How Mayfair saves this CFO up to five hours per week

“Mayfair gives us the opportunity to lower our cost, which improves returns for our investors. All that means more repeat investors, and a stronger bottom line.”

Mike Skoczylas, CFO

About

Three Pillar Communities^†owns, operates, and develops manufactured housing communities across the US. By revitalizing affordable communities, the group generates outsized returns for its investment partners. The company purchases its homes from a factory, which ensures high quality and lower costs. And uniquely for the industry, the firm intends to hold its assets permanently, riding out economic volatility and compounding value.

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Challenge

Three Pillar’s cash was fragmented and earning minimal interest

“Our cash wasn't making money,” says Skoczylas, recalling Three Pillar’s day-to-day before Mayfair. “We were in about 15 different banks and credit unions. Only one of them offered us any interest on our deposits, and it was very minimal. We wanted to centralize all of our excess cash and put it to better use.”

For every banking institution used, the Three Pillar team managed unique login credentials across separate protocols and interfaces. As a result, Skoczylas estimates he'd spend half a workday just logging on and piecing together the company's whole cash picture.

Unlike most conventional service providers or merchants of goods, Skoczylas’s group also had to find a solution that accounted for:

Multiple entities. Owning, developing, and managing 70+ communities across the nation involves a variety of business entities, all with unique structures and cash needs
Dual constituencies. Three Pillar has to both provide homes for tenants of its manufactured housing communities, and returns to its investment partners. The team must keep costs low to maintain healthy returns, yet cannot allow communities to become so low-cost that they are not a great place to live for our residents
Competing cash management solutions with disappointing offerings and hidden fees. Rival technologies claimed to offer similar software features, and Skoczylas knew it would take time and effort on his part to sort through the options

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Solution

Mayfair’s bespoke tech and fast service frees up Three Pillar to strategize better

After testing multiple cash management platforms, Skoczylas found Mayfair outperformed the others.

First, Mayfair was clear and upfront about its rates, a transparency Skoczylas appreciated after speaking with other solutions that teased a rate but then took a management fee, reducing the advertised yield. Banks and technology teams pitch products to Skoczylas daily, often with complex pricing options. He was relieved by Mayfair’s uncomplicated cost/benefit transparency. With it, he says he made a more informed and confident decision.

Next came the application, a process that surprised Skoczylas with its clear steps and intuitive user experience: "The signup process was really easy with Mayfair from the get-go," he says.

Having established trust, the Mayfair and Three Pillar teams got to work, collaborating on a centralized cash management solution for the real estate group. Specifically, the goal was to avoid the wasteful time and effort of managing and using 70 different logins for each of the different Three Pillar community entities, and instead have a simple and intuitive overview. Today, the group’s many accounts are all under one secure, permissions-based login. And to monitor entity-level and overall cash levels, the team simply logs in to one platform instead of the archaic and differing interfaces their many prior financial institutions employ.

“I can see all my accounts on one dashboard, how much cash is in each, as well as the whole amount. There’s no way I could have done that with our regular banks.”

Results

With Mayfair, Three Pillar Communities makes better decisions

With Mayfair, Three Pillar Communities now earns more interest on its excess cash.

For CFOs, whose strategic contribution to businesses continues to grow, it’s impossible to overstate the impact of this streamlined work. Skoczylas now spends more time on value-added strategy and leadership instead of juggling accounts and their many nuances.

Here’s a snapshot of the results Mayfair’s platform has driven for Three Pillar Communities so far:

5 hours per week saved. Managing cash is time consuming by nature. “Mayfair is saving me a tremendous amount of time, easily two to five hours a week,” Skoczylas says. “It's a game changer.”
18% immediate increase in interest earned on cash. After accounting for all the factors involved (comparative rates and fees charged by others), Skoczylas says Mayfair came out “way ahead” of their previous solution.
Improved visibility into the company’s cash position. Three Pillar’s leaders now have a comprehensive real-time view of available liquidity

A subsequent benefit to the CFO’s new visibility is more confident decision making. “Now that I can see where the cash is, I react if I need to and move it,” he says. For example, if a bill is due in four months and the group doesn’t plan to distribute the cash required to pay it, Skoczylas quickly moves funds to Mayfair for the interim period to generate returns.

As for the real estate investment group’s bottom line, Mayfair’s impact on the group’s cost of capital has been passed on to investors, boosting Three Pillar’s measurable performance as an asset manager. By extension, that performance fuels confidence in the firm’s future potential and capabilities.

“Our slogan is ‘We provide safe and affordable housing for our residents and safe returns for our investors.’ Mayfair helps us help both our investors and our residents, because we can fix properties by moving money on a dime if we need to.”

^†^{https://threepillarcommunities.com/founder-qa-with-daniel-weisfield-co-founder-of-three-pillar-communities/}^,^{https://threepillarcommunities.com/our-operating-principles/}

How Mayfair saves this CFO up to five hours per week

About

Challenge

Three Pillar’s cash was fragmented and earning minimal interest

Solution

Mayfair’s bespoke tech and fast service frees up Three Pillar to strategize better

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