Dallas, TX (March 31, 2011) – Lucernex Technologies, an innovative developer of business intelligence software for real estate management and development, today announced that it is a silver sponsor of the National Retail Tenants Association (NRTA). The sponsorship will give Lucernex more visibility for its suite of store lifecycle management solutions within the retail real estate industry including their FASB 13 ready Lease Administration and Rent Accounting Solution. It will also enable the company’s leadership to support NRTA’s expansion as a premier education and networking resource for industry professionals.

NRTA is a not-for-profit corporation that enhances the personal and professional education of commercial and retail real estate lease professionals, attorneys, lease accounting and commercial property management specialists. As a Silver Sponsor, Lucernex Technologies will receive placements on the NRTA website as well as in the organization’s newsletter in addition to increased presence at NRTA’s 15th Annual Conference this September in Orlando, Fla.

“NRTA is the nation’s leading educational resource for professionals in the retail real estate sector, and our relationship with the organization has been valuable to us throughout our company’s history,” said Jim Short, Director of Client Services, Lucernex. “By increasing our affiliation with NRTA as a silver sponsor, we are looking forward to having more communication with its members and providing more of them with world-class solutions for their day-to-day challenges. As our company continues to grow, we plan to also continue to grow our support and involvement in NRTA. ”

“We feel that our corporate sponsorship is a great way for sponsors to show their support for the educational mission of the National Retail Tenants Association,” said Paul Kinney, Executive Director, NRTA. “As a sponsor, Lucernex will have the opportunity to feature its products to 400+ lease administration professionals throughout the year and at our annual conference in September. Software systems continue to be an important part in the life of the retail lease administrator and they appreciate the opportunity to explore different applications prior to purchasing.”

About Lucernex
Founded in 2000, Lucernex Technologies provides corporate real estate professionals and real estate developers with powerful software tools that lower expenses and increase ROI through active real estate portfolio data management, whether applied to an existing portfolio or during the real estate development process. For more than a decade, Fortune 500 companies in the commercial real estate, hospitality, retail, construction and engineering industries, both in the United States and Europe, have been utilizing Lucernex Technologies software solutions every day to better manage the development lifecycle. As an innovative leader in Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) solutions and lease administration solutions, Lucernex continues to grow its customer base by applying its Web-based software expertise and real estate development insight to provide advanced tools and services for business. For more information, please visit www.lucernex.com.

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

DALLAS – (December 6, 2010) – Lucernex Technologies, a developer of business intelligence software for real estate management and development, announced today that it has hired Robert Abdul as vice president of global sales. In this position, Abdul will be responsible for directing and managing all sales initiatives for the Lucernex suite of Location Performance Management solutions for corporate and retail real estate executives. Lucernex’s solutions are currently in use by hundreds of thousands of locations in the global retail, hospitality, engineering and construction industries, as well as hundreds of corporate real estate executives and real estate brokers worldwide.

Abdul has 20 years of experience in the software industry with more than 15 years specialized in enterprise software sales. Prior to joining Lucernex, he was regional sales manager for Accruent, a provider of enterprise location management solutions. Previously, he had worked as director of sales and channel development for SaaS provider netASPx and sales director for United Systems Consultants, Inc., a Lawson Software channel partner out of New York focused on the retail and corporate vehicles.

“Robert has a wealth of experience selling corporate real estate solutions and knows the market inside and out, so we are thrilled to have him taking the lead on our sales efforts here,” said Joe Valeri, president of Lucernex Technologies. “He has been a top performing sales representative in his previous positions, and we are looking forward to seeing him bring the same success to Lucernex as we continue to expand our presence worldwide.”

The Lucernex product suite includes: Lx IWMS, an affordable integrated workplace management system that provides comprehensive location performance management for all phases of the real estate lifecycle; Lx Contracts, Web-based lease administration and rent accounting from the creator of SLIM; and Lx LseMod, the market leader in site selection and portfolio optimization financial analysis solutions for corporate and commercial real estate.

About Lucernex Technologies

Founded in 2000, Lucernex Technologies provides real estate developers and facility managers with powerful software tools to guide them through the real estate development process. For nearly a decade, Fortune 500 companies in the commercial real estate, hospitality, retail, construction and engineering industries, both in the United States and Europe, have been utilizing Lucernex Technologies software solutions every day to better manage the development lifecycle. As an innovative leader in Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) solutions, Lucernex continues to grow its customer base by applying its Web-based software expertise and real estate development insight to provide advanced tools and services for business. For more information, please visit www.lucernex.com.

