It always amazes me how little importance some software buyers place on reporting options. The fact is, while some IWMS applications have great industry specific functionality or better project management or CAFM or lease administration; the ultimate reason to establish a single source of location data it to enable effective decision-making. And effective decision-making can only come through thoughtful review of summarized data (i.e. reporting). While dashboards can help drive some decision making as can specific analysis functionality, reports are still the most widely used deliverable of any IWMS system.

Also interesting is how many business users seems so willing to forfeit their right to quickly create queries and reports on their own, instead giving over this function to IT personnel specifically hired (at high salaries) as report writers. I believe the reasons for this are simply a history of “enterprise” report writers in large firms and a lack of knowledge of the reporting options available in IWMS applications.

IWMS applications vary widely in their reporting capabilities and many have only one option that adds a substantial cost to the annual total cost of ownership (TCO).

With this in mind I will discuss the different types of reporting and what prospective IWMS users should look for in their IWMS applications.

In general there are three types of reporting, dashboard objects which are really mini interactive reports, ad-hoc reports and enterprise reports. Now a reporting expert will probably call this a gross generalization but for business end users this is really what should matter to you.

Dashboard Objects

Unlike other forms of reporting, IWMS software reviewers do typically place a sufficient amount of importance on dashboards. Though many folks don’t consider Dashboard Objects reports, in truth they are small interactive reports with 5 or 6 columns typically with one grouping variables and a way to re-filter the report using options on that grouping variable. For example, a dashboard object may contain a list of lease options coming due in the next 30 days allow the user to click on a field to drill down to the specifics on the actions needed to execute the option. The object might even have a drop down box allowing the user to change the number of days into the future to show these lease options.

You will find some form of dashboard in every IWMS application with varying degrees of functionality. The difference in vendors comes in:

• The number of pre-built objects available
• The functional areas covered by those pre-built objects
• The expertise of the IWMS vendor to create meaningful pre-built objects
• Drill down capability on each object – note, systems that use an external providers dashboard will not have the same degree of drill down capability into the core application as a provider who has built their own dashboard into their own code. See Single vs. Multi-platform IWMS and why you should care
• Security control over those objects
• The ability of the client to create their own dashboard objects
• The complexity of the process to create a new object (by the end user or an IT user)
• The performance or response time of the dashboard – keep in mind when you launch a dashboard you are actually tasking the system to generate a bunch of reports across a large database. Poorly architected systems may take a long time to “paint” the screen.
• The ability to re-sort tabular dashboard objects with one click and no screen or object refresh – this one items will tell you a great deal about the quality of the system architecture. If a re-sort requires a page or an object refresh there is a performance issue being hidden

Once implementation of an IWMS application is completed, experience tells us that most users will spend most of their time on the dashboard. It is the first thing you see and, in a well architected and designed system, brings each users required tasks and issues to the forefront so that work can be done in priority order with ease. Make sure to consider this use case when selecting an IWMS application.

Ad-hoc reporting

The next most used reporting feature is ad-hoc reporting. The funny thing is many IWMS applications do not actually have a true business user capable ad-hoc reporting tool. Instead, most IWMS applications take the easy road and partner with a third-party reporting company and rely completely on canned reports or on complex ad-hoc reporting tools that require an IT report writer to create reports. This means business users are beholden to IT (and the often long waiting periods after request) to get even the simplest report created. It also requires the purchaser of the IWMS to lay out an additional $25,000 to $75,000 up-front plus annual maintenance for the right to report against their IWMS database.

Ad-hoc reporting should be just that, ad-hoc; meaning any business user should be able to, upon coming up with an idea for a report, create a report within a few minutes and get a result. And they should be able to do it without understanding what an outer-join is or a foreign key relationship. There will always be some reports that are too complex and require a professional report writer, but this should be the exception, not the norm.

When getting a demo of an IWMS ask the vendor to build a simple report right in front of you to find out if there is a true ad-hoc report capability and if its truly business user friendly. Can the report be saved and kept private or shared with others? Can the report be scheduled and automatically sent out? Also ask if those reports can be emailed to a distribution list or printed, or saved as PDF, or dumped into Excel. Business users should control reporting not IT so ASK!

Enterprise Reporting

As mentioned above, there will always be some reports that are too complex for any ad-hoc tool or that require data from multiple systems including the IWMS application and other databases within the client network. Ad-hoc reporting tools also cannot typically produce detailed and often very user specific formatting requests. In these cases Enterprise reporting is required.

There is a huge divergence in IWMS vendors on Enterprise reporting that breaks down into two camps.

Mandated Third-party reporting software

Many IWMS applications, particularly those created from a bunch of different applications gotten through multiple acquisitions of other software firms. Using a mandated third party applications is required in this case as the vendor needs it to knit together all the different databases that are a typical by-product of the multi-platform IWMS application.

The benefit of this option is the vendor has likely pre-configured the data into manner making it easier to report on. This will make implementation of the reporting tool simpler and thus reduce some professional services cost at implementation (that might have been spent on organizing the data for reporting). There still will be a PS cost in creating the clients specific reports since it is unlikely the client has an IT resource that knows the required third party tool.

The biggest problem with this option is the purchaser is required to pay a rather large fee up front and then annually to use this third party reporting tool. A tool that they likely don’ t have hardware or IT resources to support. This means a very high TCO when you analyze the cost of the licenses, maintenance, hardware and IT staffing.

