Yardi

Let’s face it… the internet is NOT a fad (sorry Al Gore) and the role both the internet and computers play in our business is vast and ever growing. Let’s take a look at what parts of our business are computer and/or internet based:   

• Communication (with Colleagues & Prospects)- Email, usually Outlook is used in our business
• Learning Management Systems- Does your company offer online learning?
• Property Management Software- On our computers and generally on the internet
• Social Media
•  Rent Payments- A good portion of us allow residents to pay online
• Advertising- Our biggest source of traffic, in a lot of instances is apartments.com
• Weekly/Monthly Reports- Excel and Word play a big role in how we relay information
• Performance Appraisals- Many are integrated into our HRIS systems, which are internet based
• Payroll Time Tracking- Does anyone use a manual system anymore?
• New Colleague Orientation- Unless your company is 100% local, the internet is often used
• Accounting- Most accounting departments use our property management software in conjunction with computer and/or internet based financial software
• Payroll- The majority of us rely on Direct Deposit, which uses a computer to transmit.

I could go on and on… I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear, to be successful in our business you MUST have some sort of computer know-how. I’m not talking learning HTML here… I’m talking the VERY BASICS of computer understanding!

We've been getting questions about the potential search engine optimization (SEO) impact of putting blogs in a subdomain (e.g. blog.mysite.com) vs. a subfolder (e.g. mysite.com/blog). We've also had questions about how search engines (Google) treat subdomains that are on different IP addresses. Unfortunately, Google doesn't have an official statement about these issues, but here are our latest thoughts on the matter.

 

Subdomains link additional pages on your site.

A few years ago, Microsoft purchased the Great Plains accounting software company and rebranded it as Microsoft Dynamics - GP. This product is not about to take on the property management software leaders like Yardi and Intuit RES (MRI), however, it does offer a solution for a much needed niche: corporate accounting, consolidations, and non-real estate related business accounting.

There are excellent property management software products that manage resident traffic, rent, maintenance, etc. Where they often fall short is in handling the corporate office accounting. In the past JD Edwards has been the leader in solving this problem. However, MS Dynamics-GP is starting to gain momentum in this area. Several large multifamily companies use MS Dynamics - GP. A few months ago I helped CAS (Riverstone's parent) select MS Dynamics-GP as their corporate accounting platform. I have since assisted Aztec Systems, a Microsoft Partner, better understand the Multifamily requirements.

Microsoft has placed GP in their Office division and that has enabled some powerful integration with MS Office. For example, a report can be run in GP and placed in an Outlook folder. Users can open the report and drill down to data from their Outlook and never log into GP. Therefore, they don't need to purchase a license for GP. Microsoft has taken a best of breed approach and rather than developing their own software modules they promote tight integration. This can be very good for users. For example, job cost, project accounting, project management, and project controls can be crucial to many multifamily companies. Microsoft Dynamics-GP has partnered with WennSoft to bring a full featured product to the table. Microsoft also empowers and encourages their partners to develop add-on products. Binary Stream has created a feature that really enables GP to work in the multifamily space. GP on it's own doesn't handle multi-company consolidations as well as needed. But Binary Stream created the Multi-facility module that makes multiple entity consolidations a snap. In a nutshell, the module enables users to process centralized and decentralized AP/AR accounting transactions for multiple entities within a single company database. The same partner is also working on a real estate management module. It will be interesting to see how that develops.

I realize this post sounds like I'm a shill for MS Dynamics-GP. I'm not. I think JD Edwards is a fantastic product as well as some others. I'm independent and want people to know about their options.

Don Wood is a PMP with over 25 years of experience in project management, business process improvement, and information technology for the real estate industry. Please visit www.dbrw.com for more information.