real estate software

How to save 90 percent of time spent on real estate reporting 

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How much time does your firm spend on monthly and quarterly real estate reporting? If you’re like most commercial real estate firms, the answer is simple: Too much. What if you could spend 90 percent less time doing it?

Real estate reporting, as a process … well, frankly, it sucks. And this is not a secret.

Pulling together all of the relevant data you need for regular real estate reporting – regardless of where your individual assets are within their respective lifecycle – can be tedious chore depending on how you have your database organized. For those without a centralized database, a lot of leg work is required to collect the numbers you need.

Those of you using Excel as your primary database… well… you’ve got even bigger problems to tackle. 

Collecting is only part of the effort, though. Ensuring that the data you’ve collected is correct can be an even heavier lift. Make a mistake in the reconciliation and things can get hairy, quickly.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. Regular real estate reporting woes can be solved by having the right commercial real estate software solution that covers the entire Life of the Asset™.

Pereview by Saxony Partners is the only such solution to cover the entire lifecycle of the real estate asset, from acquisition to disposition and everything in between. Built by the core development ream from Goldman Sachs’ Archon Group, Pereview was designed for the commercial real estate investment industry, by industry experts.

Pereview makes real estate reporting simple by integrating all of your data into one central, secure, Single Source of Truth – underwriting assumptions, acquisition information, asset management data and notes, budget, actuals, and leasing information. It captures accurate data and documents at all stages throughout the life of the asset.

Users access this data through customizable Pereview dashboards. From these dashboards, you can run reports simply by pressing a button, rather than wasting time on a data treasure hunt.

One of our clients based in Texas recently adopted Pereview as their commercial real estate software solution and saw their regular reporting time slashed by 90 percent. The benefit was two-fold. Obviously, employees who would otherwise be rooting around for disparate data were free to go back to doing their jobs. Also, the firm didn’t have to keep hiring more and more support staff whenever they onboarded a new asset. After all, what’s the point of growing AUM if revenue is offset by expanding payrolls?

Are you spending hours, if not days, on regular real estate reporting? Is your firm’s AUM growth linked to headcount growth? Is your data floating around unmoored and unsecure? If so, let’s talk about how Pereview can simplify, integrate, standardize and optimize the way you do business.

Do yourself and your investors a favor and switch to the only all-in-one solution for real estate asset management.

Integration is the key to making real estate reporting easier

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Integration is the first step in turning data from dust collector to actionable asset. A Life of the Asset™ commercial real estate software solution like Pereview can put your data to work for your firm. 

Increasing challenges abound for growing real estate investment firms. As the number and value of assets under management increases, the data produced from those assets also increases, sometimes exponentially.

Consider an investment that has been operating for a few years. When originally acquired, underwriters used Excel to create the financial models. Over time, a cash flow projection tool complements (or replaces) Excel for financial modeling. A separate third-party tool tracks rent rolls, a different software package manages financial transactions and accounting, and Excel manually captures loan transactions and balances.

Assembling the data for a quarterly report  requires interfacing with four or five different sources of data to compile all the necessary information. Even more complications arise when dealing with files on a network, as not all portfolios will organize their files similarly. Knowing the type of technology and software used to store the data is not sufficient; it may also be necessary to hunt for the correct files somewhere on network drives.

Data governance occurs only in isolation in this environment; there is no mechanism to ensure data is consistent across all toolsets. This is a challenge for integrating data – to obtain meaningful information regarding an investment. Fully leveraging data to transform it into information means integrating data scattered throughout the organization into a centralized location. 

This one clean repository produces consistent reporting and avoids producing multiple versions of the truth. Data is conformed across all areas of the business, to provide a complete view of an asset, from acquisition through disposition. Responding to internal and investor requests for reports requires less time and effort. Finally, clean and integrated data allows the use of advanced analytic and artificial intelligence solutions yielding answers to previously unknown questions.

This is what Pereview Software  can do for your firm. 

Integrating with multiple disparate sources, Pereview transforms the isolated data into a consolidated, robust repository of information. Create standard formatted reports for financial reporting and reporting to investors in minutes rather than days. Take advantage of advanced analytics tools by utilizing the fully integrated and consolidated database – which provides insights far exceeding anything previously available through simple Excel reporting.

So, what are you waiting for?  It’s time to do more with your data  by pulling it into an integrated, secure, actionable, Life of the Asset™ solution.

The business costs of dirty data

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Wherever there’s data, there’s going to be dirty data.

“The only time a company could have clean data is on day one,” says Daryl Pitts, Pereview’s senior vice president of sales. “And even on day one, they may have compromised venture capital or start-up data.”

Dirty data can propagate throughout the entire lifecycle of a commercial real estate asset. For example, an underwriter makes a data entry error, which gets passed down to finance when the asset graduates into that stage. No one in finance discovers the error, which is passed down to the portfolio managers, and so forth.

Software exacerbates this issue. Three-quarters of commercial real estate companies are relying on Excel or another spreadsheet software as their primary asset database. No offense to Excel, but it’s a terrible database.

“Information stored in spreadsheets is rarely integrated with the rest of the firm,” says Derek Thornhill, vice president of the real estate practice at Saxony Partners. “It ends up siloed in Excel or a deal pipeline system.”

Risky business 

If dirty data is injected into the asset lifecycle, it can increase reputational and operational risk. Reputational risk increases when you report bad data to, say, shareholders, or the government. Operational risk increases as more and more staff are looped into proprietary, siloed processes. If a critical data trove is siloed within the underwriting team and a key member of that team quits, that leads to trouble.

Reporting sucks

Siloed data decreases efficiency, and decreased efficiency within the context of LOTA shows up in the reporting process. Monthly and quarterly reporting with dirty data is painful, requiring lots of staff and countless key stokes.

