The transfer of data from one program to another can be tedious, but a new offering from Altus group aims to provide some relief
New technology from the Altus Group aims to help relieve administrative duties from loan officers by making the transfer of data easier.
Argus API is the newest addition to the suite of products the company offers to help owner/operators in the commercial real estate space manage their assets and portfolios. The new software acts as a gateway for data transfer and connects seamlessly with other cloud-enabled Argus solutions. The technology uses an extensive set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to provide greater access and smoother integration of data.
Altus Group has been focused on making a big push to Argus Cloud over the couple years, according to Dhinaker Dhandi, VP product management. The company built a single cloud-based platform to offer existing products (previously desktop based or network server based) through the cloud.
“We wanted to give customers more accessibility, eliminate infrastructure challenges, and provide more collaboration capabilities through our products,” Dhandi said.
The main goal of Argus API is to ease the challenges that come with using multiple systems for a range of workflows. Whether it’s buying an asset, defining a budget or business plan, or creating cashflow evaluation reports, there’s often a need to use multiple programs which can require the same information to be inputted multiple times.
“This data has to be available in all these different systems in the same manner, so our customers can make the right decisions. The APIs will enable users to seamlessly transfer data from our systems to other core systems and save time from the manual re-entry of information to help make decisions faster,” he said.
A good example of how the new software can benefit owner/operators or asset managers is using it to connect an existing property management system with Argus Enterprise, which is used to project the performance of their commercial real estate assets through an investment life cycle. To accurately forecast the value of an asset, information like expenses and actuals is required. Currently, either an analyst manually rekeys this information into the system, or files from the property management system need to be generated and an integration needs to be built. “What we are doing with our APIs, because we are cloud-based, is making everything more robust,” according to Dhandi. “You can update information in real time, and then that data can be pushed into the Argus Enterprise system automatically.”
In addition, Altus Group is collaborating with other CRE tech providers to develop pre-built connectors. While this offering is still in the works, these connectors will provide a more seamless flow of data between Argus and other popular industry applications.
As for implementation, new customers have been able to get up and running on Argus solutions within a couple days, according to Dhandi. They’ve also made it very simple for existing customers who may be looking to move to the cloud and get access to APIS to migrate their entire on-premise application to the cloud within an hour. Using the APIs is designed to be a more custom experience and users will have to spend some time to configure the software to best suit their business needs.
Moving to the cloud and integrating new data technology is a trend that Dhandi doesn’t see changing any time soon. “The integrations that cloud-based systems offer through APIs and connectors help quickly configure, develop and implement the data transfer between systems, so the focus can return to tasks more critical to business versus data management.”
Argus API will be available mid-December this year.
