Google Earth Portfolios

At Space Database we have become fascinated with Google Earth. It is a great tool for getting a visual understanding of real estate and the surrounding context. Through our research, we have developed a way to integrate Space Database information so that we can navigate through client portfolios using Google Earth.

This interface represents a fundamentally different way of organizing information. Traditionally building portfolios have been thought of and organized in groups and lists based on building type and region. The tree-view left-hand control is the ultimate result of this conceptualized hierarchy. Google Earth lets us replace this model with one that is much closer to reality – the actual spatial relationships of the buildings themselves. We can use this intelligent map as a replacement for tree and list based organization.

For this to work, users will need Google Earth. It is a free download from Google; you can get it at http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html. It does require administrator rights to install, so if you can’t get this at the office right away, you can try it at home. It is a very cool tool!

Once you have Google Earth installed, paste one of these links into your browser:

• http://www.SpaceDatabase.com/GE/RedcliffRealtyManagementInc.kml
• http://www.SpaceDatabase.com/GE/Dundee.kml
• http://www.SpaceDatabase.com/GE/SlatePropertiesInc.kml

You should see an entire portfolio displayed as a collection of icons on the globe. Now if you click on more than one portfolio you will see more icons and overlapped logos. We have not figured out how to ‘unload’ a set of objects yet.

We have not made a general announcement about this integration yet as it is still in the development stage – I have been emailing a few of our clients at a time to let them know about the prototype.

We will be able to modify the content of the pop-up windows with whatever links and text that we want. Your feedback will be very valuable in helping us design this interface. Please let me know if you have any ideas for how we can make this tool more useful.

B!CRM

B!CRM stands for Building and Client Relationship Management. This is a new strategic tool that we are developing at Space Database to give Arcade a competitive advantage in business development and customer service. This software will give us a clear understanding of our dealings with our clients. It will give us new insights by helping us map and understand the relationships between people and buildings. With our new ‘B’CRM system we will be able to associate our clients with the physical assets that they manage.

 Contact Management

We all have contact lists of people we deal with frequently. Whether they be in Outlook, Act or in a paper address book. One of our goals is to consolidate these lists so that we have a single source of accurate and up to date data that we can all share. This will save time in that only one list has to be maintained. As a shared list, we can put more energy into keeping it complete and up to date.

 Relationship Management

Once we have more than one person dealing with the same list of contacts, managing the relationship between our clients and prospects and our organization becomes more difficult. How do we know we are communicating information to clients that is relevant to their roles? How do we ensure that three people are not trying to sell them the same thing? How do we make sure we don’t forget about some people all together? The situation starts to become more complex now that we are providing many different products and solutions.

As we try to coordinate our services and sales efforts across disciplines we need a system to track all of the communications we have had with a client. We need to be able to see and share all the points of contact that our clients have with us. This is the role of the client relationship management part of the system. An online CRM system will let us see all of the significant contact we have had on every level whether it is by phone, a mail out, a meeting or even a complaint. When we are speaking with anyone of our clients we will know what their history and experience has been with us and our colleagues.

 Building Relationships

What is unique about our business – what sets it apart from other sectors is that we have ongoing relationships with physical assets as well as with people. We need to track what we do with buildings in addition to what we do with people. When we looked at commercial contact management and CRM products, it was the inability to track relationships to buildings that was the biggest impediment. Using off-the-shelf software would in all cases require quite expensive customization or work-arounds. The cost of this combined with the licensing fees drove the pricing up for commercial software to be greater than the cost of developing our own solution.

In our ‘Building’ & Client Relationship Management system, we can track the relationship between our clients and the roles that they play for the buildings they are involved with. For each building we can track the people that are related to it. We can see what projects different people in Arcade have participated in for each building. We can also see what information exists in Space Database that we can leverage for our projects.

 Integration

A system like this will be useless unless it is used by everyone and maintained over time. Ease of use is not just a convenience but a critical success factor. If people do not use this system on a routine daily basis, it will not provide any benefits. It is essential that we make the system very accessible and easy to use. Our strategy will be to put the information in front of people in more than one place. We will integrate the front end of the application into our company portals, offer it as a stand alone web site and display information from within Outlook. In the next version we will also provide a mobile interface for use on Blackberrys and cell phones.

 Here are some examples of how the data will be displayed:

In the Space Database portal

In the Frankland & Associates Portal

In Outlook as a tab under each contact

 Goals

The development and use of this system will allow us to achieve three things. First it will help us communicate better with our clients. Having up to date contact information that is easily accessible and that includes histories of our interactions will make it easier to stay in touch with our clients. Second, more effective communication and better intelligence about people and buildings will support our sales efforts and help generate more growth. Finally a deeper understanding of our clients and a holistic view of our communication with them will allow us understand our clients better and enable us to deliver superior service.

