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.

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While no one can say for sure, it appears based on the recent positive GDP announcement, that the U.S. economy has bottomed out and we are now in the midst of what may be a longer and slower recovery when compared to past economic recessions. The events of the past 24 months have forced growth-minded real estate companies to re-examine or retool their business models to optimize efficiencies and harness opportunities. Economists believe future growth is expected to come from overseas markets, especially Asia and the “BRIC” nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).

Many corporate and retail real estate companies are using this opportunity to expand globally into Asia, Europe, and the BRIC nations. New stores are opening and new manufacturing facilities are under construction. There are many reasons for this shift. Growth in the United States is not expected to be as strong as projected growth from the emerging markets. And, the financing markets may be more receptive to opportunities in these faster growing regions of the world. As part of a push by companies to tap into global growth, companies must accordingly adopt a strategy to “globalize their corporate real estate portfolio.

However, moving into foreign and emerging markets does not come without risk and challenge. In order for any company to operate a global real estate portfolio, they need to be able to standardize and track the real estate lifecycle process. This may span several different countries and include different languages, currencies, time zones, and measurement systems.

As an example, imagine a United States headquartered corporation with manufacturing facilities opening in Brazil, China and Canada. How is this United States-based company expected to be able to track the development and eventual operation of these different facilities in real-time, and be able to actively manage all processes? At Lucernex, we believe it is critical to implement a system that will standardize all variables for a company’s global real estate portfolio. The newest version of IWMS software can do just that – easily track and standardize currency, measurements and time zones. And, this software will also help a company better track its leases, costs, and employee count, too. Lx IWMS also now has Lx LseMod software integrated providing fully internationalized lease analysis using any currency or measurement with all results flowing automatically into Lx IWMS site selection module for optimal decision making.

Companies using Lucernex applications are actively benefiting from these tools and have found the value and efficiency it provides to be critical to the real estate development and management process. In today’s emerging global real estate business, if an IWMS system cannot handle a company’s complete portfolio, that company is at an extreme disadvantage.

Having been involved with the IWMS industry for over 25 years, I have seen many trends come and go including some of the early attempts by the commercial real estate firms to enter the lease administration software business when outsourcing first appeared, to the focus on retailers, the shift toward real estate life-cycle and IWMS to the more recent set of events attempting to consolidate the industry. I sold my company, National Facilities Group, Inc. (the SLIM product) several years ago to Accruent and know what it means to be acquired and how it affects products and clients. In my case, there were a number of factors that made the event successful including the huge economic growth that was happening, the move to large suites of point-solutions – creating full real estate lifecycle applications and the fact that there was no clear leader in the space. The question asked today is, “Is the acquisition of MRI and Accruent a good thing?” Emphatically, I have to say “NO”! Unlike the liquidity events of years past where these companies announced the raising of millions of dollars to fuel internal growth and expansion, this recent event is simply a sale. Instead of acquiring new sources of capital, Accruent and MRI have been acquired by the capital sources. Fundamentally this is an entirely different type of event. It weakens the decision-making capability of the acquired organization, puts limits on product development and creates an internal feeling of “the sky is falling”. It will take months, if not years, for these companies to completely sort through all of the internal issues and during this time, their products and their clients will be affected – whether it will be a positive effect or a negative effect, only time will tell.

In most IWMS software selection procedures I’ve come across customers think they represent an unique business case. However, I’ve been involved in selection procedures for more than two decades now and I have come to conclusion that within the IWMS arena most business cases are for about 80% the same. Organizations that want to buy an IWMS could benefit enormously from off the shelf products based on best practices with predefined work flows, procedures and standardized configurations, potentially saving substantial resources both in time and money.

However, most customers expect an IWMS to exactly match their way of working for 100% without compromises. This implicates bespoke development or customization, since off the shelf products will never entirely support an organizations working processes. This is exactly what is causing a whole lot of problems. These problems vary in severity and impact on the organization but have one thing in common, they are all based on the Customization Paradigm.

Customization Paradigm

The customization paradigm is about the triangular relationship between an organizations’ processes, customization and configuration. Before presenting the paradigm I’d like to clarify the three concepts.

• Processes – The processes that enable organizations to maximize the RE and FM performance in contribution of the primary process.
• Customization – Bespoke Development in the IWMS core altering the source code of the core product.
• Configuration – Specifically tuning the IWMS System towards organizational processes without adding business logic, fields, etc to the core of the IWMS System.

The paradigm implicates the following:

Organizations that exactly try to match all processes by customization of the IWMS System in order to contribute to the business performance, will contribute less to the business performance than organizations that configure the IWMS System accepting that it will not exactly match all processes.

Reasons
There are a number of reasons that support the paradigm.

1. Customization is expensive
   All processes and business rules need to be programmed which will take quite some time therefore being very expensive.
2. Customization is time consuming
   Programming is time consuming. Even minor changes (such as work flow changes) can take weeks because all rules have to be programmed.
3. Customization is inflexible
   Although you might think that all bespoke development is very flexible it is not. All modifications to custom developments is besides time consuming also very inflexible. Even minor changes are in most cases extremely difficult and can’t be done by the organization itself. This leads to point 4.
4. Customization ensures dependency on the IWMS Vendor
   If your organization can’t do minor changes (field labels, work flows, etc. ) yourself you will be creating a dependency on the IWMS vendor. In fact you will be married to this vendor and divorce is painful.
5. Customization causes upgrade problems
   Almost in every implementation of an IWMS that I have been involved in customization causes upgrade problems. Since most bespoke development is developed at the customer it hardly ever returns in the core product. This implicates that bespoke development is not tested in anyway by the IWMS vendor besides at the current version of the customer implementation. If your vendor releases a new version 9 out of 10 that your organization is in trouble.
6. Customization requires technical skills
   If your entire solution is customized to your needs changes require substantial technical skills to do modifications. Since most professionals in FM and RE do not have a technical background. You will need IT people to do business modifications. This leads to point 7.
7. Customization ensures dependency on the IT Department

When the IWMS is implemented within the organization only technically skilled professionals (either from the Vendor or IT) can do modifications to the business procedures. This ensures that even from a functional IWMS perspective you will be depending on the IT Department to do changes for you.

Although there are quite some other disadvantages to customization the above are the most important ones. In the next post I will discuss: 7 Reasons why you should configure your IWMS