Lx Contracts was designed by Lucernex Executive Vice President Ken Brown, who is also the original creator of the Strategic Lease Information Management (SLIM) software originally from National Facilities Group, one of the most widely-used lease administration products in the market. Where SLIM and other similar products do a good job of managing leases, Lx Contracts is designed to handle any type of agreement for leased or owned locations and is tightly integrated into Lucernex’s single platform and architecture. Lx Contracts is also a fully web-based system that offers an easier integration of documents and improved access to and sharing of information; data distribution, navigation and reporting.

“Commercial and retail real estate lease professionals who visit with us at NRTA’s Annual Conference will learn why Lx Contracts is the most affordable and complete lease administration solution available on the market,” said Joe Valeri, president, Lucernex Technologies. “We will also have special offers available to those wishing to upgrade their software from older tools that no longer meet their needs, including free upgrades for SLIM users.”

The product is offered as a standalone solution and as a module of Lx IWMS, Lucernex’s integrated workplace management system currently used to manage hundreds of thousands of locations in the global retail, hospitality, engineering and construction industries. To schedule a meeting with Lucernex Technologies at the NRTA annual conference, visit www.lucernex.com.

About Lucernex

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.

The Lucernex team will also have details on our Legacy Lease Administration Replacement program for users of outdated SLIM, REM, Siteseer and RetaiLease products.

DALLAS – (May 3, 2010) – Lucernex Technologies, a developer of business intelligence software for real estate management and development, announced today that it has promoted Howard Zola to vice president of U.S. sales. In this position, Zola will lead the company’s domestic sales efforts for its suite of Location Performance Management products for the corporate and retail real estate industry.

Zola will be responsible for continuing to grow the overall sales of Lx IWMS, Lucernex’s affordable integrated workplace management system; 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. 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.

Zola brings over 20 years of technology and sales experience to the Lucernex team. He served as the vice president of major account sales for Comps.com, the online commercial real estate data provider that is now owned by CoStar Group. He moved on to become the chief operating officer and vice president of sales and marketing at WorkplaceIQ, where he led the effort to acquire the Siteseer lease administration software. Zola also served as principle of his own consulting firm which specialized in supporting the adoption and implementations of technology within the commercial and corporate real estate and facility management industries. Most recently, he was the vice president of sales and business development at House Party, Inc. before joining Lucernex as a sales associate in November 2009.

“Since joining our team last year, Howard has been an integral part of Lucernex’s recent success as he has previously worked with many of the major players in the commercial real estate market,” said Joe Valeri, president of Lucernex Technologies. “Our main goal in 2010 is to focus on the growth of our new lease administration product, Lx Contracts, and IWMSCloud, our cloud computing delivery of Lx IWMS. Howard possesses all of the necessary capabilities to lead this effort.”

“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to continue to expand Lucernex’s sales efforts for Lx IWMS, Lx Contracts and Lx LseMod,” said Zola. “These products are the best in the industry and I intend to continue working with potential customers to prove the value and show them how Lucernex’s suite of products will make them more efficient and profitable.”

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.

# # #

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?

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.

In the last Blog I talked about the importance of an IWMS using the Location as the central organization point for all data.

By centering on the Location you can:

• Track all entities within your Portfolio or aggregate information to track your entire Portfolio
• Track all Center information including Leases
• Track all Facilities and equipment on a Campus
• Track each tax Parcel within the Location
• Track multiple planned Locations by market in multiple Programs
• Manage all collected data for multiple Sites of interest for every planned Location
• Manage as many Construction Projects as you want on one or more tax Parcels of the same or different Prototypes
• Maintain as many Facilities as you would like across one or more Programs
• Track all Spaces in each Facility, how they are used and the associated Leases.
• Run as many Capital Projects as you need
• Administer multiple Leases and subleases on a group of Facilities or on individual Facilities
• Track all real estate related Contracts for Equipment, Land, Services, etc….
• Maintain as many Franchisees information as required in the same or across multiple Facilities
• Track all Lease income and expenses on any Facilities or Location

What makes Location Centric Management most powerful is the infinite combinations of business arrangements it can handle. A few examples:

Example1:
Let’s say you company is a Convenience Store Retailer but also a real estate developer. You buy land that crosses two jurisdictions in an emerging market, put in one of your stores but also develop the surrounding property with a strip center, a hotel and two small office buildings.

• One location, multiple tax parcels, three facilities, one owned store created from a construction project, one center (also a facility) with multiple leases, two facilities for office building with multiple spaces and leases including some spaces with multiple leases. You used one of your prototypes to develop your store and it exists within your Rural Market Program. You can now launch capital projects across your entire Rural Market Program to automatically include this store. Every detail on each item discussed above can easily be viewed at the Location level with dashboard, alerts and reports to ensure a senior executive responsible for one or more locations or parts of a location (like Office buildings) can see everything related to the Location and drill down as needed.