 

What is Indexio?

Indexio is a new service and software offering that has great strategic value for both Space Database and Arcade. Indexio supports our goal of creating value through the effective management of building information. The solution allows building owners to store and easily retrieve CAD files, scanned drawings and other documents that relate to their buildings. Access to this information will make ongoing maintenance and periodic updates much more efficient.

The service aspect of Indexio will involve an initial assessment of the existing data on the building. Space Database staff will review the available information and determine what is most current and relevant. Electronic files from all sources will be consolidated. Paper documents will be inspected and the useful information will be scanned. Once we have determined what is available it will be organized and uploaded to a new web application. For each file around ten database fields are filled in to facilitate searching and retrieval of the information.

The software side of Indexio will be a parallel system to the leasing support application that currently constitutes the Space Database drawing management application. Users of Indexio will login through the same portal and will drill down through the same portfolio tree as our current leasing application users. At the building level there are top level tabs that provide access to the two applications as well as general information on the building.

Tabs at the top of the page allow access to three sections: Overview, The Space Database leasing support application and the Indexio operations support application.

Unlike the current Space Database application, information in Indexio is not organized only by floor and drawing type. There are many pieces of information attached to each file (this is sometimes called metadata). Drawings and documents can be retrieved by searching. You can fill in any amount of information in the search fields to find information that meets your criteria. Enter more detail to narrow your search results or use less data to widen your search.

Search results are displayed under the search form.

Having quick and easy access to technical data will make subsequent projects much more efficient. The archive of information will be kept up to date by uploading and indexing all new information that is generated from these new projects. Once Indexio is set up for a building, the use and reuse of CAD drawings becomes a smooth and efficient process. As landlords, our clients become better building managers. As designers we are able to focus more on value creation than on data creation. We can spend more time developing client solutions and less time drafting.

 

ISO certification at Space Database

The ISO certification at Space Database took around six months from the time that we set it up as a serious project until the time that we felt we were truly running the system. We ran the system for more few months before we had our first external audit and became fully certified.

 We were helped in our project by a very good coach. We had heard that it was very difficult to prepare for the audit without the help of someone that thoroughly understood the ISO system and the process of certification. We met with and interviewed a few different consultants and then selected the one that we felt most comfortable with. Jeff Chesebrough was a very helpful guide and remains a valuable resource as our current internal auditor.

The first thing we had to do was to define our ‘scope’ of certification. What was it that we wanted to say that our company did? We had to put some thought into what our company actually does. Next we had to define a quality management statement. What was the goal of the system we were about to design? These are very important steps because without them you don’t know where you are going and you have nothing to measure you progress against.

The scope of our business:

The provision of software and services for real estate clients, including building surveys, interior design and information management.

 Our Quality Policy Statement:

Space Database is committed to supplying their customers with services that meet their expectations and with information that is clear, accurate and reliable. Space Database strives to continually improve the efficiency and profitability of their processes.

The next thing we had to do was the largest part of this project: we had to map out and document the processes for the work that we do in the office. This involved defining what we do from the sales process, through project management and the various work procedures all the way to final delivery and acceptance of the finished work. We had to document all of the tasks in the office and all the ways that different types of work gets done. We created work flow diagrams and text descriptions of everything. It was a team based effort and it was interesting to find out that there was quite a bit of disagreement about how things were actually being done!

Once we had mapped out our processes, we began to discuss how things could be improved. What should we change? Where were problems most likely to occur? We updated our procedures in ways that we could all agree would help us work more effectively with fewer errors and problems. We designed control systems – mostly in the form of check lists – that would ensure that the steps we had agreed on as being essential for quality results were actually followed.

 The last piece of our quality control system was the setup of measurable objectives. How can you know if your system is working if there is no way to measure results? We set up both objective measures of our performance based on turn-around times and profitability as well as subjective measures based on what our clients thought of us. We conducted an online survey with multiple choice answers. We now re-do this survey every year to see if we are improving.

Although nerve racking, our first certification audit was quite painless. The system was new and we were all enthusiastic about it. Subsequent audits have been a ittle harder. We now have a track record to beat and new goals to reach every year. There is always the tendency to loosen the controls over time. But that is why the system requires regular external audits. The auditor ensures that we do what we said we were going to do!

It was a fair bit of work to set up, but the ISO certification process was not really difficult. We know our own business and we have an intuitive sense of what will make it work better. The ISO system simply helps us standardize on the best practices within the organization. And then the fear of the auditor keeps us honest!