Microsoft Dynamics SL vs. Yardi Voyager

For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.

Incentivized

Yardi Voyager is best suited for users in the multifamily and commercial real estate space, and can be used across a wide range of employee roles, including management, leasing, maintenance, operations, asset management, ownership, and more. On the leasing side, Yardi Voyager is best paired with either Yardi CRM or Yardi CRM IQ (Yardi's newest feature program), as they bring a more robust CRM product that helps with managing prospects and residents. Yardi Voyager houses operations for the majority of integrations across a wide range of industries and vendors, and it comes highly recommended by those industries and vendors when it comes to use of APIs and cross functionality

Incentivized

• Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting
• Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing
• A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing.
• Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel
• Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service
• Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL.

Incentivized

• The out-of-box reports are comprehensive and dynamic, in that you can drill down into specific data columns to see more detail.
• The setup of properties is simple and intuitive, and not that different from other multifamily software competitors, which helped with the transition.
• The residential Manager dashboard hosts a great snapshot of the property management performance of a property in real-time. It is easy to locate current occupancy, leasing activity, and maintenance request data.

Incentivized

• Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good.
• I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports.
• Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer.

Incentivized

• In my experience there's a fairly steep learning curve for a new user to be able to navigate the system
• While there's diverse functionality, many items seem buried in menus or obscure places, particularly the first time you're trying to find them
• Getting used to the refresh functionality in some parts of the system can be challenging if you're used to a system that automatically updates when new filters are applied

Incentivized

Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.

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 rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.

Incentivized

Overall it is a reliable and relatively easy product to utilize. No Property Management Software is simple to implement, so a return on investment is delayed and care should be made to ensure that this platform does everything you need for it to do. Experience and knowledge in SQL programming language is helpful, as there are many SQL reports and scripts available to be able to better utilize the software. It takes time to find the ones useful and the ones that resolve hiccups.

Incentivized

We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.

Incentivized

Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.

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

Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!

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

Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.

Incentivized

Citrix and Argus are property management tools that each fill a function. Citrix is used to track real time payments, while Argus is used for modeling and cash flow analysis. Yardi combines many of the features between the two. Though it is more difficult to use, fully integrating Yardi into a company could save time and money and standardize many of the finance operations of Real Estate asset management firms.

Incentivized

Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.

Incentivized

• More time is spent on manipulating reports which can and should be automated.
• Lack of electronic invoicing process and other green technology features creates more cost on printing and storage costs.
• The lack of a user friendly interface requires more training and a bigger learning curve for staff.

Incentivized

• Streamlined our business
• Ease of use
• Plugin in updates are a pain point. I think when Yardi has updates that they should have vetted it and that us the client shouldn't have to test thousands of plugins to see what is different. Just leaving the information on client central for the end user to look at, at their leisure is in my opinion not the best way to handle, you should send out updated white papers to the SPOCS to let them know what changes are coming.

Incentivized