BH continues to stay ahead of the game when it comes to using data and AI in onsite operations. Brandy Daniel, Chief Data Officer, joined a panel discussion at NMHC’s OPTECH conference that discussed creating a comprehensive data strategy.
For an industry as well-established as ours, the development of sophisticated data analytics and BI tools is still in its infancy in many organizations, large and small. But BH continues to stay at the front of the pack in our BI and data analytics journey.
For example, having established the first iteration of our BI tool, BH Fusion® in 2018, BH just released our second iteration, BH Fusion+, with natural language processing and dynamic dashboards. Users can search via more filters than ever to get what data and reports they need such as Location (State, Market or County), Takeover Date, Ownership Group, Renovations, and Role.
Any BH client or team member can slice and dice the info to meet their reporting needs. There’s a new navigation and search component to BH Fusion+ that BH’ers are raving about after participating in the platform’s debut walk-through this month.
One BH property manager attending a demo commented, “Christmas has come early for us. Wow.”
“Our current goal is to transition from just reacting to the data from the descriptive analytics dashboards we offer today, to forecasting what is likely to happen and then acting on that,” Brandy says.
Data Integration a Top Industry Concern
NMHC recently conducted its Technology and Data Benchmarking survey with half of survey respondents rating “Data Integration” and “Data Quality” as their top two challenges regarding their company’s BI efforts.
Brandy agreed with those results during the panel discussion and credited her BH team members with the overall value of the data stating, “We offer a Citizen Analyst Learning Path in our LMS system and rely on the hard work of our team members to keep the data updated and correct so that we can make good decisions that lead to success.”
Of course, the conversation about data isn’t complete without talk of AI. With 98% of property management companies looking to utilize AI, BH has already embraced and benefitted from it.
When asked about BH’s longer term data journey and how AI will contribute to how we move, integrate, and use data in the future, this panel discussed ways to continue to help improve the day-to-day workflows of our teams and offer more direct data interpretation.
Brandy muses, “Imagine turning on your computer in the morning and having a ‘To-Do List’ of the things that will be most impactful to your residents’ level of satisfaction and your overall NOI. This reality is not too far away.”
BH is Walking the Talk
BH is walking the talk, too. Perhaps the most exciting feature in BH Fusion+ is the brand-new AI-driven “Ask Easley” function. This feature can take the user to whatever data set they are looking for based on keywords – bringing our highest level of simplicity to sorting through BH data.
Easley is smart. She knows all the information in our dashboards but as she works alongside our BH teams and partners she will learn new words and data points that will make her smarter every day.
“As we learn from her, Easley will learn from us, too,” Brandy points out.
Though our data strategy began in 2017 with the development of our own data warehouse, we have built a full data strategy that encompasses how we ingest, store, and cleanse the data, what we build around the data, and how we use it to be better.
“We have learned over the years that what data is most useful changes and how to react quickly to what will move the needle,” Brandy says. “We will continue to branch out further with what data we use and what processes we employ. We’ve never been afraid to ‘break things,’ to learn and get better, and to fail forward.”