Introducing Cardinal: Made to Help You Get Hours of Your Week Back
In the commercial real estate (CRE) industry, existing processes and software fall short of meeting the communication, knowledge management, and macro-level portfolio visibility needs of modern CRE professionals. At Hedinger Group, we have developed Cardinal to meet these needs. We’ve been working on Cardinal since 2023 and have been testing it internally in our day-to-day operations as owners and operators of a +1,000,000 SF commercial real estate portfolio. Informed by our experiences with existing software and feedback from internal stakeholders and industry peers, Cardinal is a product that is designed to bridge the gaps between your existing tools and processes, keeping you up to date and helping you get hours of your week back.
Who are we and how did we get here?
American Industries, Inc. (DBA Hedinger Group) began in Portland, OR as American Steel Warehouse Company, a steel company founded after WWII that grew to have locations across the pacific seaboard. Over time, American Steel accumulated a large commercial real estate portfolio and became American Industries, a family office focused on asset management. The current CEO, Huston Hedinger continues this legacy today through the strategic operation of the CRE portfolio. He also manages the company’s investments in private equity and technology. Before focusing on the family business, Huston began his career in the software industry, successfully starting and exiting multiple tech startups. This unique perspective has allowed him to identify major gaps in the real estate property technology market. After discussing with peers, Huston and his co-founder, Mike Watson (CFO of Hedinger Group), decided to develop software to address these gaps and improve how people use software in the CRE space.
What problems are we solving in CRE with Cardinal?
In owning and operating our CRE portfolio, we have identified pain points where existing processes and software systems fail. These pain points are consistent across the CRE industry and can be broken down into the following three areas:
Communication Gaps
The constant coordination between multiple stakeholders required across the industry relies on a high volume and fragmented system of emails, phone calls, and text messages. Arranging these varied communications is extremely challenging. The organizational friction from this results in missed deadlines, unclear action items, and the loss of critical information, as identified by Drooms and Statista in their 2025 study. Poor communication is one of the problems most commonly cited by real estate managers, having a direct impact on deal-making, operational efficiency, and costs.
Deficiencies in Knowledge Management
For every firm in commercial real estate, the same is true: property-specific insights, vendor relationships, and general institutional knowledge are crucial to operations and unique to each firm. Access to institutional knowledge and its preservation through periods of employee turnover are paramount to success. However, current systems lack the structure to capture, organize, and make this knowledge easily accessible when needed. This leads to the fragmentation of data across multiple systems, which hinders operational efficiency, prevents informed decision making, and limits growth, per the BLMI in their "State of Data in the Commercial Real Estate Industry - 2025" report.
Limited Macro-Level Portfolio Visibility
Portfolio-level analysis is essential to decision making regarding risk mitigation and performance optimization in CRE. Real-time dashboards and centralized visibility tools are becoming crucial for effective portfolio management, yet many firms still rely on static monthly reports and manual data compilation from multiple, disconnected sources. This results in gaps between information sources that obstruct high-level analysis. A 2021 Data Strategy Survey by KPMG found that disparate systems were the greatest obstacle to data capture for real estate companies.
What are we building with Cardinal?
Cardinal was developed from the ground up to think like CRE professionals do and to address specific problems relevant to their workflows. Our approach focuses on helping teams reclaim hours of their week by streamlining communication, preserving knowledge, and providing comprehensive portfolio visibility. With Cardinal, our goal is not to replace your existing tools, but to serve as a connective layer that makes them work better together, ensuring that critical information doesn’t fall through the gaps between job functions and that your team operates with a perspective informed by complete visibility across your portfolio.
In upcoming posts, we’ll take deeper dives into the specific issues that Cardinal helps solve. Specifically, how it solves them while providing practical insights for CRE professionals dealing with these challenges. Be sure to subscribe to our blog and follow us on LinkedIn to stay updated as we continue to explore the intersection of technology and commercial real estate operations. The industry is evolving rapidly, and we’re committed to providing the tools and insights that help you get back hours of your week.