Posted by:
Ed Noha
Strategic Consulting

Another successful CoreNet Global Summit is behind. It was great as always to visit with our clients and find out what others in our industry are doing and thinking.

And we are doing and thinking so much!  I’m constantly amazed at the tremendous progress that corporate real estate has made in recent years and the value we can bring to companies.

We will continue to innovate. But the greater priority for most CRE departments is to get to know their business better, so that they can apply the tools and best practices that are already in place. At most companies, there are still untapped opportunities to reduce cost, improve service delivery to the business, and enhance portfolio flexibility using existing expertise. We know what we need to do and how to do it; let’s focus on doing it, and doing it well.

This post unofficially ends our coverage of the Phoenix Summit, but it is not the end of the blog. A couple of our people still have some thoughts they may share in the coming days. And within the next week, my EMEA colleagues will start posting on the London Summit.

Posted by:
Michael Casolo
Corporate Solutions

At the session “Who is Managing Your Corporate Real Estate Software?” Maureen Welsh emphasized that the most common bond amongst her E&Y and Deloitte clients was not in the solution selected but rather than in the selection process itself. I liked her summary of the (relatively recent) history of CRE technology decision-making. I would elaborate on the earliest period, or as I would call it the ‘Breakthrough’ period:  there was much innovation and many options. The selection process was hampered by several factors:

- Number of options with fundamentally different philosophies
- ‘Newness’ of the general concept and lack of historical perspective
- Easy access to software investment dollars led to plethora of ‘quick to market’ solutions

Eventually, the primary choices for data management became internal vs. off-the-shelf vs. service provider-developed. This, in many ways, is still the case, but the complexity has increased in the past few of years. With cloud computing expanding at a rapid pace and more sophisticated demands by end users, the marketplace has again become complex.

Posted by:
Mary Curtiss
Energy and Sustainability Services

Yesterday I went to a really good CoreNet session “The Story Behind McDonalds Green Globes Assessments,” a presentation by my colleague Michael Jordan.  What a great program for establishing a baseline measurement of the sustainability of an office portfolio.

The Green Globes tenant space assessment for McDonalds offices looked at five areas of environmental performance that are specific to offices in multi-tenant buildings:

- Energy features and management practices
- Employee commutation and travel
- Material resources use
- Waste stream management
- Procurement practices

We view these sorts of assessments as annual checkups for your space.  Generating a sustainability score allows management to quantify performance and to identify gaps across the portfolio.  As opposed to assessing one building at a time, the portfolio analysis we did for McDonalds prioritized actions that the company could take across 25 offices for maximum return on effort.

For example, McDonalds was able to see which of its offices already are strong performers in employee commute reduction, which is important for carbon reduction and for employee convenience.  The offices that had not yet made progress managing commutes could learn from those with good practices.  By putting green teams and sustainability champions in place, armed with specific data about the portfolio’s environmental strengths and weaknesses, the corporate management team could focus improvement efforts where they would make the most difference.

Using a simple online tool like Green Globes is a great way to collect comparable data as well as for companies that are interested in exploring ENERGY STAR or LEED certification.

Posted by:
Vivian Mumaw
Corporate Solutions

In the Trading Spaces session a panel of corporate real estate executives and service providers talked about the increasing trend for talented real estate professionals to move back and forth across organizations.  The blur between service provider and client continues as companies continue to globalize their real estate management and continue the trend of outsourcing management to partner providers. 

When asked how they made the decision to make the move from Corporate to Service Partner and vice versa, each of the panelists focused on the growth opportunity provided by the role, their ability to leverage their experience to drive change and the ability to impact the organization. When asked which role provided better compensation, work life balance and empowerment there was no clear distinction.  

As entry level roles in real estate industry become more likely to be filled by service provider organizations than corporate real estate, the movement between Service Partners and Corporates will only increase.