Even if a company has already invested in an Enterprise reporting tool, many IWMS vendors offer one option for third-party reporting and if you are not already using that third-party product you have no choice but to bring in yet another reporting solution.

Vendor Agnostic Third-party reporting

In short, what this means is the IWMS vendor allows for reporting by most if not all third party reporting solutions. There are two common methods used for this type of reporting, data marts and web services.

Data marts There is a base standard most third-party enterprise reporting vendors use for how they access data called ODBC or JDBC. What this means is any data provided in a manner that can be accessed using ODBC or JDBC can be reported on.

So, some IWMS vendors will provide new clients with a data mart, which is a small database designed specifically for reporting against. The vendor should then also provide a pre-built process for updating that data-mart on some short time period (often nightly). This then allows the client organization to leverage their existing enterprise reporting investment to create Enterprise reports against their IWMS system. They don’t have to buy any additional software licenses nor hire more IT staff to write reports using a new reporting tool.

Clients do have to provide a database instance to store the data mart in-house and enough bandwidth at off-peak hours to update it. There will likely be some up-front cost in making sure the data mart has all data clients may add during an implementation and in making sure the data exchange for updating the data mart works in a secure fashion though any cost here will be far less than the cost of buying a new third-party reporting tool.

Web services
Another method more advanced IWMS vendors may provide is web-services access to data for reporting. What this means is the vendor has pre-built little programs that are created for the sole purpose of securely passing data out of the system to a requesting system. The big advantages here are that this method is self updating and does not require much upfront PS work to get it going. It also

The downside is that many customers simply don’t have the IT know how to do it.

Using this means the customer IT staff would create a report using what ever third party tool they already have and then write web services (if the third party tool does not already have them) to ask for the data the report requires. The request is sent to the IWMS vendor application, which has web services to receive the request and respond with the data required for the report.

I could go on all day about reporting but as this is my longest blog ever I applaud anyone who got this far and thank you for getting here!

Shameless Plug

Lx IWMS offers business user friendly ad-hoc reporting and Enterprise reporting through a delivered data mart and web services allowing clients to leverage their existing Enterprise reporting investments without any additional software cost. Lx IWMS also provides a user definable set of dashboards including dozens of pre-configured user specific dashboard objects. And, in late 2010, we will add the option of an optional Enterprise reporting tool called BIRT; an open source (aka FREE) reporting application that will allow clients without existing enterprise reporting to build and utilize advanced Enterprise reports with NO additional software cost.

Previous IWMS related Blogs

What is IWMS anyway?
IWMS? It’s Location! Location! Location!
The Power of Location Management
IWMS – Why so expensive?
IWMS in the “Cloud”
How Capital Project Management fits in an IWMS

There is a very wide range in how long an IWMS implementation will take from as little as a few weeks to as long as a few years. There are a number of reasons for the variances in implementation time frame but I will focus on three that I believe are the most significance: product flexibility, delivered functionality and client requirement complexity. These three issues are actually highly entwined making it even harder for most companies selecting an IWMS to properly assess each one.

Delivered Functionality

When companies look at applications they often make the mistake of basing their analysis of how well the product fits them based on what they are shown in a demo. Even though those demos may be as long as 8 hours, what you don’t know is how long the vendor spent preparing it and how much of what your seeing is real functionality vs. “configuration magic”. Pre-configured product can be a good thing if the items configured are actually truly usable by the client. However what most often happens is the client is shown a demo, let’s say of sample real estate transaction management processes, thinking that what they are seeing is actually part of the delivered product only to find out later that it was a configuration item and they will need to build their own base functionality from scratch. This of coarse means professional services cost to get it done, often in the form of a change order over the initial estimate.

To avoid this ask vendors to first give you and “out-of-the-box” demo before getting the long demo full of “configuration magic”. You will then be able to properly assess what you are and are not getting.

Product Flexibility

There are also products that deliver a lot of out-of-the-box functionality providing clients a better starting point for their implementations but that are inherently hard to change. For example a vendor may have a very specific IWMS product for restaurants or cell towers, delivering a lot of specific features to fit that market BUT when you begin to implement you realize that changing critical system pages, building a simple report or creating a data export requires a software developer immediately extending the implementation timeframe and running up cost.

Ask the vendor to modify a few critical pages during the demo and add, delete and change fields. Ask them to add a page someplace in the menu structure that you identify. Make them create an ad-hoc report on the fly and show how that can be scheduled. All of these items will indicate a level of flexibility that will significantly decrease the implementation timeframe and overall project cost. This level of flexibility can mean the difference between a 2-month project and a 6-month project.

Client requirements complexity

Every client is different and each client always has unique requirements. Applying those unique requirements will require some degree of configuration or, with some less flexible software, customization. As the number of locations gets larger, typically, the complexity of configuration also gets larger. Larger firms not only have more complex business processes they also have many integrations and data conversions adding complexity and cost to any implementation. All of these items will add to the timeline and cost of an implementation project though a large degree of the business process complexity can me mitigated with a highly flexible product.

Shameless Plug

Can an IWMS really be implementing in weeks or a few months instead of a few quarters or years? Lucernex provides a Quickstart® program that can have smaller companies live in two to nine weeks. We have the most flexible product on the market allowing for client or implementation team configuration of nearly every page, wizard, form, workflow or report in the system. The Lx IWMS also is delivered with a huge amount of industry specific functionality out-of-the-box and also comes with many best practices forms, workflows, reports and pages pre-configured. Unlike may other vendors we are doing everything we can to AVOID high professional services fees for implementation by making the product easy to configure without ANY software development resources. It is extremely rare that any of our implementation require any customization.

