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to specific outcomes. In an industry where every extra dollar of Further, by standardizing on an agreed upon set of Key
retained income is worth twenty dollars in market cap value, this is Performance Indicators (KPIs), you ensure that everyone in
a high yield effort worth propagating across the entire enterprise. the organization operates with a common narrative based on
hard data.
The Overlay Model: Leveraging the Data You Already Have For example, an Executive Dashboard can provide the C-Suite a
For many, there is a tendency to see the effort required to 15-minute daily view into key operating metrics, such as Budgets
embrace systems that enable operating in a data driven fashion in Process/Completed, Top/Bottom Performing Properties; Most
as limited to the largest portfolio owners, i.e., those who can Profitable Clients, New Leases Underway, and Property Loans
afford multi-year, multi-million dollar investments, and who have approaching Maturity.
dedicated staff that can drive the effort.
Let me calibrate this one for you. There is a clear path
for portfolio owners of all sizes to activate a strategy to be-
come data driven, but you need to see this as a multi-phase
effort, as there is only so much technology a company can
digest at once.
Also, you need to see it as a ‘feature’ and not a ‘bug’
that the process of shining a light on your data will reveal
incongruities and areas where workflows are disjointed. This
will inevitably drive a data re-factoring effort, as you evolve
from ad hoc to systematic, integrated and automated.
So how does one start? Well, here is the good news. If
you are reading this, you likely already have a system of
record in place by virtue of adopting a commercial Property
Management and Accounting system, like MRI and Yardi.
Let me explain. If we look a bit deeper, we see that the
underlying data sets in systems like MRI/Yardi are: A) Diverse But the real beauty of a data driven model is that the same
and Deep in terms of the type of information they capture; data sets driving dashboards and decision trees can also be
B) Logically Structured (in database terms); and C) Readily pushed into consolidated reports and tied into workflow logic to
Accessible via methods, such as SQL database access queries, API drive automated tracking of recurring tasks.
calls and CSV file format exports. Case in point: a not so dirty secret about the real estate
What this means is that portfolio owners don’t need to operate business is that it’s an industry where lots of reporting must be
silos separated from the data sets in their MRI or Yardi environ- created on a monthly and quarterly basis. More than anyone
ment, which also means that their data collection efforts start at would like to admit, a great deal of this reporting is done in
a fairly robust level. Excel, an environment prone to user errors, versioning issues
Conceptually, you can think of this approach as ‘overlaying’ and stale data. Is it any wonder that this effort is often referred
the MRI or Yardi software. In doing so, the system can operate as to as Excel Hell?
a superset of the property management and accounting data. The Data Driven model turns this process on its head, enabling
Simultaneously harnessing fresh data from MRI or Yardi, and rapid creation of multi-report monthly management ‘report
programmatically reaching out to touch more data sources in a books’, custom reports consolidated from multiple data sources,
leveraged fashion. and interactive reports that support drill down to external data
Plus, because this approach creates data abstraction from the sources (e.g., invoices in AP Management Systems), inline com-
underlying MRI/Yardi instance, the data can be structured, trans- menting, printing and sharing.
formed and warehoused over time, making it useful for much Finally, by tying key tracked data, such as expiring leases,
more than just dashboarding and decision support. renewal notice periods and spending variance from budget to
business rule-based thresholds, your portfolio can start telling
Real Estate Business Intelligence as a Common Console YOU where attention is needed.
The central idea of Real Estate Business Intelligence is to provide There is a saying, ”There are no rewards for doing things the
a Common Console for all of you stakeholders to access the hard way,” which is why adopting the data driven model, and
core data that drives the business, including Executives, Asset embracing Real Estate Business Intelligence just makes sense.
Managers, Property Managers, Accountants, Leasing Agents,
Marketing and Operations personnel. Mark Sigal is the Chief Product Officer of Datex Property
Most of these are folks who would not otherwise log into Yardi Solutions, makers of Datex Business Intelligence (Datex BI), an
or MRI, so the user experience must be simple to use, prefera- industry leading Real Estate Business Intelligence and Data
bly starting with pictures, charts and graphs, with the ability to Warehouse platform. He is a five-time entrepreneur, with a deep real
quickly filter and drill down to the details. estate background, and successful exits to Apple, Intel and IBM.

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