Commercial Property Executive May 2010 : Page 37
Technology New Developments Data Aggregation, Tenant Services Drive Software Evolution By Christopher Hosford Software applications serving the commercial office market are evolving rapidly. Whether for property management, accounting, asset and portfolio management or any of a wide variety of other areas, today’s building operators and owners have plenty of new software options at their disposal. “Even over the past year or two, we’ve found that commercial real estate soft- ware technology is becoming more acces- sible, especially to smaller players,” said Chris Werely, COO with Visual Lease. “The barrier to entry has been reduced, and companies that weren’t approach- ing real estate software to automate their business processes are doing so.” Much of this is coming from the prolif- eration of on-demand applications, also known as “software as a service” or “cloud computing.” Software can be “turned on” remotely, without the need for a pricey IT department. “It’s about doing more with less,” observed Peter Boritz, president of Real Data Management Inc., which of- fers a software and services platform for both the commercial and multi-family sectors. “It is about being lean, having high productivity but at a low cost.” Cloud computing, he said, reduces costs by as much as 60 percent versus working with in-house software run by an IT staff. “It updates instantaneously, and it’s all on-demand.” But the rapid development of commercial real estate software applications is also being driven by asset and portfolio managers, who want deeper insights into how their real estate investments are performing. “Now that some of these systems have developed and matured and companies are accumulating quite a bit of data, the trend is to find easier and better ways to le- verage and use that data, to capture it and use it more strategically,” explained Bill Greenhaus, a principal with REdirect Consulting. “That means to capture key performance indicators at the executive level rather than just do a receiv- ables report.” In addition, real-time information is impor- aggregating and accumulating detailed data about their owned assets,” said Rob Teel, vice president of commercial and invest- ment products with Yardi Systems Inc. The result has been solutions that offer much more than simple key performance indica- tors like occupancy, balance sheets and income statements. “With the downturn, investors and the asset management community started asking more questions about individual assets,” said Teel. “It’s not enough to know that a building is 80 percent occupied, but also who the tenants are, their renewal dates and details about the other 20 percent.” A big shift in capabilities, Teel not- ed, has been the ability to integrate property management databases— such as those from Yardi, CTI, J.D. Edwards and MRI Software—into in- vestor databases, offering a complete investment picture to the asset man- ager. The result gives owners insight into open balances, top-10 tenant lists, lists of delinquencies, rent roll details and more. The impetus, he said, is coming from owners and asset managers tak- tant to owners today as the economy changes conditions rapidly. But a special focus is being paid to larger investors, which may not be dedi- cated to real estate alone but are increasingly appreciating that real estate is a unique asset class. The result has been the emergence of dedicated software solutions specifically aimed at large investors like insurance companies, pension funds and asset managers to help them better manage their real estate holdings. “The activity is starting to pick up on our end, with asset managers asking for help in ing a more hands-on approach with their in- vestments. “I want the top-10 tenant listings at a minimum, and in order to do that I need details about all my tenants,” he said. “Why? If there’s a particular tenant paying you $1 mil- lion a year and you just saw that the tenant has a renewal date in the next six months, you might just want to pick up the phone and offer him a better deal.” Mind you, that’s an initiative from the own- er side of things. Hands-off asset management is so 2007. CPExecutive.com | May 2010 37
Technology: New Developments
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