You may have a bit in common with Dennis McCarthy, chief information officer at SRI Management of Tallahassee, Florida. Like Dennis, your organization may be facing growth. And like Dennis, you may be searching for a solution to help you manage that growth and prepare for future success. McCarthy’s senior living management company is expected to double in size in the next two years. He and his team searched the globe to find software that would ease growing pains. SRI Management found success using Yardi EHR and Yardi eMAR. We sat down with McCarthy to learn how EHR and eMAR have made it easier to do business while quickly growing. Q: How did Yardi’s technology help you accomplish growth? A: Yardi’s technology has been phenomenal. It’s an integrated piece of software that anybody can see anywhere. As we’ve spread out, as SRI management has spread from one location to another, as we’ve had to add people to help us run all of these properties, it’s easy for people to see everything that’s going on because they can log in anywhere and see it anywhere. So, the standardization that we get from the software helps us grow easily and confidently. Q: How has technology impacted your world? A: Interestingly, our world is not a technology world. SRI is a management company that runs properties for owners, so we don’t really focus on the technology as much as we focus on the people. What the technology does is make it much easier for us to focus on taking care of people. It just makes SRI Management a much more efficient company because we have the background of the technology behind us to do our jobs as easily as possible. Q: What is the value that Yardi...

How do you create a better online experience for prospects and residents? Just ask the dynamic marketing duo at The Excelsior Group (TEG). Meet Brenda Studt, vice president of marketing, and Shelly Steitz, marketing manager. Together with their team and tools from the RENTCafé Suite, they’re transforming the online renter experience to better match the expectations of today’s digitally savvy consumers. When Brenda and Shelly visited the Yardi studio recently to film their Real Estate Questions Answered videos, we chatted about marketing, websites and themselves. Keep reading to find out what you can do to make your sites more appealing to people who are searching for a place to call home. Q: How does marketing work at TEG? Brenda: TEG is a group of real estate related businesses operating on a unified platform. Shelly and I work for TEG’s Creative Studio. We’re an in-house, full-service creative and marketing agency offering a variety of creative solutions specifically designed for real estate related clients. We focus our marketing strategy around client goals and consider owner goals and expectations for specific assets. Our largest client is TEG’s multifamily business. Shelly manages all marketing activity for this client and works with their property management and development teams daily to develop and execute annual plans for each property across the portfolio. Q: How do you make sure your property marketing websites engage and convert prospects? Shelly: We create engaging websites through strong visual storytelling. We take a “show, don’t tell” approach and that includes 360 tours, high quality amenity photos and vibrant gallery pages. And then we give the prospect as many ways to engage with that content as possible. Brenda: Using RENTCafé has been great for our clients. We’re able to understand user patterns and user experience better...

Growth can be a mixed blessing. San Diego-based MG Properties Group, for one, certainly didn’t mind significantly expanding its portfolio of properties in California, Arizona, Nevada, Washington and Oregon. But by 2015, the company’s investment management technology couldn’t keep pace, and the company, which acquires, rehabilitates and manages apartment communities, was approaching a stark choice: Modernize or risk stagnation. Cramped by Spreadsheets The spreadsheet programs MG Properties used for investment calculations and investor reporting couldn’t keep up with the rising volume of work. A single report often contained up to 450 tabs, for example. “When we loaded a number and hit “Enter,’ we crossed our fingers and hoped the whole system didn’t crash,” recalls Joe Anfuso, the company’s chief financial officer. “The old method was stressful, error-prone and hindered our performance.” It became clear to him and other executives that the company needed a modern, professional investment management software platform, one capable of automatically capturing and distributing all relevant investment information. Anfuso and his colleagues also realized that if they wanted to compete with the major players—the big institutional investors—they needed to invest in technology that removed pain points, time and effort and enabled more efficient operation. “That’s when we decided to ditch our spreadsheets for a more modern solution,” Anfuso says. A Single Connected Solution That solution, adopted in July 2015, was Yardi Investment Management, which automated MG Properties’ asset, investment accounting and investment lifecycle. The system helps MG Properties track not just the movement of dollars, but the result of the investment they represent, from the moment an investor makes a commitment. MG Properties grew its investor base by 150%, its properties by 24% and its units by 50% without needing additional staff or expenditures to manage them. The quarterly distribution process...

When you think about your senior residents and their families, do you think of words like “tech savvy,” and “forward thinking?” You should. Breck Austin, VP of operational services with Clearwater Living of Newport Beach, understands the importance of exceeding clients’ growing tech expectations. His organization has identified software that allows the company to advance with the times. We sat down with Austin to learn how the organization uses RENTCafé and Senior CRM to make life easier for residents and staff. Q: What are one or two business objectives you’ve been addressing over the last year? A: At Clearwater Living, our objective is to enhance residents’ experience in the senior platform. So one of the things we look at is technology. We look at how do we make ourselves more relevant? How do we make the residents’ experience relevant? We use a variety of things that we are addressing, from technology down to our philosophy of care. Q: How did Yardi technology help you accomplish this? A: Yardi technology was the best thing that ever happened to us in a growing state. It provided one single integrated platform that allowed us to address the growing need of the family’s involvement and their need to know what’s going on, transparency, to our consumers. So, it’s no longer just a resident living in our community. We’re addressing the family members or those that are responsible for members of our communities. The ability to communicate with them through technology, Yardi provided that outlet for us. And it’s integrated so that it addresses all areas of our touch points and building on the connections with our residents. Q: What Yardi products have been most transformative for you and why? A: Two products that have been transformative to the...

When Charles Hunt decided to strike out on his own and start a boutique property management firm in Melbourne, Australia, he knew that one of the factors that would make or break the new business was the technology platform he chose. “CHP Management was born out of the need to provide boutique, high quality add-value service to our clients. We only do property management, and we specialise in bringing back professional service to property management and the real estate industry,” says Hunt, the founder and director of CHP Management, which opened in 2014. The company focuses on privately held retail shopping centres, industrial properties and office buildings. Coming from a major multi-national firm where he had worked for 8 years, Hunt saw that commercial real estate clients were often disappointed or frustrated without the support of personalised customer service. At the same time, they required a robust technology platform that would handle much of the back office work. “We had to make sure that the ‘exact science’ part of our role was done well, accurately and efficiently. That’s what Yardi does for us,” Hunt says. His vision has been recognised –  In 2010 and 2015 he was awarded the honour of REIV Commercial Property Manager of the Year and in 2016 he was a finalist for National REIA Commercial Property Manager of the Year. Four years after Hunt signed his first Yardi contract, he can definitively say that he made a smart choice by choosing the Yardi Commercial Suite. The rapid growth of his company, while maintaining a lean staff size, is proof. CHP Management now has in excess of 100 properties under management after starting with just one. Despite that influx, just one staff member can handle the admin and accounting platform for...