It’s a new year and new you – with the same needs to enhance operations and customer service. As we shelf 2011 and delve into 2012, here’s a look back at our most popular educational content and resources from the past year.

The top topics enjoyed by your peers:

Checklist: Implementing a Successful Emergency Response Plan

How ready are you for an emergency? How do you track and document incidents? What sort of emergency preparedness training do your employees have? When was the last time you practiced a tabletop exercise? Time to assess your readiness?

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Webinar Executive Summary: From an Owner & Investor- Metrics That Matter

Senior Real Estate Investor, Timothy Donahoe shares his perspective on identifying key areas for metrics and visibility to mitigate risk and enhance investor returns. Watch the full webinar or just the highlights of Donahoe’s insights into quantifiable operational performance metrics. Take measures to measure!

CRE Quick Take: Proving Your Value to Your Manager, Owners, Clients… and Yourself!

This article shows you how to keep all your balls in the air AND prove your value to the owner, interested in the highest return from the property, and your tenants, interested in the best service and value for their money.

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Building Engines Kit: Tenant Retention

Is your tenant retention program building loyalty and increasing retention? Does it accurately document tenant meetings, service requests and other important state-of-the-tenant information:? Download the Building Engines Tenant Retention Kit and start assessing your level of tenant service today!

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Get ready for the year to come!

Register free for the 2012 Real Estate Operations Masters Series and receive automatic registration for webinars, on-demand content, and best practices on a variety of operations topics.

It’s four days into the new year. Maybe you’ve already made  your resolutions, maybe you’ve already broken them, maybe the only resolution you care about is measured in pixels. Regardless, here’s one for business-sakes it would pay to heed: Improving responsiveness to tenant requests.

Here’s why:

Tenant Service is Elastic.

Service response time plays a key role in determining the involvement tenants have with a building manager. Longer waits and slower responses lead to an overall negative experience and vice versa. Being the most controllable aspect of any building, the speed of service with which a building manager can successfully complete required tasks, could make or break a tenant relationship.

This stems directly from two things. First, the rate at which an owner must charge a tenant more or less cannot be changed. Second, the location of the building will not change no matter how much you may want it to. This leaves one major, elastic characteristic tenants consider when looking for space to rent: the service provided.

Why do Tenants Choose to Stay?

Here’s How:

Be Effective, B-E- Effective (Automate)

Service must be provided efficiently and effectively. One of the major issues today with responsiveness falls back to the owner. Whether the tenant cannot get in touch with the building manager, or the building manager has not made available an effective means of solving issues, the tenant rarely is the one at fault. See if your company is putting its best face forward with effective customer service.

Allowing tenants the ability to submit work orders easily only quickens the response time. Automation, therefore, becomes crucial. Implementing a system where tenants have the ability to electronically submit service requests allows them to save time, which subsequently leads to a better experience.

Don’t Just Have a System, Use It!

Many things can be fixed quickly, and consequently should. Requiring someone to call the maintenance office every time a light bulb goes out never proves to be an efficient way of handling a situation. Automation is great, but it does not work if no one knows about it. Tenants need to be informed about the utilities they have access to in order to make the most of them. Simply having an online system is not enough if no one uses it. In order to effectively and efficiently vanquish service requests, the tools available to tenants must be used.

Find Out How Your Service Stacks Up

Know where your service level stands compared to that of your peers and industry top performers. What are other property owners and managers offering that you could adopt? What response times and service performance are standard? Take Building Engines Service Responsiveness Benchmark Survey for a compilation report identifying Best Practices you may want to consider.

Want more? Read about How to Rock Occupancy with Technology!

This season we are revving our engines for 2012, including a great plan to continue to build new features and functionality into the application. On December 22nd, we will introduce a new module! (hint: it rhymes with “schminpections”)

A theme you will see throughout the year, however, is technology-enabled best practices for building operations. For unlimited access to our operations best practices content, live and archived webinars, demonstrations, and more, you can join the Building Engines Inner Circle for free! We will ramp up our scouring of industry experts to gather more statistics, trends and best practices in property operations and workflow management than ever.

One major focus for the new year will be making data visible and actionable. You know all that data you’ve been collecting in your closet? Well, it’s time to make sense of it all! We will continue to evolve our analytics model and further develop the Building Health Quotient concept that we released in the latter half of 2011.

As we evolve the model, we will introduce functionalities including the ability to set your own benchmarks and targets, and then report against them. Over time, you will be able to use this data to create meaningul reports that reveal trends and reflect your progress in relation to set goals.

