Hey Kesh, thank you so much for joining us, um, on our Yardi Living series. I'm so excited to have you and have a conversation around kind of your role in Fresh and, and kind of your, your view and your take on, on using the solution. So I guess first of all, starting off with, um, maybe just briefly introducing yourself and your role with, uh, at Fresh. Yeah, certainly. So Esh, uh, administrator, finance director at Fresh Property Group. Um, I've been here for two years, uh, within Fresh Property itself. Uh, and then prior to that I've had about 15 years worth of experience within the facility management industry. Not specifically students or BTR or COVID, but particularly facility management itself, you know, where we're working with large sort of EIP systems, which would've, you know, across, across different departments across the business. So yeah, that's myself. And how many people are on your team at Fresh? I currently manage, um, three direct reports and then underneath all those reports I, I've got a team of I'd say about 15 underneath me. And then we've all got a function outsourced in India who do all our transactional based stuff, which about 30 to 35 staff over Ninja who would do a lot of the crank and a lot of the work outside to ensure that our p and ls and everything are kind of speak in span as they should be. Yeah, So a huge finance operation then? It's a big one, yes. So taking a look at Fresh and their portfolio, obviously it's a huge portfolio of properties that they manage and I can only assume it's going to keep on growing. I guess from a finance and reporting perspective, what is and is going only to become more complex with that growth As you grow naturally. We're growing quite a lot at the moment is that we are encountering a lot of data. So we get tons of new data coming in, whether that's from occupancy reporting, demographic reporting, you know, in terms of data for that. And then from a finance perspective, we're gonna have more invoices coming through, there'll be more churn. So it's just lots of data and lots of information. So that's becoming a bit more complex. And then on top of that I suppose is, is the requirements from the clients off the back of that data to understand what it means. And I think that's the biggest piece is that we've got this ton of data in the background, but then you've gotta ask the question what does that mean and what can it give us and how can that support us, grow the site, create more occupancy, and ultimately increase the NOI of a site, which is kind of what we are there to do. And also and maintain the site as we should do too. And off the back again, further requests of it is being is coming out of it is more dynamic reporting. You know, you're gonna have multiple clients and clients wanting different wants and needs as we go through. So being able to have more dynamic reporting I suppose is what's becoming a bit more complex. And I suppose the pace of that, that's required too. So I said before, we may be reporting once a month, we get into a world now where we want this data immediately so we can make the changes immediately and actually fruition from the impact of it. Um, I think that's probably the most complex side of things as we are growing and in a, in a brand new environment where data is key and we know more about more things On the topic of data actually. And I'm appreciate you weren't involved in the original sort of Yardi selection process. Um, but from kind of your, you know, with with working with the teams and things like that, how was before implementing the Yardi solution data structured across perhaps multiple teams including finance but also maybe leasing and operations? Well, from what I know, the the, there were, IT was ran across four or five different systems and solutions. You know, whether that be a system for invoicing, a system for pos, a system for lettings. In fact what I am aware of is that there was a system for BTR and there was a system for uh, PBSA when it came to lettings, which, so there was nothing was talking, everything was in different areas. Um, so that was kind of the process at that point in time, which from an impact to the team side of things was it was just creating hours on end of how you kind of reconcile from one system or another. So nothing talked to each other and thus that was time and effectively time is money and you can't be as dynamic as well with as it, with it at the same time either. And I guess just talking a little bit around kind of those inefficiencies if you like, um, particularly from a finance perspective, how important is it to have one unified system like Yardi in place, um, when it comes to things like financial controlling, um, auditing and that kind of thing? Well, I suppose the key, the key thing here for me obviously being in finance is the audit. You know, and, and there are lots of other benefits, but from an audit side of things is having the credibility with, with from an audit to sort of say end to end. We can show you the transaction. So whether that be from the PO or job being raised to the purchase order, being raised to the approval being done through to the invoice being posted and then having visibility to the invoice at the same time. That gives me true control and credibility to an auditor and the external environment to ensure that we've got a fair set of accounts. I think in terms of it being internal, it allows us to interrogate it in a more dynamic, more faster way, you know, so if I want to look at the variance for the month because something has overspent or even underspent, I can just look in one, one area, I can see which invoice was raised, why it was raised, and how it was approved at point in time as well. So having it in one place is, again, its speed and it gives me clarity on why we've made these, these variances do exist. And working with the Yardi sort of student stack. So from the student IQ to the finance part, what would you say, if you had to maybe boil it down to a couple of points, are the key benefits that you've personally seen within your position and your team that it's brought? Well I think the biggest piece I suppose is the time it saved for people. So if we got back to the point about how we have multiple solutions and systems that had across the board, it was time, you know, the team, my team in particular would've been spending time reconciling from one to another to ensure that there's no risk sat within the system or with anyone's p and l. Um, and you know, you could even say that's three, four days working days per person. Wow. In terms of reconciliation 'cause it would've been done very manual via Excel log into, in and out of different systems. It's, it's pretty clunky. It's not, it's not the ideal way of doing things. So I would say there's a, that immediately is a big, big improvement. It then allows my team then to start working on more value add