Almost a year ago, we embarked on a set of interviews and studies to “bring to life” how business intelligence (BI) drives enhanced performance in multifamily housing operations and asset management.

For many years now, I have observed how hard it is for CEOs and COOs who have never had good BI to understand how the apparent “soft” return of “better decisions, faster” can justify the “hard” costs (i.e. writing a check) to pay for a BI platform. Yet every CEO or COO I know who had a good BI platform and left for a company that didn’t, immediately made building or acquiring a good BI solution their #1 or #2 priority.

Born from this disconnect, we had a leading industry consultant talk with many of our customers to draw out specific real-life examples of the payoff from their BI platform. While we accomplished that objective, collecting several compelling examples of the real return of “better decisions, faster,” and publishing them in a white paper, the result was much more than we initially expected.

As we poured over the results, we realized that there was something much more profound than simply bringing our BI solution to life. Rather, the conclusion became obvious that we were framing the problem statement in the wrong way. We discovered that thinking about BI as a point solution to be chosen was the wrong way to think about it. Rather, operators and asset managers need to think about what kind of analytics platform they want to have…and the clear need is for a “connected analytics” platform.

A Connected Analytics Platform (CAP)

So, what is a connected analytics platform? In short, it’s both a broad and a deep set of data, modeled to make it easy for analysts to do sophisticated analysis and create/distribute dashboards and reports that democratize the data to the people who need it the most—operators and asset managers making small (and large) daily decisions that add up to whether a portfolio over- or under-performs its market.

And more than just providing dashboards and reports, a Connected Analytics Platform (CAP) creates an ecosystem for all things analytical. A CAP links together your budgeting and forecasting application with your BI data model. It links your pricing and revenue management solution. It makes it easy to track lease-up performance, analyze true ROI on renovations and track associate and investment performance—all without having to download reports, copy and paste and then cobble together manual analyses.

A CAP fosters collaboration both within and across departments, and between central and property-level operations/asset management. It aligns teams to common goals and enhances collaboration far beyond those of typical property ownership and management companies today. Specifically, CAPs foster collaboration in three different ways.

1. “Collaboration within Teams” happens when CAPs help property managers foster better teamwork within their own direct span of control
2. “Collaboration between Teams” happens when CAPs facilitate cross-departmental teamwork to achieve financial goals
3. “Collaboration between the Center and Property Operations” bridges the frequent divide between corporate and property-level functions, using the CAP to break down the natural barriers of communication between them

CAPs provide new levels of insight thus driving improved performance. Opportunities that were previously hard to see become obvious, allowing companies to make better decisions and do so faster.

How does a CAP do this?

• It identifies and contains the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that serve as the currency of collaboration. Our research revealed that KPIs are more than just targets; they help organizations work differently. When two departments or managers align on the same KPIs, their likelihood of success increases.
• The collaborative processes enabled by a CAP outperform spreadsheets. While spreadsheets are undoubtedly a powerful business tool, they are at their best when information is static, and the number of metrics to track is small. However, dynamic, multi-stakeholder environments expose their limitations. CAPs move beyond Excel to more interactive platforms providing more context and leading to better results.
• CAPs allow operators and asset managers to shift from reports/spreadsheets to analytical tools that expand what businesses can know. Trend analysis offers more depth than static reports. And in a sector like real estate, where location and floorplans are paramount, the ability to visualize data using maps proves superior to using data tables.

If you experience any of the following challenges, you may think you need a good BI point solution:

• Spending more time collating data (e.g. downloading multiple reports then copying and pasting into a single, manual Excel report) than analyzing data
• “n reports with n+1 occupancy numbers”
• Frustration with not being able to get exactly the analysis you want from your transactional software
• Struggling to do important analysis that requires pulling data from multiple transactional systems
• Feeling like you’re drowning in data but starving for information

However, as our research proved to us, that point solution is a necessary but not sufficient, solution. What you really need is a Connected Analytics Platform!