This week, IBM announced its intent to acquire Red Hat (read the press release here), making a huge leap into open source and hybrid cloud, and doing so in a way that a more traditional IBM may have never considered — by embracing openness and connectivity with others.

With arguably the strongest open source community, Red Hat has already figured out how to leverage the power of community to further technology. No longer do the best ideas have to come from the engineers in the ivory tower. Open source communities continue to drive innovation, accepting contributions from a wide array of talented individuals whose passion is furthering technology, not enterprise value. The community is not constrained by budgets or quarterly financial results. The community is focused on technological advancement.

The new normal

Hybrid cloud also represents a departure from a traditional, insular, enterprise focus where a bias towards IBM technology was how business was accomplished. By entering a hybrid cloud world, IBM no longer has to fight a displacement battle to win share. Instead, they can now work in collaboration with other cloud providers, including the client’s on-premise computing infrastructure, to enable solutions that are decreed by the client, as opposed to those that IBM may prescribe. Recognizing that the hybrid cloud is the new normal for clients is a huge step for IBM and how they approach and interact with clients.

The Salesforce acquisition of MuleSoft (which adds the capability to connect to all means of applications) and the IBM acquisition of RedHat (which adds the capability to connect to all means of infrastructure, as well as embrace the open source community) reveal unmistakable macro trends. The traditional walls of enterprise software and computing infrastructure are being reshaped to be more open and allow more connectivity.

We, at MRI Software, see the world through the same lens. Embracing openness and connectivity are keys to the future of technology. Organizations who continue to try to do it all themselves, who are insular, and who don’t play well with others will continue to fall behind the community of providers who know that we can do better together.

We’d like to applaud all who were honored at the inaugural MRI Innovation Awards! Presented at the 2018 International Users Conference in Atlanta, these awards were given to clients who have embraced the power of the open and connected ecosystem and pushed the limits of what’s possible for the industry. The winners of these awards embody innovation, change, and community, and we’re proud to call them our clients.

And the award goes to…

Phillips Edison & Company (PECO) – Impact

Phillips Edison, a nationwide owner and manager of grocery-anchored shopping centers, received the Impact Award for its pioneering use of robotics and machine learning in concert with MRI solutions. The result has been increased business productivity through optimized decision making, enhanced cross-functional data sharing and heightened analytical precision.

CBRE Group – Flexibility

CBRE Group, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, was honored for its innovative use of the MRI Information Exchange (MIX) APIs to connect its own proprietary systems with MRI’s financial and accounting platform. As a result, CBRE was able to streamline data audits, simplify reporting and reduce manual processes.

Mirriam Livingstone (Village Green) – Ambassador of the Year

Mirriam Livingstone, vice president of operations services at Village Green, one of the nation’s largest apartment property management companies, has made exemplary contributions and displayed strong leadership in the real estate community. Mirriam and her team actively participate in MRI users groups, and they have provided instrumental input into MRI’s residential management feature sets and partner integrations. As a genuine advocate for her organization, Mirriam’s collaboration with MRI has truly helped shape the future of real estate software.

VTS – Partner of the Year

VTS, the commercial real estate industry’s leading leasing and asset management platform, was selected as an outstanding member of MRI’s Partner Connect program. VTS ranks among MRI’s highest rated partners in client satisfaction, offers the capability to integrate with MRI’s solutions across the world to serve clients globally, and has one of the highest adoption rates of any partner among MRI clients. The commercial success of this partnership is possible through the strength of the VTS solution and the active, close collaboration between the MRI Partner Connect and VTS teams.

To learn more about these incredible clients and all the work they’ve done, check out the full press release regarding the MRI Innovation Awards.

This year’s International Users Conference in Atlanta was an overwhelming success, and so we’d like to thank our wonderful partners whose continued support is essential to the MRI Ecosystem.

We want to give special shout outs to our Diamond Sponsor, AvidXchange, and our Platinum Sponsor, Nexus, who were both incredible partners of this event.

At MRI, we pride ourselves on promoting an open and connected ecosystem that works for all of our clients. A successful ecosystem such as this is only feasible with partners who share that same vision and work to achieve it together, putting client over business. Through our Partner Connect program, we seek to offer our clients access to third parties who share our commitment to the “open and connected” way, and the exhibit hall at IUC was the perfect visual representation of how MRI Software, our clients, and our partners all work together to achieve greatness.