things in terms of like analysis and bringing all this data, as I said before, bringing the data to life and making sure that we are progressing with that and helping the sites improve. Whether that through NOI or maintenance, it could be having one system, there's the maintenance side of it as well, which is a cost. So you've got the people time saving, which will bring value add. And then the second part of it is mainly the cost. So the cost of having multiple systems would've been sky high, you would've had a problem, you'd have to maintain it. All things cost money. Whereas having it all in one place just allows you to have one area. If you've got problem, we know where to go to and to speak to different people, we know what the costs are, we've got transparent costing throughout all of it. It just helps in terms of planning for the future. And I suppose the one biggest point of it is having one source of truth. I think that's the biggest thing. It's in one area and that for us and from a control perspective gives me confidence in what we're doing. Talking further to the benefits of the solution. One of the things I'm quite interested to know and maybe you can speak to is how has having that one unified system helped with the communications between yourselves as a finance team, perhaps with operations or the leasing side and how you are working together? Having it all on one system allows the operating team which is scattered around the country, you know, from a site perspective to have visibility their site in one place without having to constantly be coming back to a department to ask for the question which, which which gives lag because we can't answer it straight away. But what's happening here with the likes of student IQ is that it is run on a dashboard which anybody can log in at any one point from any location, which then gives them that visibility of how the site is trading, how it's working, what the occupancy may be, if there is any debt that needs to be chased in the arrears, it gives them that ability to do it immediately, um, at that point in time rather than waiting for a report to come from finance let's say, to sort of support 'em on that, that that side of things. So I think that's the biggest piece is that it's all real time and anyone can log in at any one point. Talking a little bit around kind of the impact on maybe the NOI visibility and and maybe forecasting and I guess that's kind of one of the realms within your role is how have you kind of utilized the data you're getting outta the system to help and aid with that? With it having it all in one place, we have like the account tree, so the p and l that we produce every month that gives you NOI, you can clearly see all the costs are in the right categories. And I think as you do that over time, so we now have this for a number of years, we can now see the trending in certain general ledger codes. So you can kind of see how utility spent has been tracking over the number of years, which then ultimately allows you to sort of forecast for the future. Whether it's seasonality spend, we could kind of see it if there's been a one-off spend. It allows you to really interrogate that data and drill in. I think having again, but one system is that you'll have your forecast, you'll have your actual, your budget versus actual, if there's a ve a large variance against it, you can drill in immediately and look at it rather than having to go to different areas and different sources to understand why that's happened. And then that allows us to sort of understand the in month position for the NOI and see if, if that NOI is true or not through to forecasting and budgeting for the remainder of the year through trending anine, if there have been any additional spends that are gonna come through outta it. 'cause we haven't recognized it just yet. So it, it certainly gives us that, that that visibility And talking more maybe around data and kind of moving away from kind of what you and the, the internal team do more for, you know, PBSA clients, investors, um, you know, and kind of those that you report up to, they're of course also demanding more data in real time. Um, and I guess it's how has Fresh kind of adapted in terms of providing them access to real time data or what has your kind of solution been? This is where things are evolving now. Like I was going back to the point where we have a lot of data, you know, whether that's all in the Yardi solution, which is most of it is in there, whether it being one one data stack, but we have got data from other areas too coming in, whether it be Google, Google Analytics or student crowd information or whatever it may be. We have data all over the place, so it's about bringing it all together. So that's kind of my, that's what I've been working on for the past number of years is bring it together into a data warehouse. So at that point we can then pull from that and then use analytical tools like Power BI to create the analysis and the trends and something which can cut slice and dice to look in a different way that will help, uh, manage the site. In particular what we have done, I suppose with the data we've got 'cause it is quite clean and in one area is develop this data warehouse and created a portal which will allow clients, uh, and internal use to go in and visually see their site real time. So there'll be a refresh every night and then that gives ability to the next day to see how, how it is and how will this site perform over the next day or maybe over the next week or so. I think that's how we need to use that data to bring in it to life and having that make it dynamics of people can cut slice and dice how they want to. And talking a little bit more around kind of clients and how we feed you, feed them data, um, you mentioned around a client portal that was a project that you are, you are working on and I guess if you had to quantify the time it would've taken before you embarked on that project and how long it would've taken to given them that sort of data that they needed, what would you say that time was and what are the kind of effies on that? The team previously would've been working two days to generate the reports. So it either a Monday, Tuesday to generate the reports and maybe Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning the reports would be sent out via Excel mm-hmm an email, uh, through to the client and that would only be once a week. Um, so that's probably the timeframe that you've been working on previously, whereas now it's allowing that data to be refreshed at night automatically. So there's no touch points from a human perspective, um, which it's immediate in instant information for the client to look at or whoever it may be, whether it's internal or external to look at the data in the morning without anybody having to spend time generating a report. So the time being spent by the team now will be more