2025 - A year of delivery, focus, and foundations
By Mark Cohen
Around this time of year as things wind down, I always end up reflecting on the year and ensuring we have a solid plan to kick off the next year. This year was about doing the hard work that compounds.... Less noise. More outcomes. Stronger products. Stronger teams.
What we shipped in 2025
Across our APAC Product portfolio, we focused on things that matter to customers.
AI features that reduce effort. Natural language interactions. Automated prospecting call scripts. Practical assistance inside real workflows. (thanks to Adam Campbell Owen Moony Max Sim Ange Sutton Duncan Abbott Annie Costa and so many others)
Platform reliability work that users feel even if they never see it. The Agora Insights upgrade lifted database performance dramatically. similarly for other products. I think high-end databases might actually make up the single biggest spend category on our cloud bills (thanks to Lyndon Walker Shay-lee Blokker and the Christichurch team)
We invested in, expanded, and grew our partnerships. This included security and compliance that removes friction from sales conversations, like the soon-to-be legal requirements around AML via APLYiD and others. We further extended our mandatory MFA across our products. Shout out to Steve Grubmier who always keeps us busy 😂
The goals were straighforward. Faster work. Fewer steps. More trust.
Our 2025 product roadmaps in practice
We anchored on three things.
MRI Agora as the backbone.MRI Agora is our internal platform strategy. It's how we make a portfolio of 175 products make sense, and make it scalable. We want less duplication. Fewer brittle integrations. More UX consistency. One front door to all MRI Products at hello.mrisoftware.com.
Adoption over novelty. Features only matter if people use them. We pushed AI usage from early experimentation toward day to day reliance. We tested with users and built for client use-cases.
Show and Tell. I have a rule that my team will never smokescreen a demo. Our CRMs, PM systems, Occupier and Commercial products, and even some consumer offerings were demo'ed publicly including at user conferences. We show working software. We answer questions honestly, even if the answer is "we can't help with that". If we need to show concepts (like for user feedback) we will always make it very clear.
These strategies undoubtedly helped deliver both client outcomes and product growth. Our wins came from credibility - not slides.
Team and execution
This year also tightened how we work internally.
Clearer release discipline, with more consistency around tooling (thanks go to Russell Budgeon and Biancha Guthrie in particular)
Better risk visibility. (Thanks to every team that humoured me with my /health endpoint obsession)
Stronger collaboration across APAC product and delivery teams. (Again thanks to all, and thanks to Harshal Choksi for taking a new team that was already great and making them even greater)
New talent onboarded.
Acquisitions like Anacle Systems Limited and Proptech Labs grow our footprint, help us fill whitespace, and set us up with a bigger market to reach in 2026
None of this is glamorous but all of it matters.
What tested us
We ran lean while delivering heavy lifts and dealing with numerous challenges along the way. We did not avoid hard conversations. We dealt with them early. We also went through a strategic structural shift within the APAC Product org, and I am hugely thankful to Natasha Chan Harshal Choksi Weronika Barszcz Santanu M. and even the resident chief number-cruncher Lee Demetriou for helping us succeed.
What I learned
Data changes the quality of leadership conversations. Stories land better when they are backed by evidence. Innovation only sticks when the core systems are predictable and everyone buys in. Change doesn't happen without process and discipline.
Looking to 2026
Next year is about acceleration on strong foundations.
Deeper AI-driven automations inside core workflows in all products. Hopefully we will get to take our AI efforts to the next level and utilise our datasets to train industry and geography specific models
Stronger enterprise reporting using Agora Insights on more of our products, and in particular the new Report Builder for APAC Living products.
Continued growth in key strategic areas.
Expansion into commercial CRM by expanding on the already-established MRI Vault offering.
Tighter consumer workflows across property management and sales - yes, incorporating AI and agents.
One connected ecosystem, anchored by (on? around?) MRI Agora.
The aim is clear: MRI becomes the operating system for property in ANZ. Or as David Bowie says "MRI is the heartbeat of the property economy"
My thanks go out to our amazing teams who built, shipped, fixed, and supported all year. This work is a real group-effort. And 2026 builds on everything we put in place in 2025 so it's sure to be another ride on a rocket-ship.