Proptech firm AppFolio announced a new product, AppFolio Alpha, an "AI-powered investment management solution designed to provide an all-in-one experience that automatically aggregates, normalizes, and visualizes key property management data," according to a press release.

The argument for the product that AppFolio makes is the degree of manual collection and manipulation of property management data that asset managers perform. Not only does it take time, but is difficult to manage and scale and susceptible to human error, as is true for all manual data entry and manipulation. Misreadings, transpositions, and putting information into the wrong field are common and can cause errors that are difficult to identify and correct.

"According to research from Pi Labs, almost half of firms spend two to three months of the year managing and organizing data to drive decision making," the company wrote. "Additionally, in today's economic environment, asset managers are more focused on optimizing their investments through the use of metrics like occupancy rates, lease expiration, and rent growth."