Somewhere right now, a financial analyst is downloading a CSV from Yardi, reformatting columns in Excel, manually mapping cost codes, and uploading the result to Anaplan. They did the same thing last week. They'll do it again next week. And every time, they hold their breath, hoping nothing breaks.
This is the hidden tax of connected planning: the manual data pipeline no one wants to talk about.
The Promise and Reality of Connected Planning
Connected planning platforms like Anaplan have revolutionized how real estate organizations approach financial planning and analysis. The ability to model scenarios across entire portfolios, connect operational metrics to economic outcomes, and run real-time forecasts has transformed strategic decision-making. Leading consulting firms, including those recognized as Anaplan Global Partners of the Year, have built sophisticated practices that help clients unlock this potential.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: even the most elegant Anaplan model is only as good as the data feeding it for real estate organizations, and that data resides in property management systems like Yardi Voyager systems, not designed to integrate with financial planning platforms.
The Spreadsheet Tax
Spreadsheets typically bridge the gap between Yardi and Anaplan, lots of them. Property managers export rent rolls, operating expenses, capital expenditure data, and occupancy metrics. Finance teams reformat, validate, and transform. Someone maintains a master mapping file that translates Yardi's chart of accounts to Anaplan's data structure. Updates happen monthly, sometimes weekly, and the process consumes hours that should be spent on analysis.
This spreadsheet tax creates real business risk. Manual processes introduce errors, transposed figures, missed properties, and stale data. Reconciliation becomes a recurring headache. And when leadership needs a quick scenario analysis, the answer is often "we need a few days to refresh the data."
For implementation partners, the spreadsheet problem extends project timelines and increases costs. Valuable consulting hours get consumed by data wrangling rather than model design and strategic insights.
What Automation Actually Looks Like
Purpose-built middleware eliminates the spreadsheet layer. Instead of manual exports and imports, automated pipelines continuously extract data from Yardi, transform it according to predefined business rules, validate it against quality checks, and deliver it to Anaplan in the exact format required.
The transformation layer handles the complexity typically found in spreadsheets: mapping property hierarchies, converting chart-of-accounts structures, normalizing date formats, and aggregating data at appropriate levels. Once configured, it runs without human intervention daily, hourly, or on demand.
For financial planning teams, this means Anaplan models always reflect the current operational reality. For implementation partners, it means faster time-to-value and projects that focus on insight delivery rather than data plumbing.
Beyond Yardi: The Multi-System Reality
Most real estate portfolios don't run on a single system. Yardi might handle property management while MRI manages investment accounting. Construction data lives in Procore. Budgets originate in departmental spreadsheets. The connected planning vision requires connecting all of these sources, not just one.
Middleware designed for real estate understands these ecosystems. It speaks the native language of property management systems and translates fluently to financial planning platforms. The result is a unified data layer that enables accurate connected planning.
Time to Retire the Spreadsheet
At KriyaGo, we build data infrastructure that connects property operations to financial planning. Our platform automates the Yardi-to-Anaplan pipeline and connects to MRI, Procore, and the broader real estate technology ecosystem. We handle the extraction, transformation, and delivery so your teams can focus on what matters: driving better decisions with better data.
The spreadsheet had its moment. It's time for something better.
Ready to automate your data pipeline?
See how KriyaGo accelerates Anaplan implementations with automated Yardi integration. Request a demo to explore our connected planning solutions.
