So what’s all the buzz about business intelligence (BI), and just what does BI mean for apartment operators and managers, anyway? “Put simply, business intelligence is all of the things that enable you to make good, data-based decisions to improve business performance,” explained Glenn Thomas, Lead Software Development Manager, Business Intelligence at Property Solutions during an industry technology event last fall. With the multifamily industry increasingly looking toward the freedom provided by open, agile systems able to capitalize on the competitive opportunities revealed in strong data and reporting, Thomas outlined the four most common data challenges with multifamily software systems that traditionally have inhibited the ability to cultivate actionable BI:

1)                 Bad Data: Bad data includes duplicate files and data sets, corrupted files, and non-tied data sets that should logically be connected or relational.

2)                 Old Data: This is yesterday’s news, or worse, even older legacy data from systems, products, properties, and people no longer relevant (and therefore antagonistic) to your enterprise and your data management.

3)                 “Can’t Get There From Here” Data: Fixed reports and data sets that are not malleable enough for analysis and interaction offer little promise for efficient and actionable data analysis for multifamily strategists.

4)                  “Can’t Get There Quick Enough” Data: The red-headed step child of “Can’t Get There from Here” data is data that might be malleable or interactive, but is for a variety of reasons held captive from the data analyst, including data sets dependent on participation from other partners, vendors, or housed in disparate systems.

 To overcome bad data challenges, Thomas advocates for a single-platform business intelligence solution focused on performance, control, and quality of data, allowing for customizable reports, ad-hoc reporting, template and document merge, advanced scheduling functionality, charting and dashboards. Only then might multifamily technologists and business strategists realize the concept of “self-service” BI as a tactical and strategic approach to enable discovery, analysis, and interaction with the “right data” housed within their existing systems and software.

“The foundational component of any piece of software is the database,” Property Solutions CEO David Bateman said at the event. “The reality is that all of us like messing with data, but that doesn’t come without its challenges. So far people can get answers, but they don’t always know if those answers are right or not right. We ultimately feel there is a lot of power to get the data out the way you want it.”