Good morning, and welcome to another in the Yardi Living Series. Today, I am delighted to be in Bolton, of all places, in Placefirst, beautiful Deansgate Gardens, and I have the privilege of having Cesar Paniagua with me from Placefirst. Cesar is head of asset performance for Placefirst. Yes. Cesar, welcome. Thank you. Good to have. Thank you for turning on the weather here in Bolton. It is a beautiful day. Exactly. I was not expecting that when we set up today, but it's beautiful to have sun like this. Yeah. It's great. And so Cesar, I think to get started, it would be great to know a little bit more about Placefirst. Placefirst is a company we've had the pleasure of working with for a few years now, but it'd be great to hear your side of the story about how Placefirst has developed, and a bit more about the business. Yeah, for sure. Placefirst was set up in 2009. Since then, we have been focused on just being able to deliver homes, that being single family or apartments. But yeah, we are quite focused on single family, 78% of our portfolio is single family homes. We currently have 2,500 homes in operation, and another 1,500 in the pipeline, so 4,000 in total. So really exciting times for us. Really exciting times. And I love the way you're already quoting statistics because it shows that you're actually using the data to know your statistics, which I really like, and that's the kind of purpose of our chat today. What would be great is to understand a little bit more about this particular development we're in today called Deansgate Gardens in Bolton. You were telling me earlier about the history of this and how proud you are as a business of this, but it'd lovely to hear about the journey that has got you here today with this beautiful development. Yeah, for sure. I think we are really proud of this neighborhood just because it shows all the things Placefirst do. We source the land with the council and work together to be able to deliver as much homes as possible. That is one of the needs in the area. Yes. We then work through the planning stages of this development, working with the council, with GMCA, that they support us with grants to be able to achieve these results of- And for the audience, GMCA ... With the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Yeah, just to support us on this project. And then we follow all the construction with Cadick. That's Cadick Construction support us with all the construction. Yeah, and the final result is 167 homes in the heart of the city center of Bolton. Wow. And what was here before? A car park. A car park. Yeah. So you've transformed a car park into a beautiful set of homes here right in the center of Bolton. So, exactly what the market needs. Congratulations. Thank you. Exactly that. Thank you for that. So Cesar, we're here today to talk about how Placefirst is using data to scale its business, how it's using data to make decisions, and grow the business, really. Yeah. And so I have a question, which is, before you put in Yardi, what did you do? What were the challenges that you had that made you look at the market and select Yardi? Yes. I think we had, before Yardi, 2021, we had four key system and two other complements that were really hard how they speak between each other. Yes. So whenever we needed to analyze data across operational teams, it got really challenging. Yes. Just because at some point, even the address of the unit was not the same in both systems, so it was impossible to link them. So we wanted to have, yeah, better, what we call evidence-based management and just being able to drive decisions based on actual facts. So the first thing we needed, we need to do this efficiently, so we need to consolidate all four systems in one. I think from there what we did is, well, which provider can offer us as much of that as possible and have everything in one place, and at the end, that's what Yardi offered to us. Yeah. We went live in '22, July '22. Yes. And yeah, we've been working together since, and just keep developing. Yeah. It's not a one day, one project, right? So every day today. Yeah. It's interesting to hear the challenges that you had, which I think is commonplace, which is centralizing data and trying to simplify the data. And I don't know what you think, but my experience is that that's one of the first things you have to do is simplify your data. Before you can start doing any analysis or anything really clever, you have to have clean data and simplify your data. And so it's great to see that's something you recognized a while ago, and addressed. When you started using Yardi, and you started to centralize the data, eliminate multiple systems, can you explain how you would do your reporting and the analysis of the business? Yeah, for sure. We started with a standard set of Yardi reports, Yardi extractions, mostly by YSR. Yes. And just for the audience, YSR is Yardi spreadsheet reporting. Exactly. So we started to develop some of those and keep adding more details where we needed, and just, yeah, pretty much starting to get all the data we needed. Yes. And then using Excel to combine all of those into the output we needed. That being sometimes focused on credit control, you needed to have a lot of your CRM data, but you also need the accounting ledgers. Mm-hmm. So it's combining those. Yes. In terms of maintenance, we wanted to look at, again, residents' data. Well, how long have they been living in their homes, but also we want to understand the actual repairs side of things. Yes. So it was combining a lot of different operational areas into one. And that's pretty much how we've done it, try to build as much automation as possible by doing the same things. Yes. So the Excel, you just get extraction, and the Excel will be able to give you the output, but still with some margin error- Got it ... with some challenges. Yes. And so the output to the stakeholders that you were reporting to, whether that be investors or the board or internal teams- Yeah ... was generally Excel based? