Charter Hall increases business agility with MRI Software
Charter Hall began as a boutique investment management firm and grew into a full-blown real estate investment trust (REIT) managing nearly $23 billion AUM across three sectors: commercial, retail logistics, and industrial warehousing space.
Business Challenge and Solution
By 2014, Charter Hall had expanded beyond what its systems could handle after growing rapidly for ten straight years. The firm took on additional funds and added staff, but the funds it managed also became more complicated and, in many cases, had different requirements. The sudden growth increased the organisation’s operational costs and also limited its flexibility to respond to new opportunities, quickly pull together fund models, and understand the impact of scenarios on the business. Charter Hall implemented the MRI Investment Modelling suite to improve automation and funds management capabilities and streamline the complexities of Australian fund modelling. The new technology initiative also offered the opportunity for the firm to re-evaluate its processes and data quality in parallel to the implementation process.
The journey has been transformative for our organisation. We now have one source of truth for our data.
Aidan Coleman, CTO
Charter Hall Group
Business Impact
Charter Hall has increased its strategic edge with the ability to simulate the organisation’s response to shifts in financial, capital and leasing markets.
Automated forecasting
This feature of the Investment Modelling suite replaces the transfer of thousands of Excel tabs through the various levels of the business with an automated, “point‐and-click” systemised transfer. This helps Charter Hall make better decisions regarding
what lies ahead for the business.
Efficient budgeting
By speeding up and automating the budgeting and forecasting processes, the company saved significant time – tasks that used to take weeks now take less than a day, and forecasting can be done quarterly instead of twice per year. Charter Hall envisions reducing the time of their budgeting cycle even further in the future to drive increased agility in decision-making.
Greater visibility
With better calculations and quicker automation, Charter Hall has access to real‐time forecasts and stats that were previously buried in spreadsheets, or manually shared via email.
Speed and accuracy
Performing calculations within a controlled environment results in faster, higher quality outputs and offers direct access to data for users across the organisation. Reducing the inherent error-risk of spreadsheets increases accuracy throughout the foundation of the firm’s forecasting.