COVER STORY: YARDI - Shaping the Future of Real Estate with Cloud-Based Technology

The value chain gaps in the real estate industry today present numerous opportunities to embrace digital transformation and shape what the ecosystem will look like in the next 10 years.

Real estate investment, fund, asset, and property managers must embrace digitisation because it provides enhanced data, a single source of truth and better reporting. It allows you to stay ahead of competitors, helps you focus on business objectives and provides an improved service to clients.

Yardi prides itself on the continued innovation of its platform with cloud-based, mobile-ready solutions that help clients streamline and modernise business processes that add value to every aspect of the real estate lifecycle.

Yardi Global

Established in 1984, Yardi has grown exponentially over the last four decades to become the leading provider of high-performance software solutions for the real estate industry.

The company’s award-winning, cloud-based technology helps property and asset managers reduce the costs of managing properties, improves operational efficiency and allows real estate professionals to focus on adding value.

Yardi now operates from 40+ offices across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia and continues to leverage big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to further innovate their solutions for real estate management.

Yardi Middle East

Yardi started operating in the Middle East in 2012 with two employees and a handful of clients – today, the company employs 80+ dedicated professionals and works with over 100 clients in the Middle East, making it one of its fastestgrowing regions.

Yardi has evolved into a leading provider of property management software in the Middle East with a proven track record of success across retail, commercial and residential real estate.

“We have successfully identified and built requirements within the region into our products to provide clients with innovative technology solutions that will fundamentally change how we live, work and play, including how we utilise space.” Said Haider, Senior Director of Middle East Sales, Yardi

Real Estate Runs on Yardi

The real estate industry is constantly evolving and requires adaptability and real-time data access to stay ahead. Yardi’s comprehensive end-to-end solutions are highly scalable and cater to various real estate offerings across commercial, residential, and retail markets. It offers a range of functionalities, including property management, accounting, leasing, maintenance, budgeting, forecasting, marketing, CRM, and more.

Yardi’s end-to-end, cloud-based technology helps you manage your entire business lifecycle through one fully integrated solution.

Said Haider, Senior Director of Middle East Sales for Yardi, spoke to us with an update on the region’s rapidly growing real estate market.

1. How do you position Yardi in the real estate management market?

Yardi develops and supports industry-leading investment, asset and property management software for all types and sizes of real estate companies. With over 8,500 employees, Yardi is working with clients globally to drive significant innovation in the real estate industry.

We provide our clients with superior products and outstanding customer service through an end-to-end real estate platform for all aspects of the property lifecycle. In recognition of our innovation, Yardi has made the prestigious Forbes Cloud 100 list every year since its launch in 2016.

Yardi is dedicated to the development and support of software for the Middle East real estate industry designed for portfolios that cover a wide range of asset classes including residential, office, retail and industrial. Our end-to-end solution helps automate processes, drive efficiencies, reduce costs and provide business intelligence to help minimise risk and improve strategic decision making. Cloud-based and mobile-ready, Yardi provides full business solutions with comprehensive front and back-office services that are integrated into a single system.

We launched our flagship product, Yardi Voyager, in the Middle East in 2012 and almost immediately saw high demand across multiple vertical markets. We were able to replace customised solutions with a Software as a Service platform that fulfils virtually all business operations requirements out of the box. This allowed companies to focus more on their business and worry less about the tools. We have seen a 40% average annual growth rate in the area over the past 10 years. Our clients have varied real estate portfolios and almost 90% of retail space in the UAE is managed with Yardi software.

2. What are Yardi’s latest offerings in the Middle East?

Yardi keeps bringing new solutions and features to help our clients increase their efficiency and offer more functionality in a single platform, eliminating the need for complex interfaces. We have recently released a valuation module that allows clients to value existing commercial assets quickly and easily, using data from the Yardi property management platform. Yardi Valuation Manager uses industry-standard assumptions and calculation methodologies to create asset-based long term cash flow models, resulting in an asset valuation.

We also developed and released a new module for coworking and shared space operators called Yardi Kube. This is Yardi’s latest addition to the Voyager product line that addresses the growing market space for shared workspace environment. The global coworking space market is expected to touch $19.05 billion in 2023. Additionally, we introduced a solution to manage debts for clients who are borrowers. Yardi Debt Manager integrates with Yardi Voyager to track debt against real estate collateral and account for loans by paying lenders through invoices or journalizing transactions. It is also integrated with Yardi Investment Accounting to manage investments in debt. Yardi Payment Processing is required to automate billing borrowers and collecting principal and interest.

By early 2024, we will be introducing a new solution called Yardi Floorplan Manager, a module that enables visual representation of all the spaces in a client’s portfolio. For retail: where is this unit relative to the mall entrance? How much foot traffic am I likely to get? For an office: How many desks can I fit? Where should I position the meeting rooms? Etc.