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mostly Excel based, for sure. And I suppose two years ago, Yardi brought to the market a product called Yardi Data Connect- Yeah ... which was an API that connects directly to your own instance of Microsoft Power BI, and uses the power of Microsoft's business intelligence tools, and I know that's a module that you adopted. It would be good to understand why you adopted and what you see the benefits of that today are. Yeah, for sure. I think that the biggest challenge was the combination of different sources. Even if everything was within Yardi, we had the challenges of everything was on different reports. Yes. You don't want to make all the extractions that complex and lengthy. So what we wanted was to be able, yeah, just to get everything in one place, which sounds quite simple, but it's really, really challenging. When we heard about Data Connect, it's something we wanted to already start using Power BI, so for us it was quite a no-brainer in terms of if this connects automatically everything we need, it makes it so much simpler than what we were doing, and in some cases, we are still doing, really. So it's a journey. Yes. And when you say it makes it simpler, why do you think Power BI makes it simpler for the users? Yeah. For one side, when you need access to a Yardi data point, you don't need to do some SQL to get it. So it could be quite a lengthy process- Yes ... if you haven't accessed that data point before. But with Power BI, you understand the structure of your databases and you just pretty much open that base, bring the field into- Yeah ... that kind of people table format, and you just drop it in. I think the key for us was to make sure we reduce the time of building and maintaining reports as much as possible. We wanted to focus on analysis and then what do we do to improve. Yeah. We are always looking to improve on everything. Even if it's good, can be better. So it's always about reducing that time and then, yeah, spending that time making better decisions. For us, the whole thing of Power BI is to make it simple, because if we get these complex dashboards that no one understands, it pretty much kills the purpose. Defeats the object, yeah. So yeah, I think we know what we wanted to do, and it was just to make sure we had the proper architecture, because you mentioned lettings. One key for us is to understand if there are unit types that are more attractive than others, and what do we do- Yes ... with that knowledge. So, for example, we have our unit type built properly in the system, and then we can access, and then we can see the performance of every single one of those. So it's not about a site level or even one bed, two bed. We could even check type F two beds with a corner location, and we can see the performance of that. Nice. And it could also drive pricing decisions. Who uses the reports that you're creating? That would be an interesting thing. So the different teams, the different stakeholders, and what are they used for across the business? Yeah. I think it's a combination of three. I think first, the operational teams- Mm-hmm ... to be able to understand their own data, their own performance, and how to be better. It serves our management team- Yes ... for us to be able to make better decisions at a high level. And then for our investors and stakeholders, because at the end, we also need to show our performance in order to grow the business. Yeah. No. Yeah. So those are the tricky- Areas ... areas. In terms of where do we use it, it's across anything that is in Yardi. So we use it for, as we discussed, lettings and how do we move from prospect to resident and all the steps on that- Yes ... journey. We use it for finance to understand- Right ... just the cost drivers of every single development. We can analyze against our budgets. Yes. How are we performing against those? What are the costs that are driving that? Where do we need to get better? How we not spend as much as we thought we did? And just monitoring that side. It also supports us a lot with credit control in terms of- Yeah. Right ... accounts receivable. So whenever we have debt from residents, to understand that debt a little bit more- Yes ... and then being able to, yeah, move that forward. So right across the business, really. Yeah. So absolutely everything from high-level financial reporting to credit control. