Background & Business Challenge

Harden builds and operates a portfolio of properties primarily comprised of shopping centers. They were looking to prepare themselves for significant growth by improving their digital systems. They were using a legacy accounting system along with a traditional file server that did not integrate to any of their other tools. This environment required staff to go through many painstaking and time-consuming activities to manage financial data in spreadsheets and manually communicate information across departments. Harden’s leadership wanted to provide an environment with a modern suite of connected tools that were purpose built for their industry and supported more of their management functions.

“Working with Jeff has really helped us put new systems into place effectively. Jeff did a great job at learning where we wanted to go with our technology, what our challenges were, and then converting it into a clear roadmap. We now have a strong eco-system of tools with a great support structure and detailed knowledge documentation so our staff can learn how to use everything correctly the first time.” Véronique Charlebois, Chief Financial Officer, Harden

Critical Pain Points

• Tired of sifting through an unmanageable volume of emails every day
• Frustrated with spending countless hours looking for documents
• Struggling to execute their many undocumented processes
• Difficulty in keeping up with the high volume of work
• Entering the same data multiple times in various systems

Desired Outcomes

• Increase in process automation
• Better general operating efficiency
• Manageable email volume
• Reduction in data entry
• Collaborative access to information

Evaluation & Planning

I spent three months conducting a detailed evaluation of Harden’s technological operating environment. I identified key pain points and objectives, and suggested systems that could help resolve the issues. As part of this, I created a long-term digital adoption roadmap that would give Harden’s leadership a clear timeline on how long it would take to achieve this and how much it would cost.

Implementation

We worked together for two and a half years to put the roadmap into action. Throughout this process, I guided Harden through vendor evaluations to select the best products that suited their needs and negotiated contracts on their behalf. I then oversaw all implementation activities, ensuring we were moving forward as planned.

During this time, we relaunched the use of two Microsoft products, SharePoint & Teams and implemented eight new platforms from two vendors, Yardi and Asana. Yardi products we implemented include:

• Voyager (Accounting)
• Procure to Pay (Accounts Payable Automation)
• Forecast Manager (Budgeting)
• Facility Manager (Property Management)
• Deal Manager (Leasing)
• Yardi Document Management for SharePoint (Integration)
• AR Manager (Electronic Rent Collection)

The implementations were completed within the expected timeline and within the expected project budget. By having me work with them alongside technical experts from the various vendors, Harden staff were closely monitored to ensure they were learning the new systems effectively. I also collaborated with staff to build custom elements like email templates and automations.

Results

Harden now has a connected eco-system of tools. Using this system:

• Harden has built a dozen custom automated email notifications so that staff no longer need to manually draft these messages to inform colleagues, customers and vendors that certain actions need their attention or have been completed.
• Lease data flows from Deal Manager into the accounting system automatically once the legal documentation has been signed. Furthermore, these legal documents are automatically filed into auto-generated folders in SharePoint once the E-signature workflow has been completed in Deal Manager.
• Purchase orders include real time data on every pending and completed transaction related to a G/L account so that executives can see how each transaction impacts the utilization of their budget.

Staff now spend less time looking for files as they are better organized and more easily accessible. They have better clarity on their workload and spend less time figuring out what they need to work on. There is more consistency in executing critical processes due to the development of documentation and a greater focus on training.

Going forward, this will improve the ability for Harden to scale up its management operation as it continues to grow its portfolio.