Data ownership, control, and freedom in Real estate

Data Ownership

You own your data. The PMS system and any other single-point solution you use only processes and hosts it, but the data is yours. This is a simple fact, but it comes with some complications in practice.?

You legally own your data, but your control over it is restricted. The range of queries you can execute on your data is determined by the capabilities of the PMS. Moreover, if all your data is not inside the PMS, exercising control over it will require coordination and normalization across different data sources.

What’s more, companies are often stuck with the systems they currently use. For example, changing PMS can be hard. Changes are sometimes necessary—like in acquisitions where the property runs on a PMS you don’t support—but often, the process is slow and costly. Changes can also be desired as new single-point solutions do a job 10x better than before or new systems of record or PMS emerge. When you can't change and choose systems at will, the issue goes beyond simple rights and control; at this point, your data freedom is restricted.?

In short, data can be legally yours, which is not always the same as yours to do whatever you want or yours to move into and use whichever systems and vendors you want.?

Data warehouse: the first step to control your data

All your systems of record and single-point solutions have some way to get your data out of their databases. Ideally, they support modern APIs, but these methods can also be old, clunky, and unreliable. The main thing is that since it’s legally your data, these systems must have some way to get it. The objective then is to build ETLs (extract, transform, load) pipelines that get the data for these systems to a data warehouse that is easy to control. Either you build it (hard), or you use a company that serves as Switzerland for your data (UDP), making it a top priority that you can use your data as you want.?

Data schema and knowledge base: what things are, and what they mean

Your data needs to be represented so that your systems and people can easily? compare apples to apples, regardless of the system it comes from. It also needs the right ontological structure to represent the relationship between all the variables adequately. This foundation will allow you to retrieve, query, and analyze your data.?

The three pillars of data freedom are query, read, and write.?

Ultimately, you want control of your data so you can ask any questions, read it in whichever system you like, and finally modify and update it at will. If you can do these three things, you not only have legal ownership but also control and freedom.?

The core uses cases of data control and freedom.

Control allows you to report on your business how you want. It empowers you to monitor the aspects you think are more critical and to analyze your business however you see fit.

Freedom allows you to move properties from one system (PMS or otherwise) to another easily, either because you changed your mind or via acquisitions and dispositions. Freedom also means building programmatic workflows onto your data that reduce errors and save time. Finally, it allows you to pick and choose the best vendors for each key task, making it easier to read and write from your source of truth.?

UDP is the unified data platform for Real Estate

UDP is an end-to-end solution: We build the ETL pipelines and warehouse, support infinite reporting, monitoring, and analysis, and give you the freedom to read, write, and move your data around however you like. We help you report, monitor, and analyze your business daily. However, we are also a strategic data partner that gives you the control and freedom to leverage your data to maximize your business value.?

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