More assets, more headcount

Firms hire more staff to manage demand created by dirty data and manual reporting. It’s why headcount and assets-under-management tend to increase proportionally. This is inefficient from a personnel standpoint and negatively impacts the firm’s bottom line.

“Investors are demanding quicker turnaround in reporting cycles, both in standard reporting and ad-hoc needs,” Thornhill says. “These reports are often generated in Excel and either posted to a shared drive or an investor portal. More savvy investment firms have automated some of the reporting to the investor, but there is significant legwork behind the scenes to provide this transparency.”

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Pereview Software by Saxony Partners is the antidote for dirty data.

An all-in-one commercial real estate asset software solution, Pereview is the only Life of the Asset™ platform on the market today. It integrates all your data in one place, eliminates siloed systems and processes, allows for push-button reporting, and establishes standard workflows and guidelines for asset and data management.

Let’s chat about how we can ensure that your data is clean, accessible, and secure.

How does data get dirty in the first place?

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There are many paths to dirty data, but most common are a lack of data governance, a preponderance of siloed processes, and inadequate software solutions.

Data governance is multi-legged stool, with one being data integrity. Processes for capturing, cataloguing, and reporting data must be consistent across your organization. If, for instance, your asset manager defines a certain term differently than the portfolio manager (and neither is aware of the difference), you will have inaccurate data.

It’s safe to assume that lack of data governance broadly – and lack of data integrity specifically – represents the single greatest contributor to dirty data.

Siloed processes can contribute to that lack of data governance. There’s no reason for asset managers and portfolio managers to be out of sync with one another, but it happens often.

Say for instance that an asset manager wants to execute a tenant exposure report or a top-ten clients report. Pressured by time, she/he decides to create a proprietary, off-line procedure to expedite the process. It works – or at least it works until that asset manager leaves the firm and takes their proprietary knowledge with them.

What motivated the asset manager to go rogue? If the firm was utilizing inadequate software solutions to manage asset data, then their reporting was probably more painful and time-consuming than it should have been. 

According to a recent survey, roughly three in every four commercial real estate firms are using Microsoft Excel to manage their core investments. For many of these firms, this represents hundreds, perhaps thousands, of spreadsheets spread across multiple locations. Such a scenario leads to two big problems: one, it makes work more complicated and firms less efficient; and two, it increases a firm’s organizational and reputational risk.

Excel is popular because it’s flexible and widely accessible. But that flexibility is a double-edged sword when it comes to creating a database. Because it lacks rigid structure around data governance, employees have the implicit ability to invent shortcuts that undercut data integrity.

If not Excel, then what? Many CRE firms are realizing the potential of integrated, cloud-based management solutions to manage their critical data. These solutions (like Pereview by Saxony Parnters) provide a secure, integrated platform for data across the entire life of the asset.

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Pereview Software by Saxony Partners is the antidote for dirty data.

An all-your-data-in-one-place, commercial real estate asset software solution, Pereview is the only Life of the Asset™ platform on the market today. It integrates siloed systems and processes, allows for push-button reporting, creates a single source of truth, and establishes standard workflows and guidelines for asset and data management.

Let’s chat about how we can ensure that your data is clean, accessible, and secure.

4 ways that dirty data impact real estate reporting

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In this post, we’re going to highlight four ways that dirty data can negatively impact real estate reporting. Then, we’re going to show you how to eliminate data integrity issues for good.

We need to talk about dirty data.

This provocative couplet – referring to data that is inaccurate, incomplete, or out-of-date – represents a significant liability for real estate investment firms, regardless of property type.

When dirty data enters the asset lifecycle – particularly in the early stages like acquisition and underwriting – it gets passed from stage-to-stage, all the way to the investor. Siloed processes and non-integrated software enable and exacerbate its spread, particularly spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel. Considering that roughly three in every four commercial real estate firms rely on spreadsheets to manage critical data – meaning they have no Single Source of Truth – this is not a small problem.

Here are four ways that dirty data can negatively impact your firm:

Time is Money

Monthly and other regular reporting chores are painful enough for real estate firms – just imagine what a pain reporting can be when you have dirty data? Having to reconcile faulty numbers takes time – by some client estimates, we’re talking upwards of 300 to 400 hours per quarter.

Rising Headcounts

Not only does dirty data cost you in terms of time spent reporting, but there can also be significant personnel costs, as well. Bad data takes a lot of time and many hands to sort through – and as assets under management grow, firms with bad data invariably see a rise in headcount to deal with the influx of even more data. That vicious cycle cuts into profit margins and stretches staff resources.

Risky Business

Dirty data increases operational risk, as more and more staff are looped into proprietary, siloed processes. If a critical data trove is siloed within the underwriting team and a key member of that team quits, that’s – well, that’s really bad.

Sorry, Wrong Number(s)

There’s another type of risk that is exacerbated by dirty data – reputational risk. If your swollen headcount and excess hours spent on reporting still can’t scrub away all of your corrupt data – there’s a good chance that data will trickle all the way down to the investor. And investors aren’t keen on receiving incomplete and/or wrong data. And you know who else isn’t keen on bad data? The government.

The solution

So, how do you solve a problem like Dirty Data? It depends on your current data strategy, as well as the sources of your data. In general, preventing Dirty Data involves integrating all your data in one place, eliminating siloed process, and integrating disparate software systems.

Some firms will need a Life of the Asset™ commercial real estate software solution, like Pereview by Saxony Partners.

Pereview clients have reduced the amount of time spent on regular reporting by as much as 90 percent. And most have seen their assets under management grow without impacting their overall headcount.

Interested in a plan for eliminating and preventing Dirty Data? Schedule a demo with the team at Pereview.