We are very excited for our plans in 2012, and we look forward to providing you with more visibility after the New Year.

Happy Holidays!

The holiday season is a time for positive reflections on the year gone by, as well as forecasts for the year to come! As we approach 2012, we look forward to delivering more great technology-enabled best practices for real estate operations.

Get some Holiday Cheer from members of the Building Engines team in our Interactive Holiday Card!

We wish our readers a happy and healthy Holiday Season and a prosperous New Year! Our resolution: becoming real estate operations masters in 2012!

Get a Sneak Peak into 2012 with Building Engines!

In a recent sample, 83% of Building Engines clients considered tenant responsiveness a market differentiator. How does your responsiveness stack up to that of your peers and industry top performers? Take the Building Engines Service Responsiveness Benchmark Survey and receive a compilation report aggregating responses and identifying Best Practices you may want to consider.

This 5 minute survey will provide comparative analytics to help you answer and understand:

• How your performance compares with other property owners and managers
• Where your perception of the value of responsiveness relates to others
• If response time standards should be set and included in the lease SLAs
• Real data on performance standards you may want to adopt

I’ve been told, “If you’re looking for answers, they’re not going to just fall into your lap!” Well, if you post the right question, they just may fall into your LinkedIn lap. Following a Building Engines webinar on LEED EBOM certification, I wanted to open up the discussion to other property and energy management and professionals.

LinkedIn, specifically the BOMA International Group, proved to be a fruitful forum for my question: What are some tips around the greening of existing buildings? Here are some of the discussion’s responses:

Since lighting represents about 30% of our energy bill upgrading to LED lighting saved us from 74 – 90%! We have tried several different LED lamps, however, we found that the ones offered at www.lightingatlanta.org are some of the best available.

You could also add motion sensors and wire them with the light switches so after 5 minutes of no movement, the lights will automatically go off.

There are many low-cost/no-cost measures you can take to green your facilities: (1) adjusting thermostats for seasonal comfort and programming in night set-backs; (2) reducing ventilation to unoccupied spaces and for nighttime operation; (3) replacing air handler filters, and (4) other basic O&M practices to tune up energy equipment performance

You can go further by periodically conducting Level 1 audits and follow-up retro-commissioning on key systems such as the controls or boilers/chillers/air handlers.

Relative to HVAC system energy savings, if the building’s systems utilize a building automation system, a comprehensive review of the sequences of operation in comparison to actual setpoints and schedules is a great method to save operational dollars and energy. Often, over many years, changes are made by operators and unintentionally the intended energy savings design features of the HVAC systems are lost.

The building envelope is a good place to start to realize energy savings. Before upgrading HVAC equipment, it makes sense to seal up energy leaks at the roof and facade, to avoid over-spending on heating or cooling.

Do not source a lighting solution which uses products available only from one manufacturing source.

Reducing your outdoor watering costs. Most landscapers do not know how to properly set the sprinkler systems, and often just defer to over watering, since you will only notice on your water bill.

Make sure that any intelligent lighting solution is native to the building management/automation system so there is seamless access to any available data from the lamps at any time. Further this allows you to easily share information between lighting and other systems for even more potential efficiency savings.

Read more on using lighting to conserve energy!

Q: Why do technological things never work?

A: Because there’s “no logic” in it!

Buhdum Che! OK, so bad joke, and an even worse perspective to adopt when it comes to property and tenant management. Technolgoical tools have been essential in the drive for efficiency and business process re-engineering in property management companies. Owners and operators today face more management demands than ever, and are often asked to accomplish more with fewer resources.

The best management firms have responded by accelerating their adoption of information collection and reporting tools through Software as a Service (SaaS) technologies. These SaaSy companies typically see improved service levels, tenant retention, asset protection and risk management, but there are also some less advertised perks:

Differentiation for Your Company

Top companies see the effective use of technology as a way to create differentiation despite operating in a tenant-perceived sea of sameness. Ultimately, they see it making them more profitable.

No Reliance on In-House Techies

At the same time, technology advances have made sophisticated technologies accessible to property and tenant management organizations of all sizes. The Software as a Service business and technology model has eliminated the need for in-house technology staff to acquire, deploy and maintain online information and operation systems.

Get Lost, Costs!

The SaaS model has dramatically lowered both initial costs and total application costs. Applications are easily aligned to each organization’s workflow, or introduce and reinforce industry best-practices. Software with intuitive interface design can remove user barriers and the need for intensive training.

Read here for The Keys to Enterprise Level Software Acceptance!

