With the introduction of PropTech in South Africa going back as early as the 1990s, most real estate companies have adopted technology or software in some shape or form.
However, faced with a challenging operating environment post-pandemic comprising fluctuating interest rates, loadshedding, poor service delivery, and rising municipal rates, PropTech has emerged as a potential acceleration tool for landlords, property developers, and service providers looking to streamline their operations to ensure efficiency and profitability.
A leading provider of innovative and connected real estate technology, MRI Software, echoes this, having experienced rapid growth over the past five years with an uptick in demand for advanced AI powered property management solutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and particularly in South Africa.
With over 394 clients in South Africa, MRI Software has partnered with various sized service providers, landlords, and developers including the V&A Waterfront, one of the largest assets in the country known for its forward-thinking and innovation, and one of the first adopters of the MRI Software bouquet in the country.
The V&A Waterfront first implemented MRI Software’s Property Management X (PMX) solution in 2021 for their residential portfolio. PMX is MRI Software’s framework solution, a digital, integrated ecosystem where all information is stored, providing businesses with valuable, real-time insights.
In 2023, the V&A Waterfront started the implementation of PMX throughout the remainder of its business to cover its portfolio of commercial, retail, hospitality, marine and industrial assets.
“Our previous software was predominantly a finance and accounting system which we had been operating in for close on twenty years,” says Amanda Dilima, Strategic Projects Manager for the V&A Waterfront. “It was tired and difficult to upgrade. It was also limited in terms of licenses with our different departments creating their own periphery systems which became cumbersome when trying to consolidate data from various sources.”
“We wanted a new operating system that leads with what we do – real estate. We needed great financial reporting functionalities, and it was important that the operating system had an international track record with similar sized developments. We also required accessibility for all within our organisation, to easily source the information needed to make informed business decisions,” she says.
With a large ecosystem required and a legacy system to replace, the eighteen-month process entailed setting up a new operational system alongside the V&A Waterfront’s accounting system.
“The V&A Waterfront required an operating system that could grow with its unique business – a single, modern, flexible core solution. Their previous operating solution was fixed and required customisation. MRI Software doesn’t customise its products; we offer our clients a tool kit which allows users to tweak and configure according to their preferences,” says Mark Bird, Director of Global Professional Services (EMEA) for MRI Software.
“Their technical team were also having to look after their own servers, backups and restores which equated to a lot of ‘technical debt’. MRI Software provides all its solutions in a secure multi-tenanted environment in the Cloud. In the V&A Waterfront’s case, they opted to go with their own dedicated hosting solution which our team setup.”
Mid-implementation of PMX, the V&A Waterfront opted to include Agora Insights, MRI Software’s Business Intelligence (BI) tool where everything comes together in the ecosystem. Agora Insights reviews data from PMX and third-party solutions using AI to create dashboards and insights. It also offers users the option of presenting the information in graphic form, making it easier to access and to read.
“The V&A Waterfront’s data now sits in a secure, clean system with a proper set of processes that ensures real-time information,” says Mark. “Their team can access and analyse data efficiently, allowing them to work smarter and better. A business needs to trust its data and to spot trends. There is no point having an operating system with thousands of records unless you can find value in the information.”
Adopting PropTech is a journey and not one that ends when a business goes live, notes Amanda. “We required a new mindset on how we wanted our business to be configured from a digital perspective going forward and we had to strategize on how best to go about the integration into our overall digital ecosystems.”
“It is crucial for a business to scrutinize the ‘why’. For the V&A Waterfront, it is important that we are of high-quality customer service to our tenants and by using MRI Software’s products, we can garner insights that would take much longer to extract if done manually. Our new operating system reduces human error by minimising repetitive tasks and it frees up capacity to allocate to where it matters the most while driving digitization from a customer experience point of view and continuously enhancing CX for our tenants”.
“The efficiency of being able to access information from one source is a big win for us. This is the fundamental difference between where we have come from and where we are going as a business. With MRI Software’s global track record, we were confident in our partnership, and we see this as the way forward for the V&A Waterfront,” she concludes.
