Property Management Company Improves Productivity by 34%

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization
• Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

• Business Operation
• Quality Assurance

• System Integration
• Training

After a huge restructuring effort, FirstPort realized that its organizational decision making was in need of a serious overhaul. Monthly board meetings were led by senior department managers, all with conflicting agendas and data to match. At this point in time, no one could even say with any certainty the amount of properties FirstPort managed. According to Alex, “If you asked three people you’d get three different answers.” Alex recognized the opportunity to not only unify the organization’s decision making process, but lead the company into a golden era of insight. FirstPort was generating so much data from its day-to-day operations, customer queries, financial information, and new business opportunities that they were overwhelmed. They knew they could add value and make improvements for both the customers and company if they could just tap into the data. Alex and his team needed to drive improvements in data related reporting and decisions for customers and staff members, yet lacked the necessary tools and resources to do so, having only Excel and Powerpoint. To meet their objectives, they estimated that it would take up to one year of effort if they doubled the size of their existing BI team of five. Alex decided that the right direction for FirstPort was automating as much of the data cleansing and analysis as possible, and to focus the BI team’s talents on analysis rather than ETL. On top of this, Alex needed a vendor that could do all of this in a reasonable period of time - days or weeks, not months or years.

FirstPort is one of the UK’s premiere property management services, providing high-quality property management for 180,000 properties, ranging between residential, luxury, and retirement housing. The company underwent a restructuring effort and realized the need for a unified view of their data. Different departments were presenting conflicting data during company meetings, leading to confusion and inefficiencies. Business Intelligence Manager, Alex Jay, recognized the need for a solution to unify the organization’s data and improve decision-making processes. FirstPort generates a significant amount of data from day-to-day operations, customer queries, financial information, and new business opportunities, which they aimed to leverage for better insights and improvements.

Alex started his search using the Gartner Magic Quadrant Report. After evaluating a number of BI vendors, Sisense was the only BI vendor that not only provided beautiful, front-end data visualizations, but full back-end support, eliminating days of misery-inducing, manual data preparation and ETL. Alex needed a tool that could easily let him tap into their data and visualize the data. Rollout was smooth and immediate thanks to the intuitiveness of Sisense, which didn’t require endless training in order to understand the system and put it into practice. Instead of hiring more people and spending long months developing a product, Alex was able to produce valuable and previously unknown insights in just days. Initial rollout was for property managers, the field-based staff who work at each property location. With 13 properties under a manager’s jurisdiction, it is crucial that they have access to key information about the property and residents at their fingertips, rather than having to hunt through 'eight different systems to get answers.' Sisense provided this simplicity.

• Sisense allowed FirstPort to finally see where they could be more efficient. For example, they discovered a manager who was traveling 60-miles to a site when a colleague was working in the business next door. This unnecessary trip was identified and eliminated, showcasing the power of data visualization in improving operational efficiency.
• Within three months, FirstPort saw a 34% gain in employee productivity. This significant improvement was a direct result of having unified and accessible data, which streamlined various processes and reduced the time spent on manual data handling.
• Customer complaints were resolved 50% faster. Although this was not an initial goal, it became a phenomenal benefit of the new system. The ability to quickly access and analyze data allowed FirstPort to address customer issues more efficiently, enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

• Employee productivity improved by 34%.
• Customer complaints were resolved 50% faster.