The solution will allow our clients to centrally store, view and export floorplans, edit and create floorplan versions, auto calculate rentable and usable areas and approve and activate new floorplans. In addition, clients will be able to create, combine or split units, save scenarios to send to prospects and utilise for forecasting or construction estimates, all from the floorplan itself.

3. What type of clients does Yardi have in the Middle East, and what type of real estate do they manage or hold?

Our clients range from residential blocks to offices, private equity, asset, and property service companies to government-linked companies as well as some of the largest owners and developers of shopping centres in the Middle East. Clients use Voyager to manage real estate assets across the Middle East including United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt and Turkey.

4. From your point of view, how has the readiness for digitalisation changed among retail companies? Has Covid-19 been a driver?

For a lot of companies, the pandemic pushed them to rethink their strategies and it hasn’t stopped. In the 2022 Yardi Proptech Survey, we found that 46% of businesses do not consider proptech adoption as a high priority compared to other business initiatives. However, nearly 70% of participants recognise that the adoption of technology is now a business topic. Businesses are starting to realise that technology is required to run their business better.

However, despite people in the industry recognising the importance of tech in driving the future of business, nearly 46% are classifying this topic as a low priority – they’re succumbing to the idea that they are not ready to digitise, which is an underlying issue that we need to change. The real question is, what is my cost if I don’t invest?

Digitalisation is a strategic business decision that drives the future of an organisation. Investing in technology is fundamental, but businesses need to be prepared to undergo this process before they can get to the other side of innovation.

5. Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT are currently more popular than ever before. How do you use AI in your business?

We utilise AI and machine learning within our solutions, such as the residential and commercial suite. These asset management solutions deep dive into operational data and go beyond presentation with predictive insights and prescriptive recommendations. These intuitive solutions help elevate portfolio performance by lowering costs, balancing risk and increasing revenue.

Every process in real estate, whether it’s residential, retail, commercial or even coworking, is digitalised in our platform. We have seen in the industry that clients and customers are gathering their data from different places and aren’t focusing on having a strong data foundation. A strong data foundation can be utilised for AI, predictive analysis, and the future of their business.

Based on each factor, for example, if I want to increase rent or reduce rent, the KPIs and predictive analysis we receive from AI can help us make the right decisions. So, we believe having a strong data foundation in place and aggregating this data will help companies be more productive and make better decisions in their future operations.

6. What else is new to report from your company that has or could have an impact on the retail real estate industry?

We work closely with clients to ensure our solutions can support their requirements. As the market changes, the business requirements change, so our solutions need to be flexible and adapt to any changes in business processes and business operations.

Yardi solutions have already helped clients save over 30 hours of data gathering and strategic planning, reduced the leasing planning cycle by 40% and saved 50% of time from automatic reporting. The end-to-end solution helps to easily evaluate current and future occupancy with visual floor plans, helps attract prospects, improves customer experience, and provides better analytical insights with a click of a button.

Our technology helps clients scale their business and save time through automation. The retail sector generates more data each month than most vertical real estate markets. Businesses need to move away from spreadsheets as you can’t gain valuable insights into your data or trends. It makes it difficult to find the right information and involves a lot of manual input.

Automation is key to success as you can optimise your shopping centre revenue. Proptech solutions, such as Yardi’s that are specifically for retail operators, help remove manual processes and allow them to improve the customer experience and attract prospects.

7. What are your corporate goals until the end of the year?

As we look to 2023, data and technology are still important factors in real estate. There is recognition that proptech is an important factor in business, as mentioned previously. However, companies need to understand the true ROI of technology.

We shouldn’t be relying on outdated software that requires a lot of manual input when proptech can save 50% of your time through automation alone. You cannot afford to not invest in technology, especially when planning for growth – there are a lot of overhead costs, but technology can help you save money and scale your business.

This year we will continue to demonstrate to the industry the true value of a single connected solution. Our commercial offering is strong with solutions such as Retail Manager and Deal Manager that are developed for niche market needs. We will continue to help real estate businesses thrive with the use of a connected solution and one source of truth. By investing in the right technology and understanding the true ROI, real estate owners and operators can transform the way their business operates.

Said Haider is the Senior Director of Middle East Sales at Yardi. A seasoned executive with 16+ year record of achievement – 10 of which were spent with Yardi – successfully driving multimillion-dollar revenue growth. Leading the sales and business development efforts for the company, his visionary leadership, extensive knowledge of the real estate industry, and passion for technology has helped drive Yardi’s growth across the region.

SAID HAIDER SENIOR DIRECTOR OF MIDDLE EAST SALES YARDI

www.yardi.ae