Announcing Spreadsheet Server – MRI Edition

But the client/partner interaction didn’t stop at booths on the exhibition floor. At this year’s IUC, insightsoftware announced a new partnership with MRI that includes “Spreadsheet Server – MRI Edition”. This partnership makes it even easier for MRI Platform X users to produce consistent Excel-based reports and improve financial and operational reporting. To find out more, read the press release here.

Awarding great partners

Congratulations to VTS, who won the award for Partner of the Year at the inaugural MRI Innovation Awards! The Partner of the Year Award goes to a partner that best embraces the innovation, client support and integration capabilities necessary to promote an open ecosystem. VTS has been a wonderful partner, and we look forward to working with them as they continue in their client-first efforts.

MRI also gave out several other awards in the exhibit hall that included awards for Most Active in MRI forums, Most Referrals through MRI Web Forum, and more. These awards went to well-deserving partners such as Loci Solutions, TopUp, Assetsoft, and RealFoundations.

As we reflect upon this year’s IUC, it’s clear to see that the MRI Ecosystem would not be possible without the support of our incredible partners, and we look forward to seeing how these organizations continue on their quests to liberate real estate.

We had a great time in Atlanta at the 2018 International Users Conference! MRI users got a closer look at the software we develop to help their organizations, and we got to learn more about some of the challenges they face.

Just as it is every year, there was a lot of information covered at the IUC, including some of the most recent MRI news and updates! For those unable to make it to the conference, we’ve compiled some of the announcements and highlights from the event. Also, be sure to check out this Whiteboard Wednesday for a video recap of the IUC!

Announcing a new Debt Management solution

During the General Session on the first full day of the conference, we announced our latest real estate solution, MRI Debt Management. Built on Platform X, MRI Debt Management increases operational efficiency and reduces the risks of bad data by moving debt management accounting into a tool that is fully integrated with MRI General Ledger. Debt Management aggregates all debt information including loans and their terms, abstract and contractual information and lenders, regardless of whether debt is a liability or an asset.

2018 MRI Innovation Award winners

The inaugural MRI Innovation Awards were a great success with all the pomp and circumstance our users have come to expect from IUC. We’d like to extend special congratulations to the winners of the first ever MRI Innovation Awards!

• Impact: Phillips Edison & Company (PECO)
• Flexibility: CBRE Group
• Ambassador of the Year: Mirriam Livingstone, Village Green
• Partner of the Year: VTS 

These well-deserved winners are all MRI clients that showcased extraordinary partnership with or use cases leveraging MRI and its powerful, open and connected software. Pat Ghilani had this to say about the winners: “These four award winners, in particular, stood out in our eyes the past year. Not only are they leveraging our solutions to the fullest extent, even at times beyond what we imagined possible at this point, but they’re fully engaged as partners and true MRI evangelists.”

Expanding affordable housing – Welcome IPM Software!

The MRI family is proud to welcome our latest addition from the affordable housing sector: IPM Software, a provider of property management, accounting and compliance solutions for the affordable housing industry.

IPM brings deep affordable housing expertise and market share, furthering MRI’s continued scale and growth in a key market. Headquartered in Texas, IPM Software serves hundreds of clients with its affordable housing property management and contract administrator solutions.

The affordable housing market is actively seeking innovation, and together, MRI and IPM Software are answering the call. Combining IPM’s experience and knowledge with MRI’s well-established real estate software capabilities positions us to match the needs of an ever-changing market at scale with continued innovation. This acquisition reflects a bright future for MRI, IPM and affordable housing owners and managers.

Until next time…

We wave goodbye to this year’s North American MRI International Users Conference excited about all the things we’ve learned and looking forward to what the future holds. It gets better and better every year, so mark your calendars for October 13-16, 2019 in Anaheim, California!

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) aren’t just challenged by the need to comply with various requirements; they also deal with a higher level of risk than some of their private equity counterparts. The ultimate goal of REIT technology is to minimize vulnerability and help REITs adapt to various market changes. While striving to achieve this, they also struggle to balance that with maintaining strong investment performance to attract new shareholders.

The biggest challenges that face REITs revolve mostly around reporting, as they are always looking to provide returns back to shareholders from things like adjusted funds from operations. In the midst of all of this, REITs seek to mitigate any issues around debt requirements, and the technology systems these REITs use has a direct impact on their ability to complete their objectives. However, REIT technology improvements, such as an integrated systems, can help REITs face their frequent challenges with reporting, data accuracy, and visibility.

How can integrated systems benefit your REIT?

