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My name is Michael Salcher with Western Securities Limited. Western Securities Limited is a private real estate holding, development, and property management company. It was founded in 1932 by the O'Connor family in Alberta, Canada. Today, we operate the company under the fourth generation of O'Connors. We're fully integrated and operate in the commercial real estate industry, including multi-family, commercial office, retail, land, and development. Half of the portfolio for the company is in Alberta, Canada, and the other half is primarily in Texas. I oversee the Texas division for the company.
We chose to go with Smart Rain because we have seen the need for increased irrigation during the hot summers in Texas. It can be very costly, especially with municipalities that have raised our water costs. We've had one municipality raise our costs over 40 percent, and being able to control our water use and monitor it on a daily basis made it an easy choice for us to go with Smart Rain. We've experienced line breaks and leaks that have been very costly and can add significant dollars. With the ability to control from our smartphones with the Smart Rain system, we can act very quickly and address those issues in real time.
We didn't really look at upgrading our irrigation systems initially. We knew we had a lot of challenges with breaks and wasted water, and we needed a solution to tackle those challenges. When we found Smart Rain, we realized it was a great solution to give us control and oversight of our irrigation systems. Previously, we depended on our landscape contractors, which can be challenging because issues may not be found right away, and the contractor may not be on site. With Smart Rain, we have flow sensors and technology that allow us to see issues in real time.
We evaluated Smart Rain based on the technology and sophistication of the system. It operates in a smart manner. Previously, irrigation systems ran on timers, and even the smart systems with rain sensors may not always work. The Smart Rain system's technology is much more advanced, which was a huge selling point for us. We bought into it because of the many factors they consider in managing water distribution across the landscape. The savings we expect to see with Smart Rain are significant. They guaranteed that our savings would be greater than the cost to install the system, which is a huge selling point. From what I've seen so far, I believe that will happen.
When we had a call with Smart Rain, they told us they would send out local contractors they partnered with to do the system install. That wasn't good enough for me. I wanted the experts, the guys who built the system, to come out and do the install. I made a request to Smart Rain, and they honored it by sending their team to Texas for the install. When they came out and inspected the properties, the care and time they took to thoroughly understand what was needed and how everything was supposed to be placed was impressive to us and our team.
The customer success team has been incredible. They are very responsive and quick to provide appropriate answers to our teams. They have been very helpful with the app and the system. It's impressive to see how passionate they are about their jobs and what they are doing, and what it means for their client success. Thank you.
