I recently attended the ICSC ReCON in Las Vegas. It was a wonderful opportunity to mingle with current and prospective clients as well as leaders in the real estate world. As Vice President of Product Management for Lucernex, I naturally have my ear to the ground regarding technology and tech issues and how they affect retail.

It was an exciting event this year with attendance much stronger than in recent years.

Still, it’s good to see retailers coming out of their recession-induced hibernation. Retailers are expanding again, and taking advantage of the current economy and leveraging the experience/knowledge gained about how particular store locations performed these past 3 years. Retailers are looking to technology for solutions to ensure that they are positioned properly to take advantage of current and future economic swings as well as the new FASB 13 regulations.

On our side, the vendor side, there has been a TREMENDOUS amount of activity the past 12 months. Mergers and acquisitions have really shaken up the industry, which has created some major implementation and delivery issues for legacy systems. I heard from many major retailers that they are struggling with their legacy products. They either cannot get them implemented, they’ve become too expensive for the limited features and capabilities they offer, or they just plain don’t do what they need!

Those issues are translating into a major headache  for the folks in the corner office.   These systems are no longer “nice to have” – they are mission critical, and it can be career-ending to make the wrong decision and spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on a failed project.   I listened to many stories of failures during my time on the trade show floor. The failures seem to always fall into one of two categories – it’s either a bad implementation of a good product, or a futile implementation of a badly selected “franken product”. Excessive attempts to customize an inflexible product have led to many tears.

On a positive note, there are new players in the industry who have significantly changed the landscape from when retailers last evaluated their Lease Administration and Store Lifecycle Management (SLM) systems.  These new players often have better tools, more experience, and have learned from the mistakes of old.   (I should note here that I count Lucernex in this latter group although truth be told, we are not really new!).   A consistent theme emerged when speaking with satisfied clients (and not just those of Lucernex!); quick, phased implementations and product flexibility without customization is the key to ensuring your end-users are happy and your company is getting the results it expected when it made the investment.

On a final note, hardware-wise I’m seeing fewer and fewer paper notebooks and more and more tablets. The comparison to previous years was striking. That lone person walking around the floor with an armful of binders stuffed with print outs (you know who you are!) looked out of date and disorganized compared to those with the slick presentations on their iPad or tablet. Retailers are making a major effort to leverage these new, portable and powerful technologies in deal presentations, site selection, modeling, demographics and even construction management..

Shameless Plug

Lucernex is leading the retail industry in converting outdated lease administration and store lifecycle management solutions to our cloud-based, market leading solution — Lx Retail 9. Built by Retailers for Retailers, Lx Retail combines all of the depth and capability of the best lease administration and rent accounting solutions (designed by the creator or SLIM) with the market leading store lifecycle management features Lucernex was founded on in 2000. And, since we took the time to do it right, it was built FOR RETAIL from the top down to manage the entire store lifecycle on one platform, one database and with one user interface.

Lucernex’s Lx Retail solution, being cloud-based, functions quite well on both iPad and Android platforms and will be fully optimized for both tablet platforms by year end!

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.

Dallas – (January 22, 2010) – Lucernex Technologies, an innovative developer of business intelligence software for real estate management and development, announced today that it is offering discounted subscription fees and fixed-price implementation of its Lx IWMS workplace management solution to anyone wishing to transition from Accruent’s SLM and IWMS products following Accruent’s announcement that it has been acquired by Vista Equity Partners.

Lx IWMS from Lucernex Technologies is the most comparable solution to Accruent currently on the IWMS market and offers a higher level of functionality as well as the most natural and lowest-priced migration path. The core of Accruent’s IWMS solution (previous called Store Lifecycle Management), was licensed from Lucernex in 2004 and has been installed as part of Accruent’s solution by dozens of large retailers.

“As the former CTO of Accruent and designer of the Lucernex solution, I think there is no doubt that Lucernex is best positioned to enable a smooth migration for any Accruent retail client,” said Joe Valeri, president of Lucernex. “We want to make sure that any client using any part of our software is satisfied with their investment.”

“In addition to the IWMS solution, many of Accruent’s clients are using legacy client-server based lease administration products such as SLIM, REM and RetaiLease and are looking for a web-based replacement. I am confident that any Accruent client that switches to Lucernex will be happy with the transition and will find the Lucernex team to be more responsive to their needs and willing to work with them to ensure success,” said Ken Brown, Lucernex’s executive vice president of product development and the original designer of the SLIM Lease Administration System.

First developed in 2000 and currently in use by Fortune 500 companies, the Lucernex Lx IWMS platform addresses the unique needs of companies with multi-site, rapidly changing real estate portfolios. The solution can be used to manage corporate real estate of any type and also offers market-specific functionality for the retail, restaurant and hospitality sectors.  Available in both Enterprise and Standard Editions, Lucernex Lx IWMS makes it possible for all real estate management resources to openly communicate and keep all projects on time and within budget. Enabling this kind of integrated communication will ultimately reduce costs, improve productivity, enhance operational efficiency and increase profitability.

To learn more about Lx IWMS, please contact Lucernex Technologies at 972-403-7100 or 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.