value add stuff to bring out the analysis to look at a trend and, and envision any risks that might be coming out into the future. So it's better time spent for my team. And on the topic of data again and you know, talking about, we hear often about your data needs to be clean, your data needs to be clean so it's accurate and useful reporting. How important is clean data to you? And I guess what are the kind of tangible things you do to ensure you are maintaining that level of cleanliness across Clean data is, is imperative in terms of, because it, it's a time saver as well and it gives confidence to what you actually are producing. You know, naturally being in finance, you want to have confidence in your profit and loss in your balance sheet at the end of the month. So the data inside and the data going in has to be clean. Um, and I think that's the imperative side of it I suppose. What have we done to sort of ensure, um, that does happen? Does that does work? I suppose it's more the process flow charts that we have within the system itself. So we've been able to sort of leverage the Yardi system to ensure that the workflows work from A to B and any issues we can kind of visually see it. So, you know, ensuring there's a general ledger code in the right place if there are any, uh, if anyone doesn't approve a PO we can understand why. We can then have restrictions in terms of where costs can be posted and can't be can and can't be posted. I think that allows data to be quite clean as we go through. Um, which gives me confidence in the data in, in the p and l itself. I suppose a big point in terms of clean data is around ai. So I suppose AI is fed in my, as I see it at the moment, it's all about what data is fed into the system. So I suppose if you put garbage in, you are gonna get garbage out. Yeah. When it comes to this, you can ask a question, it's gonna find the garbage and give you that answer back and it's not where we want to be. So for me it's imperative one from a p and L perspective, but then two, actually going into the future we have to have clean data for this to work. I want to focus a little bit now on the topic of AI and I think it's, you know, inevitable we talk about it because it's everywhere at the moment, you know, in all realms of industries, but also we are hearing a lot about in the PBSA and kind of the build to rent markets as well. And really first of all, talking about what are your thoughts on that and how it would help, you know, a, a finance team, whether that be personally to you or, or as a team as a whole? Well I think ai, we have to embrace it. You know, we, we've gotta move with the technology that's there and I think how it kind of supports me is probably taking away those inefficient jobs in some sense that my team do and then allowing my team then to start working on more of the value add stuff to again, looking at the analysis and, and spotting trends and risks and opportunities that we could probably leverage upon. That's where I kind of want my team to be working upon rather than, again, generating basic reports which spend hours on end to do. It'll be more on that area and then supporting them and actually picking out the trends. So that's kind of where the help will come so it can guide them in the right direction and then we can start thinking about how we mitigate a potential risk and if we see an opportunity, how do we leverage it? I think that's kind of where I see it within my finance function in particular. Um, I think it'll speed up reporting personally. Um, you know, at the moment if it can finance function, it's not, you don't get the report like that in a day. There's still plenty of work to be done in the background when it comes to accruals, prepayments, making sure the balance sheet is clean. I think it'll support in speeding that function up so we can probably get reports out slightly faster than what we do at the moment. And again, it, it just makes you a bit more agile and if you can see how you performed in prior month, you can then decide how you want to perform for, you know, what we need to do this month to sort of navigate issues that you've seen or again, picking up opportunities early doors and making sure that that does come through to the p and l um, within the financial year that we're working in. And that's probably the biggest area of, um, improvement that I think it will bring. Looking ahead or forward thinking, what is next for you and the finance team? Afresh? I think it's, it's adopting what we've got where we've got to now. So we've now got to a place where we are producing reports quicker with more data using the data warehouse. I suppose it's bringing those numbers to life a bit more storytelling where it is so we can then be a bit more agile to risk and agile to opportunities as well. At the same time, I think beyond that it's then making sure the team are set up for future growth. So if we do and we will create more, get more clients, more units under management, it's being able to adopt that quite quickly and the different demands that might be coming from different clients and different industries that we're working as well at the same time. Um, and then after that, I suppose it's again leveraging the, the analytical tools around bi. So how can we get that into a different, how can we leverage the data warehouse that we've built to create more internal reports that help support the business And think that's the biggest thing for me is how do we support the, the site teams in delivering what they do. So I know we are fun finance, but we still should be supporting and trying our best to support the site teams with the data that we've got. It's brilliant to see that growth and I'm really looking forward to seeing, you know, where where fresh goes next. I guess the last kind of question from you is how do you see Yardi supporting you with that growth? The biggest part for Yardi now from what I've seen is the AI solutions which will be coming out, um, that I've seen and I think they kind of delve into training. So it is gonna help the operational world in terms of training and, and and running the sites through to making my site my team more efficient in delivering the reports. But I think it's also the continuous improvement that we do see. So whether it's more reported on apps being a bit more agile through an application, the website's being a bit more dynamic, uh, to align with, with the, uh, the nature of the PBSA and the BTR world being a bit bit more agile with that. And then also dealing with compliance and legislation changes as well. I think that's a big part of where Yardi will support I think in how we go over the next couple of years. Kish, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today and I really hope and wish you the best of luck with the future, um, at afresh and I'm really looking forward to seeing where you guys are heading. Thank you.