While many different factors go into managing your corporate real estate portfolio, occupancy cost analysis is frequently the most powerful tool that you can leverage to control expenditures. Ultimately, it isn’t about how much space you have or about each space’s rents. To control cost, you need to look at the total bottom line expense for each space.
As you review your company’s commercial real estate holdings, you might find spaces that no longer suit your needs. In those cases, subleasing can help to blunt their impact on your bottom line.
Continue ReadingWhen you sign a commercial lease, your hope is probably that you and your landlord will co-exist in a state of perpetual harmony. However, that isn't always the case. Even in commercial properties, landlords and building managers can vary greatly. To protect yourself, consider working with your corporate real estate agent and your attorney to include some of these tenant-friendly lease terms in your next agreement:
Continue ReadingThe world of facilities management software can seem like a complicated alphabet soup of four-letter acronyms. CAFM, CMMS, and IWMS serve different, but overlapping purposes. However, all can add value to your organization. Here is a look at them all, and the benefits of each to help you manage your commercial real estate portfolio.
An integrated workplace management system (IWMS) is a powerful piece of enterprise software that helps your business manage its real estate portfolio. IWMS solutions replace the old-fashioned method of using calendars, excel and paper files to manage a real estate portfolio. Once installed, they provide a single interface to everything you need to know about your portfolio, offering multiple benefits.
With an integrated workplace management system keeping all of your corporate real estate information in a centralized place, your facilities department can do more work in less time. Ultimately, this leads to a need for fewer staff hours to do the work. Given that the software can also automate repetitive processes, it can further reduce the size of your staff.
The efficiency benefits of an IWMS also make it easier for your facilities staff to service the rest of your company. With all of the information they need in the right place, they can quickly answer incoming questions and connect departments to the right resources to solve their occupancy-related problems.
In the same vein, an integrated workplace management system also lets you take better care of your buildings.
Many IWMS packages track your building's maintenance schedules and the ages of their components. This lets you send out preventative maintenance on an optimized schedule, balancing the desire for maximizing the useful life of your facilities with the need to control maintenance spending. You can also plan your capital expenditures in advance, helping you manage cash flows.
Vacant space costs approximately as much to occupy as space that your business is using. With an IWMS, you can track which spaces you are using and which you aren't. Based on its reporting, you can then adjust your facilities for greater efficiency and, if necessary, allow leases to expire or put space on the sublease market to recoup some of their costs. For some companies, this benefit alone is enough to cover the cost of their integrated workplace management system project.
The same benchmarking tools that let you compare buildings on the basis of occupancy also apply to other building metrics -- including energy consumption. With an IWMS, you can quickly calculate norms for your company's portfolio and see which buildings don't match. Based on those comparisons, you can extract best practices from your most efficient buildings and make necessary changes at your least efficient ones. Beyond reducing your company's environmental impact, this practice can also help to reduce occupancy costs.
The most elaborate integrated workplace management system packages can integrate with your company's business intelligence programs and with your building's control systems. These packages can frequently cost millions of dollars and take years to install. REoptimizer® gives you access to powerful tools like expense benchmarking, cost comparisons and occupancy analysis at a fraction of their cost.
REoptimizer®
68 South Service Road
Melville, NY 11747
