Better student housing with a unified data platform

At the end of 2023, Chicago-based Article Student Living was acquired by a global real estate investment company, which allowed the business to expand, and enabled it to make key investments in the high-demand student housing market. But because Article was growing so quickly, managing one of the largest student housing portfolios in the US, it needed to be more intentional about operational efficiency. “There are a lot of moving parts across our properties,” says Erica White, the company’s SVP of technology and strategic innovation. “Managing everything at our physical residences is crucial to ensure smooth resident experiences, and it’s equally important to guarantee efficiency within our internal operations.” Article’s technology strategy of creating integrated, scalable systems has been key to success.

“In line with this, we understood that the more real-time insights and data we had available across our rapidly growing portfolio of properties, the more efficient we could be,” she adds. The goal was to bring everything together, which meant combining third-party solutions, like cloud-based cameras, with the brand’s centralized property reporting system to create an integrated environment capable of delivering actionable insights around property performance and resident satisfaction. “Article’s approach to innovation is built on three key pillars: user experience, employee experience and engagement, and increasing asset value,” she says.

According to White, the decision to develop a centralized property reporting system stemmed from a need for a highly customized, efficient way to manage data across the portfolio. “Off-the-shelf solutions simply didn’t offer the level of flexibility and integration we required to make real-time, data-driven decisions,” she says.