Example 2:
Your company is a large insurance company with retail-like locations worldwide that provide a local office for clients to call and receive service from. You have three large headquarters, one of which you own that is a multi-facility campus, in 2 different countries plus 600 local offices that you manage the leases for.

• 603 locations. One location is a campus, built on 3 tax parcels across two jurisdictions. The campus has 4 facilities on it, one of which has one floor subleased to 6 different food vendors. Two locations have one building on them, each having one lease and multiple equipment contracts. 300 of the 600 local offices are simple leases with 5 year renewals. 200 of the others are in Asia Pacific and have 1 or 2 year renewals. The last 100 local offices were acquired in a takeover of a competitor and are now subleased.

While Location Centric Management can do all of that it also can manage simpler structures just as well without making it any more complex than a system that can handle only simple location structures.

The next obvious question is why wouldn’t a technology for real estate be location centric? The simple answer is that many vendors started out as point solutions targeting one area of the market then built up their solution to address the image of “IWMS” or customer needs. Think about how a house looks that began as a small colonial and then had multiple extensions put on, often hastily, to meet some immediate need. Is it going to look or function as well as the same size house designed up front to meet all the needs of its users? And how much time and money would it take to tear it all down and start over? It is much the same with IWMS technology, those vendors that started out looking at the entire lifecycle will be able to provide location centric applications, built on a single framework, that best address the end users needs without trying to wedge each users special needs in with customizations or elaborate configuration.

OK, now comes the part where I have to admit that, of course, this is my view as one of the visionaries (with Ken Brown) behind the Lx IWMS Location Performance Management software. Other vendors will argue that the Facility or Campus or Lease is the central entity. From their point of view I am sure that makes sense and many could likely write a more eloquent argument to make their case. What matters to someone choosing an IWMS solution is whether all the current or future business arrangements can be handled in any combination the customer can think of and, more importantly, is the application designed to handle those arrangements or will it need to be customized or heavily configured to meet those needs (which would indicate little flexibility to change and limitations on connections between the moving parts) or worse yet – is the technology vendor forcing you into managing your locations as they dictate, rather than leveraging the unique structure that has made you successful and is your competitive advantage. Also, what is the structure of the database? Is it one database and one code base or its it a complex interconnection of separately designed products and databases tied together with a front end concealing a lack of singular design vision. I will save the details of that discussion for another Blog!

Shameless plug

Lx IWMS was designed from the ground up as a 100% web-based location centric system with a single database accessed by a single front end programmed in a single code base by the same group of developers since 2000 when we were founded. Even our recent expansion of the suite to include complete lease and contract administration (led by SLIM Lease Administration designer Ken Brown) and Capital Project Management has been added directly into the original structure. We can handle any combination of uses of a location that any organization can dream up! See our IWMS competitor chart or give me a call to discuss how we match up to other IWMS vendors.

Joe’s Next Blog: “Why are some IWMS’s so expensive”, will be posted next week.

Previous IWMS related Blogs

What is IWMS anyway?
IWMS? It’s Location! Location! Location!

Upcoming Webinars

FREE WEBINAR: How to use Location Management Technology to quickly increase revenue and lower cost. Click here for more information

Lucernex President Joe Valeri featured in NAR’s RCA Report

The National Association of Realtors Winter 2010 edition of the RCA Report includes a front page article titled “Technology: Turning time into money”. The article discusses effective uses of technology for real estate professionals and features Lucernex President Joe Valeri and Lx LseMod.

Originally published in the National Association of Realtors RCA Report, Winter 2010

If time is money, then technology is an investment a commercial real estate professional can scarcely afford to neglect. Today, brokers and property managers can produce complex analytical data, transfer the information to an easy-to-read Excel file and present it to clients with a few key strokes. What used to be a laborious, mathematically-inclined and time-consuming process now has been so streamlined by software products that pencil pushing and number crunching are a much smaller part of the job.

Used correctly, technology allows professionals to significantly increase productivity. Of course, this comes with an investment of time and money by the broker or property manager. The benefits of more potential business and greater income usually offset the risk of the up-front investment.

Though it may be easier for larger firms to make the financial leap and allocate human capital, smaller firms may experience greater impact, some say. “We can make a smaller brokerage look bigger,” said Joe Valeri, president of Lucernex Technologies in Plano, Texas. “If you use it smartly, technology levels the playing field.”

Valeri began his real estate career in the IT division at Marriott, where he created and managed the hotel firm’s property development systems. Through his work, he developed software that streamlined the company’s methods of property acquisition and construction. Understanding this could be valuable for other businesses, he struck out in a career as a technology provider.

His firm supplies lease management, lease valuation and cash flow analysis tools, among others. While this software is important to anyone in the business, Valeri admits that some brokers may benefit more from these tools.

The costs can vary, but Valeri believes that a broker can remain competitive with the investment of $100-$200 dollars each month. “Brokers don’t have to be mathematical geniuses, but they still have to look professional, and providing reliable reports adds credibility,” said Valeri.

This is especially true in the investment sales arena.

Read the complete article here.

Lx LseMod – the leading provider of Lease Analysis Software