Managing a single office can be a full-time job. Same for managing a building. But how about managing a portfolio of buildings and other facilities, plus all the equipment and assets inside—spread across the globe? When you’re managing a real estate portfolio with millions of square feet, simply staying on top of all your leases is a herculean task, and that’s not even including all your other management responsibilities. With so much square footage to monitor, would you be able to prove every asset and facility is being put to its best use?

These types of tasks and projects are what an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) does best. An IWMS like IBM TRIRIGA® helps manage some of the world’s largest corporate real estate portfolios. Sanjiv Paul Singh, Executive Vice President of eCIFM Solutions, has described how an IWMS can enable global facilities and real estate management by ensuring that all the people, places, and things in your portfolio produce the highest possible value per square foot.

Best IWMS for Corporate Real Estate Professionals

IBM TRIRIGA helps manage global real estate holdings from the asset level to the portfolio level. The TRIRIGA module Real Estate Manager is dedicated to that specific purpose. Real Estate Manager helps you:

• Track and manage all leases, contract obligations, space use agreements and service level agreements (SLA) associated with those leases. Depending on your particular portfolio, you may track a variety of lease contracts with varying terms and conditions. Using an IWMS to track contract obligations reduces complexity and streamlines processes. It also prevents unforced errors like forgetting to claim security deposits, which often amount to tens of thousands of dollars or more, upon lease termination. With an IWMS, your space use agreements and service level agreements are based on actual CAD drawings of your spaces and facilities, which eliminates the risk of relying upon outdated or faulty information. 
• Get a single view of your whole portfolio, from topline numbers down to detailed cost information on each location. That type of detail helps you project future space, equipment and facility needs and create the plan to make it happen—up to site selection for new capital projects. 
• Maintain compliance with regulations that vary from country to country. Local regulatory and tax requirements are baked into the software, so you can be sure you won’t miss any necessary steps.

Of course, there’s much more to TRIRIGA than Real Estate Manager. There are six pillars of an IWMS, and each helps corporate real estate managers with critical aspects of managing their portfolios. Facility Condition Assessments provide the baseline for planning preventive maintenance programs to allow you to get the longest possible use out of equipment and facilities in the most cost-effective and efficient way. That’s one capability of the Workplace Operations Manager module. TRIRIGA can also help discover new uses for existing space, manage capital projects, contain energy costs, measure carbon footprint and sustainability efforts and more.

Streamline Accounting and Compliance

If your organization leases to tenants, the Real Estate Manager module will help you administer those leases, with features such as tenant tracking for accounts receivable and payment processing. CFOs will appreciate how IBM TRIRIGA streamlines accounting and reporting.

Lease accounting is one of the main aspects that makes TRIRIGA the best IWMS for corporate real estate professionals. With the new Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) lease accounting standards updates, leases are considered capital that must be tracked on the books. Failing to track a given lease will have significant consequences for SEC reporting. TRIRIGA users have no need to worry about this: IBM has been building the new lease accounting standards into the software since the changes were first proposed. You’ll be able to see side-by-side comparisons of current terms versus other transaction scenarios and possibilities. It’s the best way to reduce anxiety over lease accounting changes.

Many CFOs are using the FASB standards changes as an opportunity to update their current systems. In a survey of executives conducted by IBM and CFO Research titled Working Smart: Value Management for Corporate Real Estate, nearly half of the responders said they planned to update their real estate and facilities management systems to prepare for the changes, while nearly two-thirds said they had real estate holdings outside the United States, pointing to the need for a system that will work for global portfolios.

Be More Strategic with Your Real Estate Portfolio

In the retail industry, the ideal site combined with top-quality store lifecycle management can lead to more annual revenue. Proper site selection is crucial to success in many other industries as well. The point is to collect the data that allows you to plan ahead, setting your organization up with the best possible chance for sustainable financial growth.

Beyond picking the best spots for new shops, you can engineer your facility workspaces for maximum efficiency, letting you position your people and assets in the optimal locations for maximum creativity and productivity.

Overall, an IWMS can help you make costs more predictable, streamline processes, improve efficiencies and even discover new revenue stream opportunities—all of which are of interest to most corporate real estate professionals.

Best of the Best

eCIFM has helped corporate real estate professionals, project managers, facility managers and C-level executives at hundreds of firms get IBM TRIRIGA up and running. We’ve been an IBM Gold-Certified TRIRIGA partner since the program’s inception. Our team includes some of the world’s leading TRIRIGA experts, including TRIRIGA users from a variety of industries. This collective experience makes for the best possible IWMS tailored to your current business processes by the best partners for your company’s needs. If you’re looking for new ways to get more value from your corporate real estate portfolio, we’d like to hear from you.