Typically in our blogs, we attempt to write an impartial analysis of the subject at hand and save the Lucernex marketing for the end. However, in this blog, the story of the IWMS market is really the story of Lucernex so there is no way to separate the Lucernex details from the body of the blog.

This is the story of how the IWMS market came about, from the perspective of several industry experts who work at or with Lucernex. As IWMS is a consolidation of the Facilities Management, Facilities Maintenance and Corporate Real Estate software markets, I am very sure there are other opinions from other vendors, especially from outside the retail part of this market, but here’s our viewpoint.

In the mid-1990’s Mike Nuzum and Joe Valeri, Lucernex’s founders, had similar visions for technology the retail market needed to improve its processes. Mike had successfully built multiple retail chains as the real estate expert and had developed repeatable processes that made him successful. Joe was running property development systems for Marriott International and trying to find software that fit his vision for what the market needed.

In 1999, at the AEC systems show in San Francisco, Mike and Joe were introduced through a mutual friend at the Fairmont Hotel on Knob Hill. Both had visions of a software product the industry needed. The result of that meeting was a collective vision for a new software product, which led to the founding of Lucernex in 2000. In 2001, the first Software as a Service (SaaS) IWMS product of its kind was released. The term SaaS has just been coined in February 2001 and the acronym IWMS had not yet been coined; Lucernex was delivering both. The product drew the attention of the industry leader and innovator in Lease Administration, Ken Brown of the National Facilities Group (NFG), maker of SLIM. Ken and Joe set out to integrate the two applications and, at NFG’s 2002 User Conference, what was then called Lucernex Rollout Manager was demonstrated for about 100 retail and corporate users of SLIM. This 2.0 version of Lx IWMS included integrated Market Planning, Site Selection, Transaction Management, Project Management, Facilities Management and Lease Administration all delivered over the Web as a SaaS solution.

In 2002 Lucernex won a few small deals with AEC firms, developers and small retailers, then, in 2003 Lucernex got its first major sale to Chipotle Mexican Grill, then a roughly 70-store chain. Chipotle used what they call “Lucy” to manage the growth of their real estate. Additional sales to YUM Brands (they call it YUM Builder) and Circuit City helped Lucernex finalize the Store Lifecycle Management (SLM) technology. Michael Bell, then of Gartner, coined the term IWMS in 2004 around the concept of an Enterprise software product that covers the lifecycle of real estate.

In 2005, in an effort to rapidly increase sales, Lucernex licensed the product to Accruent with the idea that Accruent’s established sales team would do a far better job of driving new sales than Lucernex could. Accruent had also purchased NFG and brought the SLIM product under its umbrella, which was already largely integrated with Lx IWMS. With the Lucernex product, branded Accruent Store Lifecycle Management (SLM), Accruent established itself as a market leader in the IWMS space. For the following 3 years Accruent sold SLM to over 50 large retailers and, with Lucernex inside, became one of the top performers in the IWMS Magic Quadrant.

In 2008, after Accruent had chosen a dramatically different technology path, Lucernex decided to update the product and return to the market including selling it directly to the market. With Ken Brown now at the helm of Lucernex product development, the data architecture was expanded to allow a single database solution to handle the entire lifecycle adding lease administration and rent accounting to the otherwise complete list of IWMS modules.

This led to the introduction of the first Cloud Computing solution in the IWMS industry in 2009 and the first product to support the expected, new FASB guidelines in 2010.

Lucernex began as the industry visionary in 2000 with a SaaS-delivered full lifecycle enterprise corporate real estate software system to manage all aspects of any real estate holding. While our initial focus was on the Retail market we have broadened our capabilities over the years to include Healthcare, Financial Services, Service Providers and the broader Corporate market. We have never deviated from our goal of creating a single platform, single database solution that is high performing, easy to implement and inexpensive to maintain. We are the only full lifecycle IWMS product on the market today that can deliver the entire functional lifecycle on a single JAVA platform and single database with no third party licenses required. We have also maintained our technology visionary status with the first Cloud solution (IWMSCloud) in 2009 and the first upgrade for lease administration and lease analysis to handle the new, proposed FASB / GAAP rules in 2010. We have more innovations planned for 2011 so stay tuned!

