Not long ago, most real estate companies made business decisions based on guesswork and backward-looking data aggregated into spreadsheets. Today, new technology automates data collection with advanced analytics to provide a complete picture of a portfolio’s opportunities and future risks. That’s big data. When it comes to leveraging big data for big results, Diana Norbury knows her stuff. Norbury is senior vice president of multifamily operations for Seattle-based Pillar Properties. Her experience includes over a decade of managing mixed-retail multifamily communities throughout the U.S. Pillar Properties is an award-winning developer, owner and manager of luxury apartment residences in the Puget Sound area and a developer of senior living communities through sister company Merrill Gardens. Since joining Pillar, Norbury has focused on refining revenue management and business intelligence practices, talent management and education, operational systems implementation, and lease-up and marketing strategies for the company’s growing portfolio. Yardi recently sat down with Norbury to learn more about the benefits of big data. How do you use big data to drive performance? Norbury: I use big data in a variety of ways. Big data is a huge resource when we’re having team calls. For example, I can go to the data when we’re talking about vacancies and pricing. With Asset Intelligence, we finally have a tool that incorporates all our property and leasing data with historical traffic and pricing data. The system marries all that information together. I can find information fast without having to dig around. It also helps us format and present our data, which we can export into Excel or PDF — I think that’s really cool. How do you use predictive analytics? Norbury: I use Asset Intelligence and predictive analytics specifically for upcoming exposure and vacancies. In the past, we’d use a variety of...

“Yardi Orion is the tool that helps us create value for our clients,” said Jeanette Ruscitti, vice president of operations for The REMM Group. REMM is a third-party fee manager with more than 5,000 multifamily units and 1.5 million square feet of commercial space across Southern California. REMM takes a hands-on approach, working with its executive and onsite teams to go “above and beyond” for its clients — and investing in technology is key to the company’s success. Yardi Orion Business Intelligence is a mobile-enabled platform that combines financial, operational and ancillary services data from Yardi Voyager to deliver holistic portfolio insight. With configurable dashboards and more than 200 key performance indicators, Orion provides flexible reporting that enables REMM and its clients to make fast and informed business decisions. Shawn Conerty, REMM’s chief financial officer, said, “We have used Yardi Voyager software for years and find it is the most advanced property SaaS platform available. Our teams are empowered by the centralized source of data and automated workflows that simplify operations from leasing through move-ins and move-outs, work orders, purchase orders, check writing and more. Yardi’s marketing and leasing tools, including RentCafe, make life easier for our prospects, residents and staff with online leasing, rent payments and maintenance requests.” Conerty commented that REMM came to the table to analyze Orion with these previous Yardi successes in mind. “Orion draws from all the flows of information that go through those Yardi systems: occupancy, delinquency, exceptions, marketing, financials, etc.,” he added. Built right into its Voyager platform, Orion has proven to be the right choice for REMM to serve its clients and meet business goals, with mobile access that makes it easy for REMM’s executives to utilize the system on the go. Real-time tracking of rental...