Since Gartner coined the term IWMS and lumped in all similar vendors including those focused on Store Lifecycle Management (SLM), it has become increasing hard to tell the difference between IWMS and SLM. Some companies provide SLM, or a point solution and call themselves IWMS and others are truly IWMS vendors and call themselves SLM but just within the retail industry. In truth, while there is an overlap of some of the core features there are marked differences in the needs of the end user, the focus of the applications and how the solutions were developed and are delivered.

Store Lifecycle Management, as a term to describe the end-to-end real estate development and management process, was first used to describe software solutions here at Lucernex in the early 2000’s. It was later picked up by Accruent to describe the retail focused solution they built on top of our Lucernex 3.71 licensed product – called Accruent SLM.

The retail and restaurant industries are the focus of Store Lifecycle Management solutions, though other retail-like firms may benefit from it as well. Retail-like companies would include retail healthcare, hospitality, banking, finance, convenience stores and any other company that manages a large portfolio real estate used to directly serve consumers. The focus of their use of SLM is a combination of cost control, risk mitigation and effective store growth.

Integrated Workplace Management Solutions, IWMS, are not focused on retail. Instead they are more generic and cover a much wider group of companies’ primarily focused on the post-operations goal of cost control through effective asset management. Notice the recent IBM acquisition of Tririga, based on IBM’s own press release, is focused on combining Tririga into IBM’s back office Asset Management solution Tivoli.

SLM applications, to meet the client demand for cost control, risk mitigation and effective growth, focus more on the front-end of the lifecycle and provide detailed tools for market analysis, site selection including demographics and mapping, lease analysis, construction project management, capital project management that impacts multiple stores, store opening planning, lease administration, rent accounting (with a focus on percentage rent and other retail specific features) and facilities maintenance.

IWMS applications, to meet the broad needs of facilities and asset managers, focus functionality on computer aided facilities management (CAFM), facilities maintenance and management, sustainability, lease administration and general project management. While some do offer transaction management, they rarely offer an in-depth solution for market analysis, site selection, lease analysis, demographics/mapping or the type of construction or capital project management needed for retail real estate portfolios. The lease administration offered is usually highly functional but rarely offers features that are specific to retailers like deep percentage rent accounting, TI Management and advanced expense accounting and reconciliation that can save retailers millions.

As a result SLM solutions are usually selected and primarily used by Real Estate Departments, as retail focused companies typically place a much higher premium on their real estate groups who are typically responsible for selecting, building and sometimes even maintaining locations. IWMS solutions are typically selected by the IT group or the Facilities Management group as those non-retail companies do not consider real estate strategic and often relegate the function to a part of their Facilities or Asset Management Department.

For retailers or retail like companies that are looking for technology, make sure to ask for the software providers retail credentials. Does management have a background in retail? What percentage of their user base is retail? How much of their R&D is focused on retail? How much or their professional services and support group has a largely retail background? While these points rarely come out during an RFP process or through product demos, it should be one of the most important selection factors when selecting a software application for retail or retail-like real estate.

Shameless Plug

Lucernex is the ONLY company in the SLM or IWMS space with:

• a CEO who was both a retail real estate executive and CEO of a retail company ,
• a President who was CIO of the real estate group within a retail company,
• an EVP who created the Retail Lease Administration Software space with SLIM in he 80’s
• a full-lifecycle, single platform, single database, single user interface solution

We invented the SLM space with the first full-lifecycle SLM solution in 2002 and have continued to innovate with the first cloud-based SLM and Lease Administration solutions in 2009.

Lx SLM has advanced and mature modules for Market Analysis and Site Selection, Project Management, Lease Administration and Rent Accounting and Facilities and Capital Program Management. And, ALL of our products were developed on and are delivered on a single platform with a single database and a single user interface.

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
What makes one IWMS easier to implement than another?
Why building real estate software in house is no longer financially feasible
Risks of upgrading Lease Administration Software alone or as part of an IWMS

Lucernex is so confident that we can replace SLIM easier and more accurately than anyone, we will convert data from standard installations of SLIM for free!

To get more information on our SLIM, REM, Siteseer or Retail Lease replacement program, go to our Lease Administration replacement program page. We also have an Accruent SLM replacement program for current users of Accruent SLM (largely Lx IWMS v 3.81) who want to upgrade to Lx IWMS v7.

You can also schedule a meeting with us to see Lx Contracts at ICSC RECon in May.

Accruent’s Store Lifecycle Management (SLM) product sold to dozens of retailer and corporate users since 2004 came about due to a license sold to Accruent by Lucernex in 2003 allowing Accruent to market the Lucernex IWMS solution under the Accruent name. The core of the Accruent solution remains, in large part, the 3.81 version of Lx Retail. Lucernex has since updated the location performance management software and is now at version 9.0 having made vast improvements in the capability. The former creator of SLIM, Ken Brown, is now in charge of Lucernex product design and development after selling the SLIM product and his company, National Facilities Group, to Accruent in 2003. As a result Lucernex can provide the smoothest transition for current Accruent clients.

No first year software cost!!

To make this easy to budget, Lucernex will convert any Accruent client to Lx Retail and charge no first year fee for the software. In addition, as a conversion from Accruent is really more of a simple upgrade into the newer version of Lucernex, our professional services team will charge a simple cost plus 20% for the project.

No one can convert you from Accruent faster, cheaper or more accurately than Lucernex!

Please use our Product Information page if you are interested in talking to an Lucernex representative about our Accruent upgrade.