In our latest Spotlight Interview, we spoke to David Oates, Chief Revenue Officer at Yavica.Dave shares insights on Yavica’s journey so far, highlighting the contrasting attitudes towards technology adoption in the UK and the Nordic region, as well as the company’s vision and plans for the future.“Master data management is one of the biggest challenges that real estate companies face as they grow their portfolios. We all know how complicated the legal entities, property groups, cost centers, and estates can get. Add to that all the different departments needing to align on shared records like vendors and tenants, and you have a recipe for mistakes in even the best enterprise solution. What you need is a “mission control” for data, and that’s what YAVICA Data Management (YDM) delivers. It does this through two pillars: defining how companies are related to each other, and configuring how data is shared.”

Q1- Yavica has seen extensive growth over the last few years which was also cemented by your Børsen Gazelle 2024 award recently. What inspired Yavica’s founding, and how has the company evolved over time, especially with the varying expertise from the current team?

YAVICA was founded by Mads Pihl Sorensen in 2017 following a management buyout from CGI. As with many startups, the company has evolved significantly, supplementing the original passionate and talented team with experienced real estate and technology professionals with many years of experience. These include Charlie Wade, ex-MD International of VTS as Managing Director for the UK; Matthijs Claessens, the leader of our Benelux region who has 15+ years’ experience in the Microsoft D365 market and Tracey Malloy-Pearson, Managing Director of our US business, who joined after a 24-year career in Asset Management and Finance with Tishman Speyer in New York. Add to this another 200+ people covering product development, consulting, support and sales and we have built (and continue to build) an incredibly formidable team.We have now created resilient (and evolving) processes to ensure our clients get the best possible experience when dealing with YAVICA, and our commitment to transparency and honesty with our clients and prospects is proving to be extremely well received.

Q2- Can you give us an overview about your FlexProperty solution and how it helps improve processes for property companies?

In the simplest terms, FlexProperty unlocks the Microsoft platform for Real Estate. Nobody in Big Tech is investing in its’ enterprise solutions the way Microsoft is, yet most real estate companies can’t take advantage of all that innovation, because their core operations and data aren’t inside the ecosystem. Dynamics 365 is the leading ERP solution, but it’s designed as a horizontal platform. FlexProperty is embedded within D365 and is the piece that makes it ”fit for purpose” for the Real estate industry (and all its’ nuances!) When our customers centralise their leasing, property management, finance, facilities, and tenant engagement in Dynamics, those processes – and especially the associated data – become Microsoft-native. Now you have one real-time source of truth, one “dataverse”, and every tool you need to convert that into bottom-line impact. That could mean creating rewarding tenant experiences with Power Portals, or driving strategic decisions with Power BI dashboards, or diversifying into new markets from a solid and reliable foundation. YAVICA cares about helping real estate companies move the needle, and FlexProperty is all about leveraging the full Microsoft platform to make that happen.

Q3- How does Yavica’s Data Management solution support clients in consolidating property data from multiple sources?

Master data management is one of the biggest challenges that real estate companies face as they grow their portfolios. We all know how complicated the legal entities, property groups, cost centers, and estates can get. Add to that all the different departments needing to align on shared records like vendors and tenants, and you have a recipe for mistakes in even the best enterprise solution. What you need is a “mission control” for data, and that’s what YAVICA Data Management (YDM) delivers. It does this through two pillars: defining how companies are related to each other, and configuring how data is shared.

Our customers are using YDM’s enhanced data governance tools to eliminate all those hours wasted on manually entering, re-entering, aligning, and validating data across systems and departments. Perhaps even more impactfully, their decision-makers are getting real-time data they can trust and act on, instead of watching strategic opportunites pass them by while waiting for yet another round of corrections. And they’re doing all that with security and privacy baked in by design.

Q4- With Yavica’s operations spanning across the Nordic region, Asia and North America, what are some of the differences in attitudes to the adoption of solutions such as yourselves in other regions compared to the UK?

As we all know, the real-estate industry is traditionally cautious in adopting new technology. However, that tide is now turning. We have had tremendous success in the UK, Nordics and European markets, winning customers such as Indurent, Landsec, NEPI Rockcastle and CTP and I have seen a massive increase in traction over the last 12 months. However, winning those clients is only part of the story. As with any major technology change, adoption is key and we spend a huge amount of time, in conjunction with our partners such as KPMG, managing the adoption and change management process to ensure our clients extract maximum value from such a monumental change in business processes. We are fortunate to be embedded into the Microsoft ecosystem, in that almost all of our clients have a huge investment into that eco-system and the ability for YAVICA to seamlessly sit in Microsoft Dynamics 365 gives clients a great sense of confidence and resilience.

Of course, the willingness to look at an alternative technology strategy for property management and finance varies not just by region, but also by organisation. There is a great fondness for the status quo, for example, in the US market. However, that is why my role is so enjoyable, as we get the opportunity to win hearts and minds and new clients in new markets and sectors.

Q5- Lastly looking ahead, What are your plans for the coming years and how do you see your solution adapting to the changes in the industry?

Our CEO, Mads, has always said that his vision is to be THE de facto standard for the management of front- and back-office processes in the real estate market. We are committed to continuing the development of the solution to meet the changing demands of today’s CFO, CTO and Head of Asset Management, and coupled with Microsoft’s massive commitment to AI and their ever-increasing investment into the development of D365, will continue to build innovative enhancements to FlexProperty that deliver real value to our clients. Our focus will always be on productivity and process improvement and most importantly, allowing for data-driven insights into the performance of the modern real estate business and the assets it commands.

As CRO for YAVICA, my biggest focus over the coming years is to continue to grow our footprint across the globe and particularly in the US as the world’s largest real estate market and we will be investing both time and resource into making that happen. I am also committed to our partner programme to make that journey easier for our clients and prospective clients. Our relationships with the world’s biggest SI’s such as KPMG, PwC and EY are already incredibly strong in Europe and this needs to be replicated in the NA market. We also have partnerships in place with the leading Real Estate consultancies such as Alpha Alternatives (formerly Lionpoint) and Real Foundations and it is the strength and depth of all these relationships that will help us achieve our future goals.

From a personal perspective, I am committed to giving our customers and prospective customers the best possible experience as they make their YAVICA journey. This is the first time in my (too long!) career that I have seen a truly disruptive technology in an area where disruption is long overdue. It has been a great ride so far and I can confidently predict it is only going to get better!