Definitions

Configuration – adapting a software application to meet unique client needs using tools provided by the software developer; this may or may not require a software programmer
Customization – programming code written by a software developer that impacts either base code or client specific code to meet the unique needs of a small number of clients
Integration – programming code that allows two different software programs to exchange data and/or activities on an on-going basis
Data Conversion – a one-time movement of data from one software application to another usually with the intent of replacing the originating system

Previous IWMS related Blogs

What is IWMS anyway?
IWMS? It’s Location! Location! Location!
The Power of Location Management
IWMS – Why so expensive?
IWMS in the “Cloud”
How Capital Project Management fits in an IWMS

Have you ever looked at an older house and noted how it’s had extensions added that don’t fit the original house? Whether it’s the pattern of the windows, the exterior surface or the shape of the extension that does not match you can tell it’s just not right and makes the whole structure look bad. Inside the house, the switch and outlet layout in the new rooms are different and the plumbing does not work as well as it did before. The air conditioning doesn’t get the house as cool and even the foundation of the house is cracking because the new and old sections are settling differently.

Now imagine the same process only with software. Start with one application from one company and add on parts from many other applications built on different platforms. Much like a house you have to match up the foundation perfectly and connect the wiring and plumbing perfectly, using a pattern and style identical to the past, or things just won’t work right.

With software it’s easier to disguise the exterior differences by adding a new user interface to all applications to make them look like one. However it’s infinitely harder to match up the structural elements of the applications and make them work like one especially if the platforms vary. The truth is no matter how good a development team is and how much time and money you spend on it, no two applications can ever be joined together in a way that allows them to operate as well as a single code, single platform application that was developed by one software firm. It would be like Rembrandt trying to finish a painting half completed by Picasso – no matter how great the artist, the result won’t be as good.

What are the problems you will see with disparate platforms?

Complex and expensive IT Architecture

The most obvious problem occurs in applications that are installed behind a client’s firewall – complex and expensive hardware configuration. If an application has one Java application, one .NET application, two databases plus third party workflow and reporting applications, you can end up with dozens of servers just to get a single instance of the system. The cost of purchasing and, worse, maintaining that hardware can be enormous. The client also needs to hire a much wider array of IT staff to support the numerous platforms and code types.

Defect Management

When a defect occurs in a single code base, single platform system, you have one set of logs to read to find the source of the error and one set of code to fix. If you have multiple code bases not only is it much harder to find the problem, curing the defect can be exceptionally hard as the developer has to diagnose code across a cobbled together interaction of two disjointed systems with different designer patterns.

Cross platform functionality

Let’s say you want to create a workflow that covers a wide section of the real estate lifecycle. In a cobbled together application you will have a workflow engine from a third party that won’t be able to work seamlessly with the Java part of your application, the .NET part of your application and the different databases. It can’t possibly be as easy and capable as a work flow engine that is built into the core of the application by the same software developers that created all of the functional code.

Price

When a company purchases several other software companies to obtain parts of their application and then invests millions of dollars trying to make several applications look like one application, then adds on multiple third party applications for workflow, reporting and other features, the application has to be pretty pricey to pay off all the debts, past investment and third party vendors.

Implementation

The complexity of the IT Infrastructure will make implementation of a multi-platform system longer and the disjointed operation of the cobbled together applications will make implementation take far longer than a single platform, single code base system.

Reporting

Though there are dozens more examples I could provide let me leave you with one more – reporting. How do you report out of a disparate application with multiple databases? Answer – using expensive IT resources and an expensive third party reporting application. Good luck using ad-hoc reporting tools or leveraging your existing investment in enterprise reporting unless it matches the application the vendor requires you to use.

Most IWMS applications being offered by vendors today were created from the whole or parts of other applications merged together. They try to hide it with a common user interface but behind the pretty exterior there is a cracked foundation and mismatched plumbing.

Here are some ways to unearth the cobbled together multi-platform systems

1. Ask to see an architectural diagram of the hardware used. Even if you are buying a hosted SaaS or Cloud solution, ask to see the diagram and ask your internal IT department to interpret it. Make sure the vendor includes the applications that run on each server. If you see multiple database instances (other than for redundancy) or multiple types of application server, you know there’s a problem.
2. Ask how many databases are used by the system
3. Ask about ad-hoc reporting – is there a way for a non-technical end-user to report against the system?
4. Ask the vendor directly if they bought any of their code from any other company. With the exception of small third party code libraries (like a spell checker or user interface controls) the answer should be ‘no’.
5. Look at past press releases for the company and see what companies they have bought over time to assess how much of the application came from someone else.

While the multi-platform problem has a bigger negative impact on in-house implementation, its almost as big a problem for hosted solutions. Hosted providers can hide their platform disparities from client IT departments however the functional problems multiple disparate platforms present are just as substantial in a hosted solution.

Shameless plug

Lucernex has employed the same group of developers since 2000 with the same chief architect and same product designer. Other than the addition of Ken Brown (of SLIM fame) last year, we have had the most consistent group of developers of any IWMS vendor. As a result we have ONE code base, ONE Java Platform, ONE Database and ONE design pattern. This allows for a simple IT infrastructure to support Lx IWMS which made our move to the cloud, with IWMSCloud®, a snap. We have a workflow engine we developed into the core of our application and a simple, intuitive ad-hoc report builder that any user, technical or not, can use effectively after an hour of training. Our application might not look as fancy as some of the firms with multiple platforms and many third party applications cobbled together, but having a single platform and code base allows us to offer unparalleled functionality at a much lower cost.

