MRI's Contract Intelligence time-saving solutions add value to shareholders at Equites Property Fund

Equites Property Fund Limited is a real estate investment trust (REIT), specialising in developing and acquiring world-class logistics assets. With properties in both South Africa and the UK, Equites trades on the JSE, and have grown their global business value from 1 billion Rand in 2014 to over 16 billion in 2021. The company manages properties, leases, and developments, focussing on providing sustainable, long-term shareholder value, with some of their high-profile tenants including DHL, DSV, Nestlé, Puma and Imperial.

Business Challenge

With a portfolio of over 60 properties, managing leases among a relatively small team became time consuming and inefficient. Their system involved numerous spreadsheets and physical folders full of paperwork, meaning administration and data extraction was taking up inordinate amounts of time.

The system also risked the business’s data integrity, since inaccuracies can lead to lost revenue via unrecovered income. As a company, Equites have fully embraced new innovations and technology that improve efficiencies and save time, so it was clear to the team that a solution needed to be found to improve their lease management systems.

Solution

As an existing customer of MRI, Equites went straight to their account managers to discuss product solutions that could help to drive efficiencies and improve their operations. When they were shown MRI Contract Intelligence the team at Equites were impressed:

“As an organisation, we like new technology and utilising alternative technologies… if it ultimately saves us time, we go for it. I was blown away – I knew that we needed this.”

Nasreen Mukuddem, Financial Manager
Equites Property Fund

“Initially I was very sceptical about it. But after listening to what was on offer, I was won over, and I began to think that this could work,” – Wouter Hanekom, Portfolio Executive, Equites Property Fund.

It was important to the team that the chosen solution could integrate fully with their existing systems, and as users of MRI’s property management solutions already, MRI Contract Intelligence was the perfect fit.

Time Saving

As their main objective, the team at Equites will benefit from the streamlined processes that MRI Contract Intelligence offers. Manual extraction of data has been a major consumer of team resources, but with AI technology accurately completing this work in seconds, this time can now be focussed on value-adding activities that benefit the business and shareholders.

Improved Accuracy

Rolling out MRI Contract Intelligence across the organisation allows for a shared database which can be accessed by the whole team. Working from a single source of truth in this way negates the risk of discrepancies across datasets and ensures a higher level of data integrity.

This improved accuracy also helps to ensure the business is recovering all the income it is due.

“Reading a lease, you can miss things, but having software that analyses it and pulls a report on it allows you to spot income that we should be recovering from the tenant but we’re not. Being a REIT, whatever revenue we get is shareholder value, so with MRI Contract Intelligence we can really add value to the company.

Nasreen Mukuddem, Financial Manager
Equites Property Fund

Useful Reporting

With MRI Contract Intelligence, the team at Equites will be able to access comprehensive, fully customisable reporting, which allows for data to be presented quickly and clearly, enabling more informed decision making at board level.

The speed at which information can be compiled is a significant attraction for the team, as previous reporting, audits, and publishing of annual results meant delving into folders and navigating filing systems to extract the appropriate data. With MRI Contract Intelligence, this data is available quickly, easily, and accurately.

User Friendly

Ease of use when implementing a new solution is important for the team at Equites. With the focus of the project being about saving time, the ability to quickly get to grips with the system was one reason they stayed with MRI. As Nasreen confirms, “That the product is user friendly is very important. It doesn’t take hours to work out how to do what.”

Embracing Change

Going forward, the team at Equites are looking forward to launching MRI Contract Intelligence across the company, as well as remaining on the lookout for more time-saving solutions to drive efficiencies within the business.

At MRI, our suite of property management software helps to streamline operations and add real value to businesses. Get in touch with our team to discuss your needs.