When leading San Diego, California-based real estate organization, HG Fenton Company migrated to MRI Version X, they were excited about the enhancements to the software. But over time they became frustrated by a few functionality issues in the update that didn’t gel with their processes and workflows, and how they were used to working. And with over 3,300 apartments in 15 communities to manage, small issues could rapidly magnify into more frustrating pain points.

To help solve this, HG Fenton called on Open Box to assist with a list of items that were causing frustration to their users in MRI’s Residential Management module as well as causing efficiency loss. Fortunately, MRI is highly customizable, and so the Open Box team got to work figuring out the best solutions to HG Fenton’s people’s pain points.

“Open Box did quick work and has a good approach to solving problems and providing recommendations,” said Nicole Zilliox, Business Systems Manager at H.G. Fenton Company.

For instance, the way the statement of deposit (SODA) function was set up in MRI Version X, meant that when refunding a client, the property refund cash type required was not auto-populated to the correct default cash type for each property. This meant the user would need to spend time going through multiple steps to change the cash type to the correct type. For the users familiar with having the information automatically update, this was a step backwards. It was also time consuming and frustrating to have to search for the correct the refund cash type, and there was the risk that SODAs could be processed with errors which would lead to the Accounting team to do more work correct it on the back end, or if the incorrect cash type was not noticed by Accounting the SODA refund check would be issued out of the wrong bank account causing other painful issues.

HG Fenton had considered changing its processes to accommodate the new version of MRI’s setup, but, when they were brought on-board the Open Box team realized that there was no need to do this. The team suggested to Zilliox that tapping into MRI’s functionality could unlock the logic to work around their challenge and get the software to meet the business requirements.

“This is where MRI’s flexibility really comes to the fore”, says Melusi Mlalazi, business analyst at Open Box. “The MRI application can be customized to accommodate your organization's business processes. And today’s users demand a much more sophisticated level of user experience from both their personal, and their work, software systems.”

This quick win saved HG Fenton Company time, reduced user irritation, improved their customer service and ensured their data was up-to-date and accurate, effortlessly. It also setup a trusted working relationship between HG Fenton Company and Open Box, forming the foundation for ongoing work, and showing the real estate company that it could rely on Open Box for honest, practical advice that would work for their business and people.