Previous IWMS related Blogs

What is IWMS anyway?
IWMS? It’s Location! Location! Location!
The Power of Location Management
IWMS – Why so expensive?
IWMS in the “Cloud”

When considering the purchase of real estate software point solutions such as Lease Administration, Project Management, Purchase Management, CMMS and Space Planning/CAFM it is helpful to understand the differences, benefits and challenges of a-la-carte options vs. an integrated suite of products. Individual software solutions are just that – products that are sold individually and have little to no compatibility with other product offerings. Product suites like an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) are offered as an integrated group of solutions and give the user benefits such as flexibility, ease of use, common overhead, better support for system architectures and platforms. Vendors, like Lucernex Technologies, who build their systems from the ground up using one architecture, one database, one codebase and one common interface eliminate many of the problems encountered with so-called “best of breed” solutions. This blog will illustrate specific examples of why an integrated product suite such as IWMS is best:

First, an IWMS product affords a company software flexibility. Users will be able to share data – including setup and security information – throughout the system and configure the system to meet the company’s needs rather than the other way around. The ability to move data such as deadlines, leasing numbers and budgets without having to re-enter it in multiple places saves valuable time, increases accuracy, and eliminates the frustration that occurs when one part of the system doesn’t talk to the other.

An IWMS solution is also easier to manipulate than single point solutions. All products integrated into an IWMS package look, feel and work the same way. Key interface items like navigation menus, common controls, prompts and messages work together to make the user experience more enjoyable. With a common interface, a user can learn one part of the application and then easily apply this knowledge to another area of the solution. One of the many reasons why Microsoft Office is so widely adopted and successful is because it has a common user interface just like an IWMS product.

Another challenge with implementing multiple software products is that many solutions overlap in areas of functionality. Document management, contract management, security and configuration (form building, report creation, workflow setup, etc.) may have specific areas of the application that are the same. When multiple products try to do similar things the inefficiencies and incompatibilities will render part of these solutions useless. Products within an IWMS system “talk” to one another so that these overlapping areas of functionality work together rather than compete with one another. Who wants to enter contact data twice or define different user security roles because one part of the system cannot talk to another and share the information? With IWMS, all products “talk” to one another, share information, and enable the user to function more efficiently.

A final point to take into consideration is that when a company adopts multiple products they increase their implementation costs, training and on-going maintenance costs dramatically. The purpose of a software solution system is to save time and money and positively impact a company’s bottom line. Often, the implementation of multiple products does just the opposite.

Shameless Plug

At Lucernex, we have a term we like to use for solutions that are banded together, using pieces of various applications to create an end to end solution. We call it a “Franken Product” and if you don’t want a monster on your hands, than consider a single platform IWMS solution. At Lucernex, our response to the “Franken product” is Lx IWMS. The Lucernex Lx IWMS platform is a single platform with one database, one code base and one architecture. It covers the entire property lifecycle with modules dedicated to market planning and location analysis, project management, capital program management, lease administration, lease analysis and facilities management that streamline key processes such as site acquisition and development, construction, procurement, grand opening, lease management, property disposition, and capital or remodeling projects. To avoid the problems, challenges and inefficiencies of a Franken Product, strongly consider a single, integrated solution and beware solutions with a consistent UI that are hiding a “Franken Product” underneath.

For more information about Lucernex Technologies’ Lx IWMS, visit www.Lucernex.com

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Previous Blogs by Ken Brown

Optimizing and Globalizing Real Estate?
It’s time to upgrade lease administration software now

What is Capital Program Management?

I have seen this particular set of functionality called capital program management and capital project management. While they are used interchangeably there is a subtle difference.

In general, capital program management is a set of features that provides companies with many locations a way to create and manage a capitally budgeted program across a number of like locations. Each location ends up with a capital project that ties back to the capital program.

Example 1: a hotel chain wants to renovate the lobbies of a set of hotels that are predominantly occupied by business travelers to add workstations and a self serve snack bar. It selects 56 hotels to renovate and gets capital budgeting for the program. This program is unlike a new hotel project or a single facility project in that it gets its budget from corporate and is typically managed as a program by a unique group of staff. The group managing the program will want to see a rollup of the schedule and budget for all capital projects and may also want to drill down into any one project to see more detail. They also want to maintain the history of the work done at any one location, on the location record for future review.

Example 2: a restaurant chain wants to pave all the parking lots for its 400 locations located on pad lots in the northeast due to degradation after a bad winter. They get capital budget approved for the paving work and assign it to 4 different service vendors that do asphalt repair. They will want to see a rollup of all budgets and projects in the program by state and by service vendor and may want to drill down into any one capital project to get more details. They also want to update each restaurants location record with the date of last paving and maintain a link to the paving project for each restaurant.

This type of functionality has always been important but has grown in significance over the past few years as companies have slowed or stopped new store growth and have focused on cost savings through renovations, remodels and dispositions – all of which can be managed more effectively as a Capital Program.