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

Whether you have realized it or not, the “Y2K” of the lease administration market is upon us. When the new FASB guidelines get approved, virtually every company with lease administration software will now have legacy lease administration software that must be replaced. Most, if not all, of the products that have been out for more than a few years will either not be upgraded due to the age of the core technology or ownership changes or will be replaced by their vendor eventually with what is truly a new product, not an upgrade.

As such it seems wise to consider the risks before replacing a key system that you will likely keep around for 5 to 10 years, depend upon to ensure leases are properly administered and that can impact your bottom line.

Risks

Risk 1: Blindly upgrading with the vendor you currently have; if the cost of upgrading is as high as implementing a new solution then is it really an upgrade?
Some vendors are already offering “upgrades” promising that their new version will eventually support the new guidelines. In most cases these “upgrades” are completely new products and have to be as the FASB changes cause a structural shift on how lease data is structured. Before you “upgrade”, stop and ask questions about new hardware, new operating systems, data conversions required (meaning a new database). It will be very apparent that you are not upgrading but replacing your old product with a completely new one, meaning a new implementation just like buying any other solution. Why not stop and consider all alternatives?

Risk 2: Will you maintenance costs go up significantly after the upgrade with no real ROI?
This is really an extension of the last item. The FASB guideline changes will certainly get your CFO to sign off on an upgrade but why not deliver an ROI with this system replacement like you would have to with any other? “FASB’s making me” should not be the entire story; get an ROI!

Risk 3: Buy from a vendor promising to support the new FASB regulations next year with no proof they know how.
I realize this one is self-serving as Lucernex is the only company who has actually verified that our upgraded financial engine will support the new FASB guidelines, but, really, how do you know a vendor can make the changes. These changes are structural, not something a simple upgrade can handle. Having been part of a team that has gone through the laborious task of interpreting the planned FASB guidelines and their impact on data structure and core formulas, I can tell you this is no simple task, requires months of planning, a great architecture and months more to develop.

Risk 4: Buy from a vendor who has no experience with your existing system and the way the data is structured; how do you know they will succeed?
We expect that over the next two years, as the lease administration replacement market gets really busy, that new vendors will show up to take advantage of the opportunity. Also, small vendors with historically lower market products will try to move up market and sell larger firms. You need to not only look at the product you are buying but who will implement it. The folks who implemented your existing system likely know your data the best. Many of those original vendors and their staff are no longer with the company that owns the products (for example Accruent owns SLIM and RetaiLease but did not create either and employs few if any of the original experts of those products). Again, it’s self-serving, but the creator of SLIM created Lucernex’s Lease Administration solution with input from experts from Tequila (creator of RetaiLease) and Siteseer. Make sure to consider WHO will be implementing your new solution, as their knowledge of your existing system and data will make the process cheaper and far more accurate.

Risk 5: Wait until the new FASB rules are out then upgrade or buy.
This is something we have been hearing a lot and its concerning. If even half the market plans to do this, and every major vendor is involved, there will be long waiting lists to get the product you want and the implementation team you want. You won’t get to choose the best product and the best vendor but the one that’s available to get it done before your deadline. Do you really want to buy the product and vendor that has time or do you want to buy the best one to fit your needs? Remember how much ALL Cobol programmers were going for and how the price got higher as Y2k got closer?

Risk 6: Buying a point solution.
Lease Admin is part of an integrated real estate process; arguable the most important part, why would you want to detach the data from the rest of the process or have to design custom integrations to get the data working together. Many IWMS solutions now have lease administration and rent accounting and a few of them are actually designed for the highly complex retail leasing market. If you are re-implementing anyway, (and as I said earlier, even if they call it an upgrade, its not) why not look at implementing a Lease Admin solution as part of an IWMS solution. While there are some good point solutions out there, if you plan to ever implement an IWMS why would you buy a point solution that does not allow for a quick addition of other IWMS modules in the future? It can replace not only your lease admin system but other point solutions like your project management system, site selection, market planning, capital project management, facilities management and even, in a few cases, your GIS/Mapping solutions? You can often get an ROI on day one just through system replacements.

Risk Mitigation – aka, Shameless Plug

1. Lucernex staff includes the creator of SLIM, along with top implementers for SLIM, RetaiLease, REM and SiteSeer. We might even have the people who implemented your existing system on staff. When we designed our new Lease Administration solution, Lx Contracts, we brought together experts in SLIM, REM, RetaiLease and Siteseer to make sure we could deliver all of the great functionality users expected from those systems. That design was then merged with the IWMS data structure and launched as part of our IWMS solution or as a stand alone solution, all sharing one platform, one code base and one database.

