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!

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.

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