How Capital Project Management fits into IWMS

Location Performance Management systems, like some IWMS’, are the perfect home for Capital Programs and Projects. As a Location centric IWMS will be the master record for all locations, and will also be managing all projects, a well designed capital program management module can fit right into an IWMS and utilize the imbedded project management, budget management and real estate planning features while providing new roll-up features uniquely required for capital program management. Doing this will allow a customer to keep all of its assets and the history of all work performed on its assets in one system. It also allows for flexibility of change in the business model from new development to remodel to renovation and finally disposition – keeping the complete history of a location from conception to closing in one database.

There have long been best-of-breed solutions in the market for capital project management but with the emergence of IWMS solutions and the subsequent addition of these features to IWMS solutions, buying it best-of-breed makes very little sense.

Shameless plug

Lucernex’s Lx IWMS has provided capital project capability for over 5 years and in our upcoming release, we will be dramatically expanding this to include full support for capital program and project management across any number of locations and including any number of programs or brands. This set of features was designed with the assistance of two current clients who require the system to flexibly handle remodels, renovations and dispositions.

Previous IWMS related Blogs

What is IWMS anyway?
IWMS? It’s Location! Location! Location!
The Power of Location Management
IWMS – Why so expensive?
IWMS in the “Cloud”

To any company developing and opening new locations, the Site Approval Process is a very important task requiring not only very good analytic information about markets and market areas, but also a network of real estate professionals managing the process.

Some companies do all of the real estate site selection with in-house development professionals while others use an outsourced network of commercial brokers; some companies use a combination of both. No matter who is doing the site selection, it is a lengthy process to accumulate the numerous types of information and documents required to make a decision.

This process is typically accomplished by compiling various aerial photos, site surveys, zoning requirements, etc. for the real estate professional responsible for the specific market or region. It is not uncommon for organizations to have monthly real estate meetings to make site decisions. To prepare for these meetings all of the paper-based details collected on the site (and it can be hundreds of pieces of paper) are duplicated to form a site approval package which is then presented along with many other packages at the monthly site approval meeting.

In most cases the site process takes weeks or months with many pages of documents and drawings followed by a period of 4 or 5 days to prepare the final site approval package and make copies for all real estate meeting participants.

The cost of this process is more than just paper, printing and copying – it’s lost opportunity.

I spent over thirty years doing real estate development with yellow pads and manila folders. In that time we figured out that establishing repeatable processes saved time and allowed to secure locations faster. Over the past 10 years, as technology has been overlaid on the site approval process, the benefits of establishing repeatable processes have increased as a good repeatable process can more easily be put into technology, speeding up the process even more. The market has evolved from one-off processes on yellow pads to repeatable paper processes to best-of-breed technologies cobbled together and finally to fully integrated Location Performance Management solutions and the time required to secure a site has been vastly reduced with each step.

Any company not using an integrated technology solution to manage the site approval process is putting themselves at a huge disadvantage and will find themselves losing prime locations to companies that use this technology.

Shameless plug

With Lx IWMS the site approval process can be shortened from months to a few short weeks. All site approval data, documents, maps and demographics can all be collected and managed in one place including conducting complete market geo-analysis online. To prepare the site approval package all you need to do is open up your document folder, click on the site approval package, click the items on the document index you want printed and your package is prepared in one format in the time it takes to print it.

Not only can you save weeks of time but all your information is in one place for all members to view. As an added benefit you now all have access to the information in one place on one platform for all members to view. This means your site approval meetings can be conducted via the internet, again saving time and travel expense. In addition you no longer have the need to print out several sets of drawings and leases and ship them to the various offices involved in the process. Again you save more time and expense.

We have examples of customers who have reduced the site approval process from several months down to just 2 or 3 days. They are now leaders in the retail and restaurant industry due to their success in securing the best locations.

When Lucernex started in 2000 we were the first IWMS to deliver our entire application as 100% Web-based, delivered as an Application Service Provider (ASP) solution. In reality we did not know it at the time but we were actually a Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor even then (according to Wikipedia it was coined in a February 2001 article written by the Software & Information Industry’s (SIIA) eBusiness Division). The difference to end users is largely invisible (except in the lower price) but to a software vendor the difference drives flexibility, costs (hence price to end-user) and focus. The next step is “Cloud Computing”, a buzz word for a service that provides equipment to host applications while doing all of the IT management on a secure environment optimized for performance and scalability.

Since this is not an article on the differences between ASP, SaaS and Cloud Computing in general, I will summarize very briefly below and refer the reader to Demystifying SaaS vs Cloud for a more complete discussion. In truth there are hundreds of these articles and even they don’t all agree.

Application Service Provider (ASP) – Web-based, hosted version of an application. Separate databases and servers for each client. ASP is much like the old model of selling software where the application was put behind a client’s firewall but instead, with ASP, the application is moved inside someone else’s firewall.

Software as a Service (SaaS) – multi-tenant databases and shared architecture. The vendor typically owns the hardware. SaaS can be delivered in a vendor’s data center, a collocation center or a true cloud computing environment.

Cloud Computing – Software applications that are delivered in a Cloud Computing center which take advantage of new technologies like virtualization and SAN storage to deliver optimal bandwidth, response times, storage and IT management. These centers typically use massive enterprise hardware owned and serviced by the Cloud center. The software vendor simply leases space in the “Cloud” and sells access to clients.

In the context of an IWMS solution, what is the difference between “ASP”, “SaaS” and “Cloud” and what are the Pro’s and Con’s of each one?

