Meet Medha Deshpande, a director of CSD in Yardi’s Pune office. Her team of 450 employees assists Yardi Energy, P2P, Matrix, Utility Billing, Utility Expense Management, and Invoice Processing clients. Deshpande’s department covers a lot of ground. She manages the broad range of responsibilities by focusing on strategic team building rather than tasks. “My role is to mainly ensure that I have the right people at the right place doing the right job,” smiles Deshpande. As her teams develop, maintaining clear, unified objectives keeps the department operating coherently. “I like our company’s vision, growth, culture, values, and philanthropy. It is very important for all of us to maintain this culture and inculcate the same value system within our new employees as we continue to grow at a good speed,” said Deshpande. She is also mindful to maintain her personal growth. During her 14-year career with the company, Deshpande has encountered and overcome numerous challenges. Each posed an opportunity for her to hone her skills and emerge as a stronger leader. Deshpande reflects, “I have learnt and can say I am still learning to have patience. I tell myself that things may not move always the way you want and at the speed you may be expecting.” She continues, “Always be optimistic, demanding, and have perseverance for sustainable growth.” Pursuing Excellence in the Community When she isn’t working at Yardi, Deshpande and her husband operate a weekend school for about 50 disadvantaged youth in grades three through 10. The school allows her to help kids pursue excellence. “We run the school at our farmhouse which is about 15 miles from Pune. We teach the children mathematics, English and value education,” says Deshpande. “This school runs throughout the year with no vacation. Children enjoy the school since our focus is not just education but also personal development through some activities which kids love. There is a library arranged for them with some very good books and educational toys.” The support of Yardi teammates and loved ones has helped the weekend school flourish. “Many friends and colleagues not only from India but from the United States donated books, school stationary, toys and other resources,” she explains. “Our family members and friends also support us on some weekends as visiting teachers. One of our Yardi employees, Chandrakant Manekar, has been a dedicated teacher for about one year, which has been a big help.” “We have been fortunate as we get immense satisfaction and pleasure from spending time with these kids. It has been like a booster to our life!” says Deshpande. To learn more about Yardi’s outstanding team members, visit the People page. Director Medha Deshpande Deshpande with school children Guest teachers with school children Local school children Roll call at school Study session with teachers Students of the weekend school Students welcome guests to school...
Akshai Rao
Yardi Leadership Spotlight
Akshai Rao’s path to Yardi wound from Austin, Texas, where the vice president of Procure to Pay earned his bachelor’s degree before taking a job in Northern California. He then went to Michigan for business school and Boston for another job before landing back in Austin as a Yardi employee in 2013. Today Rao oversees client services for Yardi Procure to Pay, an end-to-end procurement, vendor management and electronic invoicing platform. He shared highlights of the platform with us in a recent interview. Q: What matters most to property managers who deal with goods and services procurement? A: They want to perform their back office tasks, especially procurement and accounts payable, more efficiently. That lets them spend more time on front office duties, such as building compliance and customer services. Q: Can you describe how the elements of Yardi Procure to Pay meet those priorities? A: We provide one platform for the entire procure to pay process—approval workflows for purchase orders and invoices that are consistent with the client’s process, plus online purchasing, vendor management, outsourced invoice management and vendor payment services. All of these processes are accessible in real time and built into the Yardi Voyager® property management and accounting platform. Yardi has documented client savings of up to 80% on per-invoice costs and 75% on per-invoice processing time. A single connected procurement solution makes day-to-day purchasing, payment and vendor management as simple as possible. In addition, we’re building a robust analytics package to help clients pinpoint areas in which they can make process improvements. We can compare our clients’ processes to industry benchmarks, and make recommendations to improve their current processes. Yardi Bill Pay, which is part of both Yardi Payment Processing and the Yardi Procure to Pay Suite, outsources check, ACH...
