What is Yardi Elevate and is it Right for Your Company?

by | Analytics

yardi elevate selection

How to Decide if Yardi Elevate is Right for Your Company

Many companies that use Yardi Voyager are hungry for better visibility into their KPIs. They want dashboards to track their metrics, and to be able to drill down into the data to find opportunities for making operational and financial improvements. If this describes you, then you should take a look at Yardi Elevate.
 

What is Yardi Elevate?

Yardi Elevate includes a suite of dashboards and analytical modules for asset performance, budgeting and forecasting, lease analytics, expense management and risk management.
 
These modules, such as Asset IQ, Revenue IQ and Forecast IQ, Construction Manager, Deal Manager, Facility Manager are nicely integrated into the Yardi ecosystem, so data across the various Yardi tools, specifically all the data in Yardi Voyager, is visible in the Yardi Elevate modules.
 

If you have looked at Yardi Elevate and need to decide if it is right for your company, this article has been written for you.

 
We will describe here criteria you can apply to evaluate if a business intelligence solution such as Yardi Elevate is right for you.
 
 

Yardi Elevate vs Yardi Voyager

Before we get into the selection criteria, let’s clarify the distinction between Yardi Elevate and Yardi Voyager. Yardi Elevate adds more value to Yardi Voyager. Think of Yardi Voyager as the software were you enter and maintain all your data about operating your assets. Voyager has lots of reports but you might still be exporting data in order to analyze asset performance. The Yardi Elevate suite is where you analyze your data and understand the performance of the assets (without spreadsheets and manual preparation).

 

SELECTION CRITERIA FOR A BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOL LIKE YARDI ELEVATE

 
Not all real estate investment and management companies need a full-featured business intelligence infrastructure. And many companies have valuable business data sitting outside of Yardi. In fact, there are a large number of factors to consider when you are evaluating a solution such as Yardi Elevate.
Below is a framework for deciding if any business intelligence solution is right for you.
 

 

CUSTOMIZABILITY

 

Custom Reporting Trees

  • In addition to the account trees in Yardi, can you define your own trees for reporting to different audiences?

 

User Defined Fields

  • Can you add columns that are not standard in Yardi to your reports and dashboards? Examples could be Loan Maturity Date, Asset Stabilization Date, Property MSA, Fund Ownership, Geographical Region etc.

 

Historical Snapshots

  • Can you preserve prior versions of your budgets, rent rolls or proformas so that you can compare versions and track changes over time?

 

 

DATA FROM OTHER SOURCES

 

Data from Other Systems

  • Can you include data from other systems alongside your Yardi data into your dashboards and models? For example, data from Asana, CRM systems, work order management systems, water meter data, loan data etc.

Data from Excel Files

  • Data for Proformas and Deal Assumptions normally sits in Excel files. Can you include this data in your analysis, such as looking at Proforma vs Actual variances?
  • There is a lot of useful data that is maintained in Excel files, such loan maturity dates, property stabilization dates, rent increase schedules, and targets for non-financial metrics, such as lease up, work order completion rates etc.

 

RANGE OF KPI

 

Unlimited Number of KPI

  • Are you limited to the KPI available in the product, or can you define your own custom calculations?

 

DASHBOARD DEVELOPMENT

 

Choice of Front-Ends

  • Can you use your preferred front-end tool for building dashboards, such as Power BI or Tableau?

 

Build Your Own Dashboards

  • Can your team build their own dashboards and use them side by side with the pre-built dashboards?

 

Ability to Drill Down

  • Can you drill down from summary level data to transactions (such as from portfolio to property to unit)?

 

Excel-Friendly

  • Can the data be pulled into Excel for customized models and pivot tables?

 

PRICING

 

Pay for Only What You Need

  • Are you paying for a bundle of pre-built dashboards that you intend to use?

 

Tiered Programs

  • Is there a choice of programs at different price points, or a one-size-fits-all program?
  • If only one department is utilizing the product, does it cost you the same as if the entire company is using the product?

 

Long-Term Contracts

  • Do you pay month to month or are you locked into a long-term contract from Day One?
  • Is there a significant setup fee?

 

SUPPORT & COMMUNITY

 

 Tech Support

  • Is tech support available for technical questions?
  • Is tech support available for investigating data discrepancies?

 

Community

  • Is mentoring available for enhancing internal dashboard development capability?
  • Is there an opportunity to engage and learn from other users of the solution?

 

 

 

So, before you commit to a product, take the time to evaluate the options that are available. Give us a call at 248-601-6400 x1 or book a meeting to discuss how RentViewer helps companies that use Yardi.

 

Please note that Yardi Elevate is a Yardi Elevate” is a registered trademark of Yardi Systems, Inc.