IWMS “ASP” solution

An application delivered in a browser that is running on hardware dedicated to one client and hosted by the vendor somewhere.
Pro’s
1. Control – For user companies that believe that having the software on servers dedicated to them makes it more secure (which is a fallacy in this writer’s opinion) and more “their own” ASP or even self-hosting is for you.
2. Freedom of customization – If money is no object and you want to take an application and customize it to do what you want it to do and not work with the vendor to increase specific functionality in the core product over time, ASP is the best way to do that. Did I mention it will cost you A LOT more once you customize?

Con’s
1. Expense – Having dedicated equipment is by its very nature expensive and you will never come any where near utilizing its full capacity. You will need to pay IT people to maintain servers just for you without any cost being shared across identically configured servers serving an identical purpose.
2. Upgrades – Having the application on servers dedicated to you is the same as if you had them inside you own firewall. If you want to upgrade, the project of upgrading will cost you. If you make even one small customization that means the upgrade will need to be custom built for you. Again, this equals a much higher cost.
3. Performance – Technology advances quickly. Even if you depreciate your servers over 3 years and replace them immediately upon full depreciation, you will never be able to keep up with advances in technology that increase performance and trying will cost you a lot of money.
4. Security – Sorry to all those IT departments out there that sell the value of in-house hosting or ASP’s on the basis of security but no one can secure data better than a facility that is in the business of securing data.

IWMS “SaaS” solution

An application delivered in a browser that is run on 100% shared equipment and hosted by the vendor in their data center or in a collocation facility on specific servers owned or leased by the vendor. The software vendor typically maintains all equipment and software.

Pro’s
1. Lower cost – Cheaper than ASP as shared equipment means users share the cost of the equipment, bandwidth and IT resources for maintenance.
2. Stability – When a vendor has ALL of its customers on a cluster of servers you can bet they will do everything in their power to keep that environment stable.
3. Upgrades – Upgrades are free and fast. When the vendor applies upgrades all users get them. The only exception is for users that add customizations into a SaaS environment which may require additional cost as the vendor will have to uniquely test the user’s environment for every upgrade.
4. Security – More secure than ASP if hosted in a collocation facility.
5. Focus – SaaS, when compared to ASP, allows the software vendor to focus more on software development and less on IT and client by client differences in code.

Con’s
1. Performance – For much the same reason that client IT departments can’t keep up with new technologies that improve performance, SaaS providers can’t either. Since the software vendor owns the hardware or leases it and maintains all hardware, switching to newer, higher performing software can be tough. A properly architected vendor data center can largely overcome this with virtualization and other newer technologies.
2. Security – No more secure than a client in-house hosting if inside the vendors own data center. In fact, for smaller vendors it may be less secure than in-house client hosting. Hosting a SaaS solution in a collocation facility is far safer.
3. Scalability – Again, if properly architected, a SaaS provider can be very scalable however it is still not going to happen as fast as it can in a Cloud center.

IWMS “Cloud” solution

An application delivered in a browser that is run on 100% shared equipment and hosted at a Cloud computing center on massive enterprise servers owned by the Cloud provider. The Cloud centers utilize virtualization to ensure fast response times and no downtime of application servers and use SAN’s to ensure database scalability and speed. The Cloud provider manages and maintains all equipment and software.

Pro’s
1. Expense – By removing all of the IT service cost from the IWMS vendor as well as the hardware cost associated with ASP and SaaS, the IWMS vendor can offer much cheaper prices to end users. The total cost of ownership to the end user will be lowest with a Cloud offering.
2. Performance – Cloud centers are going to employ any proven new technology that improves performance and all customers of the Cloud center will benefit.
3. Scalability – By its very nature a Cloud center is all about scalability. As long as the vendor system architecture support virtualization of the front end and real time redundancy on the back end, use of a Cloud center will mean almost immediate scalability.
4. Security – A Cloud centers business is protecting data. They have the best people and tools to ensure data security.
5. Focus – Cloud, when compared to SaaS or ASP, allows the software vendor to focus completely on software development and not on IT or custom coding. This means more functionality and much quicker turnaround on feature requests.
6. Customer Service – Software delivered in the Cloud is more consistent than ASP and higher performing than SaaS. The vendor can more easily and quickly solve problems and fix defects.

Con’s
1. Ability to customize – Most vendors who deploy into a Cloud center won’t allow customization unless the client pays a high fee to maintain and manage that customization. Newer offerings like “Custom Cloud” from Salesforce are built specifically to allow end user custom environments – but again, at a much higher price than the shared solution.

SaaS applications like Salesforce.com have become very common and popular. The same is happening, albeit more slowly, for more traditionally behind the firewall applications like SAP, or desktop applications like Microsoft Word, both of which are now offered as a service. In the IWMS industry, applications have been ASP or SaaS for several years. The same can be said for the Property Management market, read
Property Management Software Sure Is SaaSy by Chris Thorman on his SoftwareAdvice blog.

Cloud computing is now here and can further advance the savings while promoting product development and customer service by IWMS vendors.

Shameless Plug

Lx IWMS has been a SaaS solution since before the term was coined though it was also sold as an ASP solution to some clients. We recently moved into a Cloud Computing center and can now offer Lx IWMS in the Cloud. As we are the low cost provider of enterprise real estate solutions and have had to manage some of the largest data sets from the largest retailers over the years, we decided it was time to further optimize our application and launch it in the “Cloud”; we call it IWMS Cloud®. As a result we have seen dramatic performance improvements and our scalability is nearly infinite.

