Yardi’s November Executive Briefing brought together a collection of industry leaders to discuss current trends and solutions to mitigate a year of unique challenges. As part of the session, Yardi senior vice president of global solutions, Rob Teel, provided an update on some of Yardi’s current initiatives and what trends are driving Yardi’s efforts moving forward. The company is underwriting a major tenant survey with BOMA which received over 3,000 responses. The survey responses will be revealed in the coming weeks and there will be upcoming webinars with BOMA to review and analyze the findings, such as the likelihood for commercial tenants to renew, factors driving their renewal decisions and factors driving office occupancy levels. Teel noted that some of the prevalent industry trends this year are topics he’s rarely had to deal with, such as concern over rent deferrals and concessions. Yardi’s response was to create a new product called Lease Manager, which helps landlords better manage tenant risk and overall portfolio health. In addition, with a focus on removing touchpoints, Yardi felt it was key to help clients eliminate paper from their day-to-day operations. To do so, there was a corporate initiative to promote products such as VendorCafe and CommercialCafe, which make it easy to electronically submit payments, vendor invoices, tenant invoices and any other documents which normally would have required mailing or submitting paperwork. The industrial, retail and office sectors have all been affected differently by the global pandemic. Industrial has become the “shining area of commercial,” Teel noted, thanks to a large spike in e-commerce growth and demand staying steady along with occupancy and rent. On the flip side, retail has naturally seen more challenges with less foot traffic, shutdowns varying by jurisdiction and higher vacancy rates. This has led...