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And every single data point we have in Yardi, we can add it to the Power BI connection. And yeah, any- Is that every single data point? Pretty much, yeah. Not everything is available from day one. Of course, there's work to do. If it's custom tables, you need to do a little bit of YSR for that to follow through- Yeah ... Power BI. So yeah, there is work. It's not magic. Everything is there. There's some time to- Yeah ... spend in there. But I think if you compare that against the time we actually spent just updating the reports on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis, yeah, it's still less time. For sure. Perfect. It's super exciting that you've taken your data so seriously. You've built this great connection from Yardi's database to your Microsoft Power BI environment using the Yardi Data Connect API. It would be really good just to drill down and discuss what benefits have you seen by doing this? Yeah, for sure. I think first, the report building is faster. Okay. In order to get one report from zero to a final output, it can be quite quick- Right ... as long as you know where every data field is- Yes ... on the databases. But I think the biggest one is the maintenance of the report. If we update this report on a weekly basis, it's just a click of a button. So that could take you five minutes max. Yeah. Against probably getting five YSR extractions and then putting them in a location. So real time saving for the business in terms of, one, maintaining reports- Yeah ... and keeping reports and data updated and real and live. What other benefits? I think just everyone being more informed. So it's being able, rather than, yeah, sending the report to everyone, there is a one link that's the latest version of the dashboard, and everyone can access at their own pace. So I believe the business, especially our management team, is more informed about the performance of the- Yes ... operational side of the business. So that's for me one key element. And I think the second one is we have been able to do more deep dive and understand the actual drivers of certain numbers in a better way and understand the actual reason. So analysis has become quicker and better. And I think the biggest, sorry, the third one is to be able to provide more information to our investors or other stakeholders. Right. It makes it easier because, yeah, the time to produce reports again. So we have been able to share more, and yeah, have all our stakeholders informed. And there's a real shift in investors over the last two years where the interest in operational performance- Yes ... and the trends of a business is super important for them. And being able to have that at your fingertips is, well, it creates huge trust and confidence between you and the investors, which only goes to helping you scale the business, I think. Would you agree? Yeah, exactly. Because it also helps you with the core investors, but also for when you want to attract more capital, and being able to provide all of that data that quick, it gives them that confidence of our performance and our business. Wow, that's good. So I think it's been helpful both sides of- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And in my time at Yardi, I've seen there are some customers that have adopted this, like yourselves, whose businesses are just moving forward so fast. There are others who are still getting their heads around how to do it. But I do urge everybody to start by looking data first- Yeah ... and getting your data right, because one of the outcomes, I believe, and I don't know whether you'll agree, is that it also improves the usage of the system. Because if you get strange anomalies in your data, you start to question why. Why have I got that anomaly? And sometimes it could be just the way someone's using a system or something like that. I don't know whether you agree. Yeah, exactly. I think the biggest thing is to get your architecture first from entity, property, unit, unit type, your attributes, your amenities. And if you get that right in an efficient way, it makes everything else easier. So before looking at everything, I think it's just how the architecture of your data is done in the system is the biggest thing. I agree. Because if you have comments there, things that are not fully done, it's just not going to give you the output you need. So César, we've talked about data. We've talked about how data is helping Placefirst scale, which is exciting. What's next for Placefirst? The same. Growth. To be able to provide quality homes to more individuals, to access new regions, and continue to expand the business to be, yeah, to have coverage across the UK. I know there's an exciting pipeline. In terms of technology, have you thought about how AI might help Placefirst? And you've done a lot of work on your database. You have pretty clean data and some great reporting. That puts you in a good place to start to look at AI adoption. What's your feeling? Yeah. I think overall, in terms of technology, we need to make sure our technology allows us to, even when we are growing, to keep offering the same quality of product, the same quality- Yes ... of service. So in terms of system, we need something that offers that scalability. In terms of AI, yes, we have started to plan things internally within the business to support our employees to- Yes ... make things easier, to access- Yeah ... analysis faster. We've done that. We are starting to look at how do we bring AI to the operation of the business, and yeah, how can we improve using it? Perfect. Great. Well, César, I'd like to thank you for taking the time- My pleasure ... and for hosting us today in this great building. And I never thought I'd say it about Bolton, but- ... what a nice day, what a nice place, and a beautiful apartment. And I really appreciate your time, and it's been great working with you for the last few years, and long may it continue. Thank you. For sure. Thank you as well.