Envolve Communities

From waitlist to move-in: a streamlined resident journey 

For Envolve Communities, the shift to a fully digital resident journey has been years in the making. The company adopted online waitlist management nearly five years ago, allowing prospective residents to apply from any device without visiting an office. When an applicant reaches the top of the waitlist, they receive a link to complete their move-in certification electronically. The system guides them through each step, asking follow-up questions based on prior answers, and residents can pause and return as needed. Once submitted, the certification flows directly to the compliance team for review. 

Jennifer van Arcken, senior vice president of information technology, describes the impact this new technology has had. “When residents ask for assistance, we can simply send them to the website where they can click the applicant link. There, they can respond to all necessary questions to be placed on the waitlist. When they get to the top, we send them a link, they do their certification online, and it gets done. It’s all much faster now,” said van Arcken. 

RentCafe also helps Envolve solve another pain point that often came up during compliance reviews. With RentCafe, Envolve can push files back to residents electronically, rather than requiring applicants to come into the office to make corrections by hand on paper. “We can quickly reach out to them and say hey, this part needs your corrections and they can simply log back in to fix it,” said van Arcken. 

One platform, many advantages 

Envolve’s commitment to a single-vendor approach goes beyond operational convenience. Maggie Murtaugh, senior vice president of compliance, describes the day-to-day value clearly: “We use Yardi for all of our practices, from operations, accounting to compliance. We rarely find the need to look elsewhere or outside of Yardi for a product that will work for us,” said Murtaugh. 

That consolidation pays dividends in employee experience. When staff don’t have to exit one platform, log into another and reconcile data between systems, they can move faster and with more confidence. “It’s a one stop shop. Our team never has to log out of one system and go to another to run things like credit and criminal checks, and then go back into Yardi to do something else. It’s very important to have it all under one umbrella,” said Murtaugh.  

Envolve has also made improvements to its office procedures with Yardi Document Management for SharePoint. With Document Management, Envolve gains a consistent, accessible structure for resident records across its entire portfolio. Everything associated with each resident is organized and accessible to Envolve team members, eliminating paperwork and streamlining workflows.  

Time savings that translate to resident impact 

“The biggest benefit is time, which is what we all need more of. Investing in tools that gives more time back to our sites to engage with the residents is money well spent,” said Murtaugh. With that time savings, Envolve site staff can engage with residents during experiences such as community events, wellness programs and resident appreciation activities.  

Van Arcken echoed the sentiment from a technology lens: “It improves the resident experience. People are doing things online now. We certainly don’t want to tell applicants and residents that they need to come into the office to get a bundle of paper and start filling out things by hand,” said van Arcken. Instead, with a click on a link, RentCafe now walks residents through a process that asks them questions and additional questions based on their answers making it easier and more convenient.

Financial visibility & operational confidence 

Beyond resident-facing workflows, the platform’s financial and operational tools have strengthened Envolve’s ability to manage at scale. Budgeting and forecasting tools have transformed a historically painful annual process into a streamlined exercise, with prior-year data automatically populating models and giving portfolio leadership real-time visibility as properties complete their submissions. 

“Our budgets are done and reviewed much more timely than they have been in the past,” said van Arcken. 

Financial oversight tools have also surfaced unexpected savings opportunities.

“We’ve recently determined we have some issues with water as we’ve been overpaying substantially,” noted Murtaugh. “Had we not had global oversight provided by Yardi software, we wouldn’t have known and been able to pinpoint that that’s where some of our issues were coming from.” 

Inspections management has delivered tangible insurance savings. By documenting fire stops, smoke detectors and maintenance compliance through the inspection platform, including photos tied to every checklist item, Envolve has an auditable record that’s helped lower insurance premiums. 

A partnership built on trust 

After more than two decades as a Yardi client, Envolve’s perspective on the relationship goes well beyond product satisfaction. “They’re a partner with us in our ability to provide affordable housing to our residents,” said van Arcken. Murtaugh added: “I feel confident that I can reach out to people at Yardi and get an answer that’s going to help me do my job better. They’re willing to invest the time in me to figure out what the solution is.”