2. We are so confident we can convert your data that Lucernex is offering free data conversion of SLIM, REM, RetaiLease and Siteseer products. No strings attached, if you have a standard implementation of any of these products we will convert the data from your legacy system into Lx Contracts for free. OK, one string attached, you have to pay for Lx Contracts.

3. We have created the financial engine that will support the new FASB guidelines and had it CPA verified. This is something we are announcing publicly this week. Our internal lease analysis and lease accounting experts have labored to create a new version of our financial engine that will support both the new and the old FASB guidelines. We will release it first inside Lx LseMod Corporate in Q4 and then inside Lx Contracts in Q1 2011. We had all of the formulas verified by an independent CPA and are opening a Beta period on the engine mid-November with select customers.

4. Lx Contracts latest release was specifically designed to handle both the current and new FASB guidelines. This bears repeating, Lx Contracts was designed, from the ground up, specifically to handle the old and new rules including comparison reporting to allow for impact analysis. Unlike most, if not all other IWMS vendors, we built all of our products and modules ourselves on a single platform and single database which makes our cost to implement, total cost of ownership and system performance unbeatable.

5. We provide SaaS Lease Administration and IWMS solutions that can deliver an ROI not just a cure for the FASB changes. We can help you make the business case to your CFO in a way that will WANT him to approve your project.

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

So here is one of the dirty little secrets of all software vendors including almost all IWMS vendors. Has this happened to you? Your company begins a product selection and ask for preliminary pricing from vendors to make sure they are in the ballpark. They provide informal pricing. You pick your finalists and send out the RFP. When you look at the pricing provided in the RFP you notice the pricing they provided is shown but there is also a list of required third party licenses; often not including the prices of those licenses (which probably makes you think they are negligible).

You finalize you process and select a first place vendor and ask for final pricing. They provide it including an appendix, at the end of the document, with third party licenses that usually includes a reporting tool like Business Objects or Cognos, a Work Flow tool, a document redlining tool and a few other apparently necessary applications. When you add up the cost of those applications it may exceed the cost of the IWMS application itself!

This should raise several red flags not the least of which is your cost estimates were WAY off. It should also tell you how much of “their” IWMS product is not actually theirs. Third party tools while often included in the installation package are NOT native applications and can not possibly be as deeply integrated as native applications (those built by the IWMS vendor on a single platform).

So what is the problem with third party applications?

In the short term the most obvious issue is the substantial additional cost of the IWMS solution. Longer term, the cost and stress of maintaining those licenses is a headache and, if the IWMS vendor maintains them and bills you, you will be forced through changes in functionality that neither you nor the IWMS vendor has control over. Third party vendors also raise their prices over time so your long term cost is not guaranteed. Sometimes IWMS vendors have to switch third party vendors as they change their applications which means you have to retrain people not only on the IWMS application but the integrated third party application as well.

Why do IWMS vendors use so many third party applications?

Third party applications cut R&D cost and allow the IWMS vendor to focus on core real estate and facilities functionality that are most important to clients. Sometimes third party applications can not be avoided as they are so specialized no IWMS vendor could possibly replicate them in any reasonable period of time. For example, all IWMS vendors that I know of use a third party document redlining tool. Sometimes, however, applications like reporting and work flow are simply to expensive for IWMS vendors to produce and they “punt” by buying a third party app.

What can you do?

Make sure to ask up front, when getting preliminary pricing, how many third party applications are required and what is the exact cost. Ask why third arty applications are required and if there is an alternative? Ask the vendor if they are getting a mark-up on the third party application? Ask the IWMS vendor who will support the third party application?

Once you have all of those questions answered you can make an informed decision on whether the IWMS product capabilities outweigh the drawbacks of the third party applications.

Shameless Plug

Lx IWMS and Lx Contracts are built on a single platform with a single database, which includes natively developed ad-hoc reporting, dashboards and work flow. Since these applications were developed by us, on our platform, they are deeply integrated across the entire lifecycle in a highly consistent manner. A third party application is required for document redlining and viewing BUT the cost of that application is included in the price of the IWMS. We have NO third-party application costs and, in fact, have no other third party licenses required.

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?

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

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

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