The benefits of commercial real estate software goes beyond management of your corporate real estate portfolio. CRE software is an invaluable tool that goes way past what Excel does for many other commercial real estate managers.
Many software programs offer functionality beyond tracking rent dates and calculating simple budgets. Used correctly, they can be strategic tools to help you minimize your occupancy costs and maximize the ROI on your company's commercial real estate expenditures.
What this post is about: How to use the features of your commercial real estate software to effectively manage leases across your portfolio. If you're unsure of what commercial real estate software is or what it can do, click here.
Understanding Reporting Features
Many commercial real estate software packages have extensive reporting tools. While you might use them to generate lists of rollover dates or contact lists for the management teams across your portfolio, you're just scratching the surface of what the software can do. Reporting functions make it easy for you to benchmark your locations against each other. You may also use the software to benchmark your sites against other ones in their markets.
Used strategically, reporting features help you understand which sites are cost-productive and which are not. Commercial real estate software that pulls in metrics from your company's data, like sales numbers or head-counts can also let you compare sites on the basis of the results they generate or based on how efficiently they hold your staff.
Transfer Dates to Your Calendar
Your commercial real estate software can even benefit you in real-time. You should be able to use the software to enter your critical dates into the calendaring system to ensure that you never miss them. The software should send you email or text message reminders that can keep you on track without requiring you to double-enter data. Support for this functionality is crucial to allow your company to execute the right decisions in a timely manner.
Go Beyond Rent
Commercial real estate software goes beyond management of rent expenses. It can also help you benchmark operating expenses as well. It's expected, for instance, that your Detroit warehouse will use more natural gas for heating in February than your Phoenix distribution center. However, if your Jacksonville, Florida office is using twice as much water or electricity as a similarly sized office in Salt Lake City, it could be a sign of a system failure or non-optimal management. Drilling down on expenses on both a cost and actual usage basis can help you save money and reduce your company's environmental footprint with aggressive utility management.
Using REoptimizer® to reduce occupancy costs can make a serious impact. Click to learn how.
Digitize Your Documents
Whether or not your commercial real estate software has a document storage function built-in, it's still a wise idea to digitize all of your lease documents. Even assuming that you enter your lease data into the software without any errors, it's still wise to keep a copy of your lease and its addenda handy. Digitizing it gives you peace of mind: you won't lose it even if something happens to your company's paper files. It also provides easy access in case you need to look something up.
Want to find out more about the benefits of commercial real estate software? Click here.
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