We all had to “fall back” this past weekend (unless you’re one of the lucky ones in Hawaii), but we don’t need to fall back on our old lighting habits. With the end of Daylight Savings Time, comes the end of low electricity bills. Short days mean a long ways to go for your facility’s lighting.

This concept is nothing new. Benjamin Franklin presciently grappled with the idea that day time = money in his essay “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light.” As the face of the $100 bill, Ben Franklin knew how to be green and had money covered.

Today, roughly a third of your utility billing goes towards lighting. How can you conserve energy? Here are a few tips:

Lighten Up!

Use lighter colors on walls and ceilings to maximize the reflection and effect of light sources. Painted walls, along with fabrics and perforated metal, should be strategically placed to offset direct sunlight. Glare distracts site occupants and is the #1 obstructor of daylighting systems.

Here Comes the Sun

Use a lighting system that compliments and supplements natural lighting for energy use cuts, increased worker productivity, and happy tenants. Make sure you are fully utilizing skylights, clerestory windows, conventional glazing, reflective materials, and light pipes.

LED It Shine

Daylight is the most efficient lighting, but after that there’s a variety of light sources each with varying levels of efficiency, color quality, and service life.

Light-Emitting Diodes, LEDs, are a newer light source that can save 50-90% in energy costs. Combined with a reflector upgrade or retrofit, the glare associated with LEDs and the number of fixtures required can be reduced. Tax credits and power company rebates are another advantage of LEDs over fluorescent lighting.

For those who are set on fluorescent, replace T12 lighting systems with energy-efficient T8 lighting and electronic ballasts.

For security and parking lot lighting, high pressure sodium fixtures have the advantage over metal halide, mercury vapor, fluorescent, and incandescent fixtures.

Gain Control

Use lighting controls to adjust electric lights at appropriate times. Use automatic controls that sense ambient daylight to ensure that electric lighting is minimized during strong daylight.

Dimmer switches in stairwells, copy rooms, restrooms, and perimeter lighting fixtures  can trim energy use. For exterior lighting and some interior lighting, time clocks or photoelectric cells can be installed.

Are you seeing the light yet?

Read more on energy management through lighting improvements at Energy Star.

Want to learn more about the greening of existing buildings? Register for a free Webinar, LEED EBOM: 101!

Register Now!

Maybe you’re better than others. Do you know it and how can you show it? Maybe you’ve some catch-up to do in key operational areas. Do you know where and how you should improve?

Get off the bench and get on the benchmarking track! Being a competitive player in CRE demands a comparative analysis of your performance to both that of your peers and best practices in the field. Luckily, we’ve the equipment to start your warm up!

There’s an easy way to measure and benchmark your operational performance. We’ve created a short benchmark survey  that allows for property management professionals to assess their performance across several operational areas and receive immediate feedback based on their responses. Take ten minutes to complete the Operational Assessment Survey and instantly receive a personalized Benchmark Report.

More importantly, you will gain a better understanding of your property’s processes compared to real estate operational best practices. Where do you shine, and where do you need some polishing?

Benchmark the state of your operations for:

1. Tenant Service & Satisfaction
2. Maintenance & Assets
3. Risk Management & Exposure to Liability
4. Online Real Estate Operations

Start the Operations Assessment Survey!

Like the topic? You may also be interested in:

• ON MANAGEMENT: Where Do We Go to Find Best Practices?
• ON MANAGEMENT: 10 Steps to Simple Benchmarking
• Keeping Some Metrics up your Sleeve: 5 Questions you Should Ask
  

If you’re in commercial real estate, whether it’s office, multi-family, retail, or cardboard boxes, you’ve likely witnessed dramatic changes in the industry over the past couple years. The focus on the deal as the investment return driver has given way to a focus on operations and maximizing NOI during a longer hold period.

Institutional, private, and foreign investment ownership are demanding more accountability from management teams. This accountability boils down to a new emphasis on operational analytics. Much as financial performance is measured and quantified, operational performance must be as well. Operating standards, real time visibility, and quantifiable performance reporting are the differentiators for today’s professional management teams.

Are you capturing the right data? Do you have visibility, access, and insight into the data you have? How do you manage and transform your operational information? This data is gold; appropriate reporting and analysis generates actionable insights that enable you to improve risk management, tenant satisfaction, and productivity.

See BEI’s flowchart for tracking and reporting assets:

The best operators are now applying performance metrics to how they operate, and that is their vehicle to taking things to the next level. The game has changed. How should you adjust your thinking and practices to this new reality?

To hear an owner and investor’s perspective on the Metrics That Matter, sign up for a free webinar!

Date: Tuesday, October 25th, 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

Register Now!