Best Asset Management Software?
Hey guys,

Looking to upgrade our asset management platform and we're having trouble choosing software.  For reference, the firm I'm working with is a boutique real estate private equity shop.  We essentially want a central location that we can monitor the performance of our assets.

Some of my preliminary research has landed me at argus enterprise or yardi.  Does anyone have experience with those?
[{"id": "cyg3pcs", "text": "Have you considered using a combination of Microsoft Access and Excel?", "replies": [{"id": "cygydr5", "text": "That's basically what we've been doing but want more functionality in a centralized location", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "cygxp3z", "text": "What type of assets?", "replies": [{"id": "cygy7gh", "text": "No specific asset class.  Variety of commercial real estate totaling roughly $500 mil. AUM", "replies": [{"id": "cyim4pu", "text": "Then youre in a tough spot.  Some someware is great for one and crap for another.  Argus is great for Office and shite for multifamily.  OneSite is great for multifamily ops and some AM function but doesnt do anything else.  Might want to look at the portfolio and try and get the best bang for the buck and write your own reporting for the others if the company is big enough to support it.  Warning though, that kinda of infrastructure is really expensive and at a certain point, you end up paying IT to issue 2 reports so that the vice-presidents dont have to read 5.  I built a huge BI platform, spent millions, and ultimately it could have been avoided by the having the highest paid employees in the company just taking 20 minutes to actually read the things they were already given.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "cyhpim2", "text": "Can't really help you much here but I can tell you that Trinity in SF exclusively uses Yardi for their portfolio if that's any help or indication. They're almost exclusively apartments though. ", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "cyk0dwk", "text": "As a 3rd-party RE accountant who has had to log into several different clients' systems, I've used quite a few pieces of software focused on Real Estate.\n\nYardi will do everything you want it to for asset management and everything real estate, it is pretty much the gold standard. It has a lot of disadvantages, but it's probably the best software to use if you are just \"getting your feet wet.\" I believe it comes in modules so you can pay for the portions that apply to your business.\n\nArgus Enterprise I have not used, but that is specifically because I had no idea it could do any asset management tasks. I have a feeling it cannot perform some tasks that would be important from an owner's perspective: tracking capital improvements, lease commission amortization, determining the cause of an unusually high water bill, etc. As far as I know, Argus is mostly a cashflow analysis software for people who are interested in buying/selling/valuing the property.\n\nWhat are you using now for a rent roll? CAM recs? If you can tell me specifically what you want the software to do, I can probably provide a cheaper alternative than Yardi. There are pros &amp; cons to all of them, so it's important to pick one that excels in an area that is important to you. For example, what is the most time-consuming/waste-of-time task you are doing right now in Excel?", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "cymuwyk", "text": "You might want to consider http://www.accruent.com/", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]