Posts Tagged ‘real estate software applications’
|Software Envy?
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
By Jeff Tosello
Maybe it’s just software confusion that has people looking, wondering, and scratching their heads asking about which lease administration software is the best and how they can get their systems to “talk to each other” or to generate this report or that one. Entering the words “lease administration software” in Google produces more than 11 million results! But the truth is, aside from the interface, most of the prevailing systems out there today do many of the same things. When clients begin thinking that software can solve their problems it can be an opportunity to educate, but it’s often an uphill battle against a tide of marketing dollars spent to make it look about as easy as a diet pill…just buy this and you’ve found a magic cure. Furthermore, what they might think they are looking for in software can sometimes be found in their existing systems if they can change business process enough to generate the data the software needs to run in the first place. At a minimum, reviewing these processes is an important first step even if software procurement, data migration, and new reporting are in the company’s future.
Real estate software applications break down into a few neat groups. First, there are applications that can be purchased and run on a company’s own network environment. Typically a license fee is paid once, the software ships, and then there is an annual support contract that is a percentage of the upfront cost. Opposite that model are the ASPs (application system providers) that provide web access to the software on a monthly license fee basis, but the application itself and the data are stored in their own server environment.
The next division is between applications that have built-in accounting functionality and those that do not. The accounting-based systems have an underlying general ledger so that when items like rent are “posted” or bills are “paid”, this debits and credits ledgers that run behind a number of the applications and can produce financial statements for properties or companies. Typically these systems are in place when a company has a lot of owned property and is, or at least functions like, a landlord or asset manager.
Finally, software applications can be grouped by features. Some applications are designed to take care of a particular function like lease administration, project management, or property accounting. Others integrate a number of functions on a relational basis such as property and lease management (data, dollars, and dates), transaction and project management (starts, stops, and status), and facilities management (parts, places, and people). Often though, and this adds to the confusion, these applications morph from one area in which they are or were strong into the other areas where they have added features to make them appear as though they can also handle other functions as well…but do they?
Everyone has probably seen many different software demonstrations for different reasons. Despite a few horror stories where someone’s demo crashed or failed, these demonstrations are usually very enticing. Dynamically updating charts, colors, graphs, alarms, maps, links to web sites….they practically run themselves (at least for the short time that the demonstration runs). At the same time, everyone has also probably bought something they saw on television or read about, taken it home, gotten it out of the box, and had that moment when they realize that “some parts are sold separately” and this thing isn’t going to work like it did on the commercial. Falling in love with features but not considering functionality can be a problem because now you own the software, and the only answer might be spending more money on software development consulting time. Ouch.
The decision to replace the old spreadsheet and try to get information access the new way via portals or dashboards can be appealing and often leads business customers to their real estate broker for an opinion. This can be a great opportunity for advisors to demonstrate the ability to listen. What is it that customer is really trying to accomplish? How can your real estate advisor help? There is a lot to consider and it certainly can start with what the customer wants things to look like when it’s all done but should it start with CresaTrac? Virtual Premise? Archibus? LeaseHarbor? Acruent? The answer is simple: maybe.
Tags: lease administration software, real estate software applications
Posted in Lease Administration | Comments Off