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Previous IWMS related Blogs

What is IWMS anyway?
IWMS? It’s Location! Location! Location!
The Power of Location Management
IWMS – Why so expensive?

Integrated Workplace Management Systems help you to reduce costs while improving your carbon footprint at the same time. Although I could create a list of 100 IWMS benefits, in this list you will find the top 10 of timeless IWMS Benefits.

1. Streamline processes

In every organization there are a lot of processes that help individuals to optimize their contribution to the primary process. The ‘secondary processes’ are the domain of Facility Management and Real Estate professionals. These processes are everywhere around you. Integrated Workplace Management Systems can easily help you to streamline those processes.

…read more…

There are many vendors of real estate software to choose from today. There are vendors that provide individual solutions for mapping and GIS technology, modeling technology, transaction management, site selection and project management technology and there are several vendors that provide individual applications for facility management and maintenance technology. Firms possessing multiple locations can choose to buy one application at a time selecting the “best of breed” to meet each major set of requirements. For example, it is very common for the construction department of multi-location firms to buy a construction project management system purely to meet that very specific need while the real estate department might choose a lease administration solution and a mapping solution and the facilities group selects capital projects and facilities maintenance applications. The groups buy based on a singularly focused set of requirements pay a fair price and implement their technology.

While “best of breed” buying may seem like a great solution, as time passes four common problems appear.

First common problem: When executives or IT (or both) decide the applications need to be integrated to avoid duplication of data and manual data entry and reentry; since each system likely has an address for each location, the company may have multiple systems of record for the same locations causing confusion and a lack of faith in all systems. And the location is just the beginning of the problem. As these systems are all involved in many common processes related to budgets and schedules, a great deal of data has to be managed across cross-functional workflows that span multiple “best of breed” systems. Integration then requires involvement of multiple vendors who, very often, don’t want the other to see their applications.

To make matters worse some of these applications may be Web-based and hosted outside of the company firewall while others may be internal browser based solutions or client/server applications. Managing multiple integrations to multiple systems, in multiple programming languages across multiple platforms suddenly becomes a spider web of complexity costing much time and money and often ending in failure.

Results: much higher cost, disparate data, multiple systems of record, loss of true real-time data, much longer time to achieve benefits of location performance management and a whole lot of finger pointing between multiple vendors and no one to hold accountable.

Second common problem: Getting staff to use the system and use it effectively. None of these systems benefit the company if they are not used or, worse, if they are used incorrectly. As many staff members and vendors may actually be involved in processes across different areas of your company, they will be asked to use multiple systems (often with different names and addresses for the same locations!). By having multiple applications from different vendors you now have multiple different user interfaces with different navigation, terminology, look and feel and overall use philosophy. As a lifelong designer and architect of software and user interfaces I can tell you no two of us thinks exactly alike (unless you work for MSFT and have no choice).

Users have to go to multiple trainings to learn multiple new systems; and you know how much real estate, construction and facilities folks LOVE to learn new technology!

Results: Having multiple “best of breed” products may result in poor uptake of the system across the enterprise and, in some cases, even when it is used it is not used well providing “dirty” data that may be used to make critical decisions. Training is constant and every change of staff requires months of training on multiple systems.

Ok, so let’s say you get passed the two problems above and now you want to integrate your “best of breed” system into the overall company financial system, often SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, JD Edwards, Great Plains, Lawson, etc… It took you three years to get your “best of breed” solutions integrated to each other and the vendors have stopped blaming each other and are now instead all taking 100% of the credit.

Third common problem: You begin the ERP integration only to realize that you will have to build multiple redundant and sometime chained (multi-step integrations involving many applications in a particular order to complete a single process) integrations.

Tracking the total cost of a location development and then maintenance over time to be able to compare to revenue and come up with a real calculation of the value the location is producing requires data from all of your vendors’ systems at different times. The same goes for tracking where and how location revenues are impacted by capital projects or new development or remodels or even dispositions. All of these everyday processes involve different “best of breed” systems at different times in the lifecycle. So, to integrate to an ERP or any other system you will need to expend much investment, much time and, again, endure finger pointing across multiple vendors as to who caused the delay in one of the 50 integration points due to a missed email.

Result: even more cost, more confusion, more finger pointing and years of project management to try and know how much your locations really cost and how long they take to become optimal.

Fourth common problem: The worst problem with combining “best of breed” solutions happens when one or all of the above problems causes a failure in implementation of some or all technology attempted; it is a loss of faith in real estate technology.
Now I am someone who has made my life all about making real estate technology so you would say “of course that is what he thinks is the worst problem”. But, it really is the biggest problem for all as a loss of faith in real estate technology often results in many years of negative feelings about trying a new technology and provides the change-averse crowd with the ideal rebuttal for anyone suggesting a new system investment – “we tried that already and it cost us millions and set us back years; why try it again?” That’s a hard argument to overcome.

Result: years of your competitors gaining or surpassing you as the bitterness from past real estate technology failures weigh on the organizations ability to do it right.

Now here is the part where I tell you how IWMS solutions solve all these problems easily – except that is not true either. While all vendors talk about having the ONE solution to manage all of your location related processes, none of us have one solution that fits everyone. And some IWMS vendors also don’t really have ONE solution anyway; they have a bunch of solutions they bought or licensed from others that they deliver as “one” solution but in reality is simply a “best of breed” solution (that may not actual be best at everything) from a single vendor. In some cases these disparate solutions are tied together by common reporting, dashboard or work flow solutions (also from other vendors) but, under the covers, are actually multiple databases and platforms with multiple programming languages in use across multiple business logic tiers. While this does avoid some of the finger pointing issue, it does not solve the other problems.