The challenges that REITs face revolve around the fact that they are often concentrated on a specific asset class as opposed to having a large variety of asset classes by which they can reduce their exposures to certain market conditions. There’s a real focus on how to best leverage debt, both secured and unsecured, to achieve their desired means.

Automation and reporting
Technology like integrated systems can help REITs because these systems allow them to easily ensure compliance with specific business and investment models. A lot of the processes associated with these business models can be automated, tracked, and audited. A system like this provides a lot of what would otherwise be a significant manual burden.

These integrated systems also support investment in a specialized asset class because they allow a user to easily understand and analyze market trends. REITs can easily consume information from multiple sources and present it in a way that is visually appealing. The systems are also efficient to adopt and analyze that information.

Data visibility and accessibility
REITs can use this technology to understand and mitigate risk by providing visibility into blended asset income and debt service. In this particular scenario, blending refers to a blending of both historical, actual information with forecasted information based on assumptive data. That specific benefit opens up an easier way to understand both what REITs are likely to encounter from a risk perspective and the kind of opportunities they can leverage to mitigate risk in the future.

Integrated systems assist in enabling quick and competitive responses to opportunistic acquisition/disposition transactions. In the past when things were done manually, this process was, in many ways, cumbersome to the point that people were missing out on strategic opportunities because they couldn’t finish the due diligence quickly enough. Systems that help automate that collaboration of information can enable REITs to act quickly when an opportunity arises.

Improved accuracy
The systems also support the timely decision making and audit requirements by reducing human error within the process. A lot of this error is mitigated simply because of the automation through systems. This means that when someone is looking at a report, they can be more confident in the data integrity.

Finally, these systems can help businesses deliver real-time reporting at every level of the REIT instantaneously. Modeling and reporting no longer needs to be done in Excel, which is usually a cumbersome process. REITs can use this technology to overcome their challenges.

Finalizing the new process

A REIT’s ability to overcome obstacles doesn’t have to be hampered by lacking technology. The software solutions discussed here are readily available to REITs so they can start streamlining processes and mitigating risk. MRI Software offers an Investment Suite of products that help REITs maximize efficiency and bring their organization up a level and prepare them to compete with private equity counterparts.

Watch the on-demand webinar here to learn more about MRI’s investment solutions and how they can help overcome the challenges facing your REIT.

People are living longer now than ever before, and while that should be celebrated, the real estate side of pensions funds recognizes that this creates a unique challenge for their pension fund management. These pension funds need to determine the optimal point to get the maximum output from the fund. Across all of that, they also need to be continually managing risk and keeping track of market fluctuations considering they have a commitment to payout at any given time.

Pension fund managers have to strategically plan for the future by taking that lump sum of money that’s been invested in the real estate portion of the pension/insurance fund and deciding how to allocate that sum to drive performance.

How can technology help?

The real estate aspect of pension funds needs long-term sustained growth to satisfy the retirement needs of clients. Like all good businesses, they need to manage debt to maximize returns, and ensure they have enough cash on hand to pay out at any time.

Strategic forecasting
Pensions funds have to think very strategically, and putting an emphasis on forecasting is critical to this particular market segment. Technology can help pension funds efficiently assess the impact of speculative pipeline deployment to compete for funds against other equity types. The ability to make quick strategic decisions about how to deploy several million dollars is critical in addressing needs.

Analyze market fluctuations
The right software solution can also help pension funds prepare for the future. These funds need access to technology that can easily analyze volatility and sensitivity to market fluctuations. When thinking about the future of pension funds, questions such as, “what if interest rates increase?” must be addressed proactively. Being able to assess these questions easily and with the help of technological solutions can help funds ensure that they’re properly set up with diversification and less risk exposure. That way, their clients’ retirement funds are can be properly secured.

Global capabilities
Pension funds are much more global today than ever before, and fund managers need software systems to provide comprehensive global, cross-border capabilities to address multicurrency requirements and regional standards. Even if funds are centered around a much more local group of investors, the assets in which they invest are highly globalized and highly diversified to hedge their bets across multiple regions and asset classes in markets. The ability to address multicurrency translation and multicurrency consolidation, as well as the ability to conform to regional standards of reporting, is critical. To manage risk without a globally applicable system requires an overwhelming amount of internal effort, knowledge, and processes, all of which are costly and time-consuming.

Drive performance
Pension funds also benefit from technology that can ensure maximum output by testing different exit strategies. This can be done by identifying low performing assets quickly so that they can be discarded at the discretion of the fund and the capital recycled in a proper way.

