How to use AI to interact with your data

Aritificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the real estate industry by helping owners, operators, investors, and tenants to automate tasks and create efficiencies, resulting in better customer service and improved client retention. The technology is a game changer for organisations seeking to improve automation, stay competitive, and gain strategic insights from large amounts of data.  

AI comes with challenges and risks, such as ethical dilemmas, bias, privacy breaches, inaccurate data, and liability issues. Real estate organisations must establish guidelines and policies to ensure their AI technologies and practices uphold high standards.  

As a global leader in real estate technology, MRI Software has been incorporating AI into products long before ChatGPT became a buzzword. Our responsible AI framework is similar to that of longstanding tech giants who are known for setting industry standards. It’s an integral part of software development processes for our team and it’s rooted in five principles:  

1. Accountability 
2. Fairness and Inclusivity 
3. Transparency 
4. Reliability and Safety 
5. Privacy and Security 

We’ve already briefly touched on MRI’s Ask Agora capability, but let’s take a closer look at the role AI and natural language processing has in a successful data strategy.  

What do we mean by AI in this context?

When we think of AI, it’s easy to get distracted by generative AI tools like Chat GPT or image manipulation apps.  

But there is plenty more to artificial intelligence. In terms of a strong data strategy for a real estate organisation, there are three aspects of AI that are most relevant:  

AI for data abstraction

Before you even start interacting with your data, abstraction tools can help you gather more data in an efficient way.  

For example, MRI has a number of solutions to help you abstract lease, contract or invoice information and feed this data into your property management solution. AI-powered tools convert unstructured data from large, complex lease documents into structures, machine-readable text to enable extraction, digital querying, and use in other applications.  

This is all done through automation, meaning the data continues to flow without any manual input from your team.  

There are huge time saving benefits involved here, but also consider the accuracy of this information. By eliminating manual, repetitive tasks, we can also eliminate the risk of human error when it comes to data entry. This helps keep your data clean so you can have faith in your numbers.  

Computer vision

The best everyday example of computer vision is facial recognition. When you upload your photos to social media or search the images on your phone, the automatic tagging of your friends and family is achieved through computer vision.  

MRI uses this technology – object detection – in a number of products, such as MRI OnLocation which is able to count footfall analytics in your retail spaces. This solution provides insights into customer behaviour that impacts the performance of stores, shopping centres and locations. Monitor pedestrian traffic, count and classify vehicle movement, see store capture rates, and analyse shopper demographics to predict and manage costs for your location.  

Natural language processing

An AI tool embedded in your BI solution that can help you to understand and interpret your data is a worthwhile investment.  

For example, MRI’s Ask Agora makes it easy for any member of your team, regardless of technical knowledge, role, or experience, to understand your data.  

Any user can simply ask a question, using natural, everyday language, and have Ask Agora instantly serve up an answer in an easy-to-digest format. You can even Ask Agora to display this data in different ways – whether that’s on a map, a bar chart or in a simple line of text.  

Machine learning

Most BI tools at the moment will look at historic data to flag trends and anomalies.  

In the not-too-distant future, we expect most tools will use predictive AI to learn about your data and create an accurate prediction of how these trends will change over time.  

MRI has started to implement this in our Facilities Management MRI Agora Insights dashboards, giving you a forecast of when your assets will start costing you more than they’re worth.  

We also have a similar functionality in our Social Housing solution – MRI Income Analytics. Predictive AI will forecast when your residents are at risk of going into arrears, so you can act pre-emptively to offer support and protect your income. 

Keen to know more?

Interested to hear how MRI Agora Insights can help your business? Book a discovery call with our friendly team today. 

Keep reading

This article is the fifth in a series about making smarter decisions through AI-powered business insights. Keep reading to discover how MRI Agora Insights can drive your business insights.