There are two key lessons to take away from this Blog:
1. “Best of Breed” application selection may seem cheaper and easier in the short term but it almost always costs far more and diminishes the competitive advantage of your real estate technology over time.
2. Even the “fully integrated”, “single source of truth” IWMS solutions are not always really one solution from one vendor!

As always ASK QUESTIONS of your IWMS like:
1. How many databases does your IWMS use?
2. Does it require multiple web servers?
3. Is it JAVA, .NET, VB or all of the above?
4. How many different code bases are involved?
5. How many development teams do you have and how do you separate their duties?
6. How many other companies and solutions are part of your IWMS solution?

Shameless Plug

Lx IWMS Location Performance Management solution is a single solution, from a single vendor, using a single code base and database. We developed all of our own code and, with the exception of our recent partnership with Buxton, deliver 100% of our solution on our servers, using our code that we created and manage. Integration across the lifecycle is built-in since the entire application was developed on the same code base by the same development team since May of 2000. Integrating to ERP’s is something we do on nearly every project and, in fact, have created a built-in (same code base and database) solution for web-based and local data integration using flat files or web services called the Lx Messenger. Even clients can use this utility that comes with Lx IWMS to build real-time or scheduled integrations to any other system.

With that said, we, like all other vendors, don’t do everything better than everyone else (but don’t tell our Board of Directors that). A customer at now defunct Circuit City in 2004 said something to me that stuck – he said (I am paraphrasing as it was along time ago and I may not remember the exact words) they selected us because we got an A, A- or B+ in every category they required.

Even though there were “best of breed” solutions that were “A’s” or “A+’s” in some areas, he realized that those slight differences in features did not come close to overcoming the value of buying one solution from one vendor that did everything.

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Previous IWMS related Blogs

What is IWMS anyway?
IWMS? It’s Location! Location! Location!
The Power of Location Management
IWMS – Why so expensive?

Real estate organizations have been using lease administration systems for years. What started out as a replacement for clunky, file-based records that were often misplaced and decentralized, modern lease administration systems have turned into centralized, decision-support databases that are critical to maximizing ROI of real estate assets. When these systems first appeared, simply having all of the key leased and owned data in one place and sharable across the organization was the primary goal.

I recall back in 1983, I worked as a consultant for XEROX, developing an in-house database to track the details on their 1,000 owned properties and approximately 2,500 leases. XEROX had just come out with a “rigid disk” option for their line of personal computers. Having a whopping 10MB of storage, it became feasible to create a database capable of storing all of the information in one centralized place. The system I designed, referred internally as LeaseAd, was written in Dbase II, stored over 900 unique attributes about each location and ultimately became the first commercial Lease Administration software available.

Today, lease administration software remains a valuable and effective tool for any real estate organization with a sizable portfolio. But, as is this case with all technology, the original conception of this software has changed many times over. Older systems are outdated and no longer as relevant as they once were. If you are a company using an older lease administration system, it is time to take a step back, look at what you have and determine if it is truly meeting your overall real estate goals and objectives and providing an efficient platform to execute your real estate strategy. There several reasons why this may not be the case.

Technology that was purchased and installed 10 or more years ago is now outdated and, in many cases unsupported. What happens if the software breaks? Who is going to fix it? And does it truly matter since the software is probably no longer compatible with current operating systems and browsers?

Integration is also an important factor. Current lease administration systems offer an integrated suite of products that can add infinitely more benefit and value to a real estate portfolio than its lease administration predecessor. What would have been several individual real estate tools years ago is now integrated into a suite of products that provide cross-portfolio analysis and reporting to give the 2010 versions of lease administration a significant advantage over older versions.

Another benefit to upgrading lease administration software is that today’s products are entirely Web-based and/or available as an on-line service. This is important because Web-based products mean less IT investment and typically better data security. It also means inclusion of features that old client server applications could not offer like integrated lease analysis and comparison, providing access from anywhere, along with real-time alerts and notifications, real-time data updating, true data transparency, access via mobile devices and integration into other modern Web-based applications like IWMS.

Working with a single vendor is another benefit of today’s lease administration software system. Why not work with one vendor who can supply all products you need rather than a host of different vendors? Support from a single vendor eliminates finger-pointing and holds them accountable. Finally, there are new laws and industry standards that did not exist years ago, that were put in place to hold software companies accountable for the performance of their products. These standards for data and programming help obtain interoperability and standard look and feel across multiple applications.

All of these benefits, from being able to service the software to compatibility, integration, web-based access, working with a single vendor and the enactment of new standards and procedures make the benefits of upgrading lease administration software a no-brainer. It is almost impossible to make the case that older versions of the software are just as effective and useful in today’s marketplace.

Shameless Plug
At Lucernex Technologies, we have just launched our newest version of lease administration software – Lx Contracts – which is the most technologically advanced, lease administration, rent accounting and real estate contract management software available in the market today with fully integrated Lease Analysis and Comparison. I’ve learned a few things since I created LeaseAd back in the 1980s and SLIM in the 1990s, along with over 600 implementations. Lx Contracts starts where these systems left off and provides a platform that will be meeting your needs for many years to come.

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Previous Blogs by Ken Brown

Optimizing and Globalizing Real Estate?