating our property management data into one platform, Yardi Voyager will enable us to easily scale as we execute new opportunities for growth.

Learn more about Red Sea Mall.