AHA nears end of Discovery, Design & Planning for new Integrated ERP system

AHA is on Week 15 of the Discovery, Design and Planning phase of implementing its new Integrated ERP system. There are five weeks remaining in this phase as it prepares to use Yardi Voyager as its new platform for managing property, assets, and financial performance.

Weeks 19 and 20 will be dedicated to the planning phase of the project.

The new system will help AHA streamline its efforts, said Samir Saini, AHA’s Chief Technology Officer.

Improvements include automating AHA’s business processes, introduce paperless processes, eliminate many processes that are now done manually, eliminate data-entry redundancies, create one source of the truth, and create 100% data accuracy and completeness.

It will also create automated data exchange with external partners, such as the property management companies that run AHA-owned properties. Data about those properties will, once the new system is operating, come directly from the property managers to AHA. This will reduce administrative effort and time it currently takes to transfer the data, creating “a level of transparency we’ve never had before,” Saini said.

This immediacy appeals to Suzi Reddekopp, AHA’s chief financial officer, who said the new system extends also to other communities.

“Our previous departmental silo approach made it very difficult to obtain real-time visibility of our entire portfolio of affordable housing units in mixed-income communities. We needed a much higher degree of integration of our critical business processes, along with better business intelligence tools to analyze our assets and performance,” she said “It will further professionalize our real estate business and enable AHA to better serve our assisted families.”

The new system is composed of a software suite specifically designed for affordable housing management and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reporting.

The new Integrated ERP system will be implemented in a phased approach beginning in the current fiscal year with a payback period for the investment estimated at three to four years. The savings will be $3.5 million to $4.5 million annually into perpetuity.