Finally, software that can quickly produce attribution reports can aid pension funds in optimizing performance across asset classes, regions, and strategies. As a pension fund, you need to be able to generate reports that can drill down into all the information and divide everything into proper groupings such as asset type, sub asset type, region, sub region, and so on. This ability is critical to identify the strongest and weakest parts of a pension fund’s portfolio, so the fund can plan even more strategically for the future.

What’s the solution?

The challenges facing pension funds can feel daunting at times due to the nature of the business, but adapting these types of technological solutions can make any organization more prepared for what may lie ahead. For these challenges and many more, MRI Investment Suite provides pension fund software to help funds compete on a more even level with other private equity firms and organizations.

Watch the on-demand webinar here to learn more about MRI’s investment solutions and how they can help overcome the challenges facing your fund.

MRI Software is proud to announce Version X.5, the latest release of our web-based real estate accounting and property management software. Building off the strong foundation of our popular Platform X, the most recent version combines powerful new functionality with feature enhancements to enrich the user experience and improve operational efficiency.

New features in Residential Management

Version X.5 delivers several new features to Residential Management within MRI as well as new capabilities for the UK market. Core functionality updates have been made to the batch entry process to allow users to disable cash types in batch entry and also create and post batches from multiple properties. Keeping with the theme of extended functionality across multiple properties, a new drop down box enables users to narrow searches for prospects and residents across multiple properties. Finally, from within the MRI-GO results screen, MRI has added the ability for users to create a service request from the GO Card without leaving the GO search screen. Once the service request is saved, the user returns to the MRI-GO search screen and can perform additional actions.

In the UK, MRI announced the general availability of the Residential Suite with features and functionality designed specifically for the UK residential sector. These include:

• Flexible rent dates: UK property managers have the flexibility to adjust the monthly rent due dates for any tenant.
• Proration: Real estate organizations have the ability to prorate on an annual or monthly basis.
• Step-ups: This solution enables the rent on a multi-year tenancy to increase annually, making it easier to manage three-year lettings.
• Break clause: Property managers can set the ability for a resident to break a lease without penalty after a certain amount of time in the unit.
• Common banking: Fee managers can collect rents into a common bank and then disperse the funds into the proper accounts afterwards.

Now available in Commercial Management

Updates to MRI Commercial Management are designed to make accessing information more efficient by assisting common user activities. For example, when a user is typing in a lookup field, MRI will intelligently attempt to find matching look up items based on user keystrokes.

New features include Multicurrency Recoveries, which enables users to calculate recoveries in a currency different from the base currency for that entity. This delivers the ability to capture expense pool amounts in the target currency based on the AP invoice date and using the daily exchange rate. This reduces the risk associated with fluctuations in exchange rate and results in a more accurate recoveries process.

Accuracy is a critical component in the development of a new CM/GL interface page that allows the user to review the interface details in a single grid and make any updates from this view. In this release, the calculation of Bad Debt Reserves is now automated. Users can now designate bad debt percentages by asset class or entity and automatically calculate and journalize those entries.

MRI Fixed Assets tightens the integration with MRI Financials

In MRI Financials, the X.5 release represents a significant step forward for the integration between MRI Fixed Asset Accounting and the General Ledger. Users can now create assets in MRI Fixed Asset Accounting by entering invoices and journal entries in MRI. This automated process will save hours of manual entry and reduce errors and reliance on spreadsheets.

Enhancements to Budgeting and Forecasting

In this release, Budgeting and Forecasting users will notice greater control over workbook functionality, including new check-in/check-out options, the ability to lock workbooks and delete a workbook from a budget. New fields, filters and column headers offer users greater visibility and flexibility across various time periods. Finally, enhancements continue to the Residential Management functionality as multiple collection frequencies can now be budgeted and users can enable step-ups from the Property Options tabs upon release.

What’s new in X.5 Reporting

The release of X.5 introduces a redesign of 50 of the most commonly run reports within MRI. This new, contemporary design delivers a streamlined and accessible look and feel to these reports. Additional information about the report itself is arranged so that users can recognize the key aspects or parameters of the report at a glance.

For users requiring additional detail, Advanced Filtering has been added to the runtime option page to allow users to run query-like parameters against reports to dig deeper into the requested data.

Introducing the web interface for Security Console

X.5 marks the first release of the web interface for Security Console and represents a major step toward combining the functionality of security console in windows and security manager. The new web interface improves the overall navigation experience as well as makes processes such as creating and setting up new users more efficient and intuitive.

Already an MRI Software client? Download Version X.5 from the MyMRI client portal.