Accruent Lucernex vs. Yardi Voyager

I believe Accruent is well suited for companies with a large amount of leased assets that need to be accounted for under the new accounting standard. Companies with fewer leases would not need an intricate tool of this size. It is suited for both real estate and equipment leases, which makes up the entirety of our portfolio.

Incentivized

I think it really depends on what you're looking to get out of the system. In terms of managing, updating, creating, and following prospect records, Yardi Voyager is absolutely fantastic. There are a number of existing API integrations already on the market that can connect into the record, and I commissioned a custom one to be built to work with the website that seems on the whole to work fairly flawlessly, so long as your community codes aren't regularly changing. That said, you definitely need to do strong onboarding with anyone coming into the system, particularly if they have limited former CRM experience. There's a great opportunity to input (and aggregate reports) from multiple facets of the system, but if people are inputting poor data, or missing it entirely, or you haven't formalized an even plan for things like Source and Sub Source then even the best system is likely to end up disappointing you and your stockholders when it comes time to analyze data. But, when used properly I'm impressed with how robust it is.

Incentivized

• The classroom and web-base training experience were very well-executed. Instructors and SME's in training were knowledgeable and helpful.
• Upper management oversight of the projects provides the customer with confidence knowing that if escalations need to occur, issues will be handled.
• Management was quick to make it right and switch our team when they recognized that there were some fundamental pieces missing from our initial SOW for our project.

Incentivized

• Reporting in Yardi is really strong, especially the financial reporting.
• Yardi also is good at versatility when it comes to finding information - you can locate data in many ways and output in many forms.
• Yardi is pretty seamless with allowing you to switch from property to property.

Incentivized

• We were misled that we would be utilizing Lucernex employees on our implementation. We have subcontractors from Sense Corp who do not seem that they are very familiar with the software. They often have to take questions away to ask (presumably Lucernex employees).
• The implementation process is very inefficient. The upload templates are not straightforward, and there are "required" fields that are not designated as "required". Also, the sheer number of upload templates that need to be populated does not seem like the best way to get our information into the software. A guide to denote what each field on the template actually represents would be helpful.
• You can tell that Lucernex is benefiting from the influx of business from ASC 842, and is trying to onboard as many clients as possible at the same time. This has caused a lack of attention to our implementation, and it shows with some frustration on our side with the implementation process.

Incentivized

• Upon disposition the retrieval of all on line documents by unit instead of tcode.
• Menus are all over the place and need to be standardized.
• Ease of finding reports, seems like if you are looking for a recurring pmt report typing recurring payment would get you the result, but instead it is a payment manager analytics report.

Incentivized

We have invested 5 years of setup, implementation and training on Voyager. It's doing a very good job for us and I feel we've only scratched the surface of its capabilities. Yardi support has been very responsive with very little down time. The training materials are great from Client Central

Incentivized

I'm coming from the perspective of a fairly tech-adept person, so I didn't find the system too hard to learn. That said, I do feel some of the buried menus and the system's own internal search feature could use some improvement, but I have that feeling about the vast majority of CRMs I've ever used. There may be a little bit of a struggle to onboard/train up someone who isn't used to this sort of system, but once up and going it should be smooth sailing.

Incentivized

The local office is very knowledgeable, however recently it seems that Yardi has begun to route calls offshore and the knowledge base there does not seem to be as strong as the USA based support centers. All customizations are done by offshore personnel, which presents issues in terms of the language barrier and time zone differences.

Incentivized

The trainers were knowledgeable and engaging in presenting the materials, and their emphasis on important concepts was helpful (I would rate the trainers themselves a 9!). However, I do not believe there's anything we learned in the in-person training that could not have been taught via live web-classroom. Traveling a significant distance (in our case) to Austin, TX for only approx. 12 hours in the classroom was (in my opinion) not necessary, since the same material could have been presented via live web-classroom and saved us the expense and travel-time. I would encourage Lucernex to consider moving to a live web-classroom format in the future; an online live format would still allow for participation and questions from the participants while saving clients' time and money

Incentivized

If you are converting from another system, grouping your properties by subsidy type seemed to help us. We were able to focus on a half dozen properties at a time, rather than the entire portfolio.

Incentivized

We chose Lucernex based on the commitment of building and maintaining the customer/vendor relationship to grow the product, the end user ability to configure the system and the systems functionality to complete all of our lease management needs.

Incentivized

Yardi is more user-friendly, dynamic, and comprehensive than other similar products in the real estate space. While there is some ramp-up time to learn the system, Yardi is pretty intuitive and literal, which removes much of the confusion that other systems offer. Voyager also allows us to integrate better with outside vendors, as it is one of the most common ERP systems on the market.

Incentivized

• Lease negotiation process has improved, we are able to make quicker, sound decisions with all the data at our fingertips
• Internal and external reporting has been enhanced through the use of the reporting module. Reports can be easily made and tailored for reporting needs
• Percent rent and straight line accruals are now automated through the system which cuts down on manual user error from previously using spreadsheets

Incentivized

• Yardi saves much time whenever my company is involved in consulting a property manager or an asset manager on their real estate asset. Because we can look at their Yardi financials, it's easy to tell where cash is being spent.
• Yardi has a positive ROI by making us able to answer these questions quickly, and thus keep clients happy.

Incentivized