ALCO Management

One platform, full visibility

For Sarah Jemison and her executive team, one of the most tangible benefits of Yardi’s connected platform is the ability to see everything in one place. From corporate dashboards to granular property-level data, ALCO can drill into details or stay at the summary level without spending hours pulling and organizing data from disparate systems.

“We’re not spending a ton of time pulling data and organizing data. The data is there, it is organized, and we’re able to then use that information to go forward,” Jemison explains. That kind of financial oversight has become especially important as the company grows and takes on new development and HR functions alongside its core property management operations.

From scrambling to inspection-ready, every time

Perhaps the most dramatic operational shift ALCO has experienced is in MOR inspection preparation. Previously, teams spent weeks getting files in order before each inspection, creating higher levels of stress with real consequences if something was missed. With RightSource managing compliance file reviews, that scramble is gone.

“For an MOR, it’s like, oh, it’s Tuesday and you’re showing up here. Great,” Jemison says with a laugh. “We make sure everyone’s wearing their right shirt, but otherwise there’s no prep because RightSource is pulling the files for us, and we know those files are right.”

The shift has also transformed how ALCO thinks about growth into new states. Rather than requiring internal teams to quickly develop expertise in unfamiliar state regulations, RightSource already knows each market. It’s a scalability advantage that Jemison describes as a “hidden benefit” that gains in value as Alco expands.

Resident dignity starts at the front door

Jemison express that her favorite Yardi product didn’t have to do with core functions such as compliance or finance. Rather, she named REACH Websites as particularly beneficial to ALCO.

Because ALCO serves an almost exclusively Section 8 resident base, its prospects and residents often have limited choice in where they can live. ALCO keeps those restrictions in mind in promoting a high-quality experience in searching for properties. “When a prospective resident sees a beautifully designed, market-rate-caliber website with real photography of their potential home, something meaningful happens. Our prospects get to see pictures of what their unit might look like and therefore what their life might look like living there. I love that we can offer dignity in that choice for residents,” said Jemison.

That first impression sets an expectation, and Jemison believes ALCO’s team gets to live up to it. “I think it allows us as a company to change what a resident’s expectations of the quality of housing they’re going to get,” she says, “and then our team gets to live up to that expectation by providing really high-quality experiences for residents.”

Built to scale with the industry

Jemison started her career advocating for affordable housing at a time, as she says, when “no one was talking about it.”

Today, affordable housing is a national conversation with greater attention in communities across the country. Tax credit programs are expanding. New development is accelerating. And ALCO needs to be ready to grow quickly.

For Jemison, the platform’s scalability is a strategic asset. “Yardi allows us to scale up more quickly,” she says. As Compliance Manager rolls out and Virtuoso begins to interact with compliance workflows, she anticipates a further reduction in the burden on ALCO’s central compliance help desk, freeing her team to focus on the residents and communities they serve.

“We know that there is a whole team of people thinking about what’s next and how we improve these products — how we improve the employee experience and the resident experience and the executive experience. That innovation, that work is being done behind the scenes. And so we know that the product we are getting is really the very best it can be,” said Jemison.