The new managing director of MRI Software James Massey says that his role is to help the FM business for MRI Software.
MRI Software is a provider of real estate software solutions that transform the way communities live, work and play. MRI’s open and connected, AI-first platform empowers owners, operators and occupiers in commercial and residential property organisations to innovate in rapidly changing markets. MRI has been in the PropTech industry for over five decades, serving more than two million users worldwide.
Massey’s background has always been around property technology. He adds: “My primary focus is on customer success. This helps if you’ve got a good team, which means the team will deliver a good service. If you’ve got happy customers, they’re going to stay with you for the longevity and that’s the absolute key focus for me.”
Talking about the acquisition of FSI by MRI, Massey says: “Everything we do is around PropTech, that’s our entire strategy. Everything that we acquire has to tie into that field.
“We always look to find the best product in the market. That’s what we do. We were missing a part of the puzzle which was a full size enterprise-grade facilities management solution. We didn’t have one in the stable. We had other products, but we wanted something that was a true SAAS-based enterprise level FM solution. FSI is the one that that had been on the cards for a while. We were really interested in coming to the Middle East as well. FSI which had a physical presence here was something that MRI was really interested in. And the fact that it already operates in all the geographical areas where we already operate made it a good acquisition. FSI as a business itself chose MRI. The previous owners were a great bunch of people who were very conscious of whom they sold to.”
FSI complements MRI’s globally recognised Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) solution and strengthens the company’s position as a PropTech provider that powers the entire workplace.
Massey adds: “When you an buy organisation, you don’t just buy the software, you invest in the people as well. A software itself is great, but on its own without people it’s nothing.”
Massey claims that as a result of this acquisition, MRI Software is now an end-to-end property management ecosystem. This means that the firm can essentially carry out lease accounting, energy management, space management, and now facilities management. He says: “We can do everything backwards, upwards and downwards in this ecosystem.” The firm plans to be comprehensive, flexible, open and connected in its offerings. “We want to give people the choice. Being open and connected is our absolute key [philosophy].”
MRI launched a new global data platform on maximising the value of information that it holds in its system. It wants to deliver a valuable data experience, Massey reveals. “Our development team is very agile. We have global product management teams, global product strategy teams, global product development teams, and several industry principals and sector consultants.”
Massey says that the UAE market is demanding but in a positive way. “I think there is an urgent need of technology here, which is great for us because we’ve got to be a flexible team. I think what we need to make sure is that we listen a lot. We need to listen to the customers.” He believes that there is a drive towards non-calendar-based maintenance. “I think we are migrating away from calendar-led maintenance to more towards usage-based maintenance.” Meaning that things are moving towards predictive maintenance.
MRI’s global data platform has reports that are historical in nature. He concludes: “What we want to do is use that vast data and start to build some prediction around that. We want to move into AI and machine learning, taking what happened in the past and working out what could happen in the future.”