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Hello. At The Rainmaker Group, we operate every part of our business, from sales and marketing to product development and implementation, within a set of core values. This month my partner Tammy Farley wrote about the core value Imagine. In an email to our team, she challenged us to remember Imagine is Innovation. |
Innovation is exhilarating, it ignites a spark, it raises your blood pressure. If innovation was a drink, it would be fizzy and caffeinated. But innovation doesn't just appear fully formed, as a rabbit from a hat. It doesn't arrive unannounced, unexpected, uninvited. Innovation isn't wished for-it's pursued, it's hunted. Now, I ask you, how are you pursuing innovation in revenue management? In this issue, you can read how LRO's data brought innovation to MAA's renewal processes. Speaking of innovation, we are gearing up for our annual Rainmaker LRO User Conference next week (Oct 12-14) at the
Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, Miami. This year's event has drawn record attendance from our customer base! It is THE place to network with other LRO users, our management and product and services teams, share your successes and challenges as well as discuss industry topics impacting revenue management. We look forward to seeing many of you there and helping you imagine and seek innovations to make LRO work better for you.
At the recent, first-ever industry-wide Apartment Revenue Management Conference, leaders in the industry shared insights, expertise and innovations on how they make revenue management work for them. We were honored to sponsor the conference's keynote speaker, our colleague and longtime friend Bob Cross, dubbed "the guru of revenue management" by the Wall Street Journal. He engaged the audience, shared how he began the concept of revenue management and delivered an animated and spectacular keynote. Innovation indeed!
Customer Spotlight: ECI Management Expands Revenue Management Program with Rainmaker LRO |  |
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ECI initially implemented Rainmaker LRO™ at 16 remote communities in March 2011. LRO was selected to deliver revenue management strategies because of its ability to utilize a community's actual traffic and leasing data as well as comparable competitor data to provide pricing recommendations regardless of urban, suburban or rural markets.
Once the system was operational, ECI's executive team immediately realized the benefits of LRO's streamlined integration with its property management software and its simple and efficient process of delivering pricing recommendations and reports. ECI decided to ramp up its engagement and rolled out the solution across the remainder of its 36-property portfolio by July 2011.
Harris Carlock, ECI's vice president of property management said, "The implementation and customer service LRO delivered were exemplary and we realized we would be hindering our success in the marketplace without a unified revenue management strategy. Thanks to LRO's implementation team, our on-site managers not only understand but believe in the system, which has helped close more leases according to the pricing recommendations." Read more about the ECI innovative implementation >>
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| MAA Communities' Use of LRO for Renewal Strategy
Q&A session with MAA
Chris Lynn from MAA (formerly known as Mid-America Apartment Communities), a real estate investment trust that owns and manages a portfolio of more than 47,000 multifamily apartments in the sunbelt region, recently shared how LRO significantly impacted the company's pricing and renewal strategies.
Q: How was MAA pricing units in the past and why did you explore a revenue management system?
Lynn: We used spreadsheets. There were conversations between our on-site staff, property managers, area managers, and marketing folks to discuss what the pricing should be. We wanted to have a data-driven process that would give us a systematic approach to pricing. Q: Eric Bolton, CEO of MAA, stated to a Rainmaker team member that "the renewal portion of the solution alone was worth the price of implementing LRO."
Tell us why and how this has made such a significant impact for your renewal strategy.
Lynn: I believe he means that because it is more difficult to raise your rents on your existing residents versus your new residents, it's fantastic to have a system in place for the renewal process that is driven by data from LRO. The software minimizes the emotion of setting the price. The on-site team gains a logic and reasoning behind the renewal price, making the conversation with renewing residents much easier since they have facts supporting the renewal rate. Q:
How have you integrated LRO's forecasting capabilities into your renewal strategy?
Lynn: LRO forecasting gives us a much better renewal answer because it is not based on prices for the current period but forecasts pricing based on data at the time of renewal. So we gain a better renewal offer that's more in line with the rates at the time of renewal. LRO's system flexibility allows us to customize it to meet our specific needs, and this was just one of the factors that led to our decision to roll out LRO to our entire portfolio in a three-month period. |
