LOS ANGELES—In response to its office occupier client needs, CBRE has launched Occupier Advisory and Transaction services, an integrated platform of brokerage and advisory services that will better meet the needs of large and small clients. Darcy Mackay has been tapped to co-lead the group as COO, along with Whitley Collins, who will serve as Americas president. To learn more about the new platform and the growing needs of occupier clients across the globe, we sat down with Mackay and Collins for an exclusive interview. Here is what they told us:

GlobeSt.com: What inspired the integration of these two platforms?

Darcie Mackay: There has been a huge growth in the needs of our occupier clients. CBRE has been in the business since its inception of serving occupiers and their individual transaction needs, and we've also built the world's biggest business in terms of serving our larger integrated needs for occupier clients across transactions, projects and facilities management, but there is a growing need for smaller younger companies coming up in this space to use the services that CBRE has on more than a one-off basis. They may not be ready or at the scale to buy in bigger increments, but they have a very similar set of needs across markets, geographies and property types. We realized that we had an opportunity to build a fully integrated occupier services platform that would address the need of the entire spectrum, not just the one-off clients or the larger integrated accounts on the other end. All of the things that we have invested in over the years in terms of technology, innovation and what we call our platform were just as relevant to the middle occupier client as well, and that is really the space that we are looking to take a lead in serving.

What are the special needs of occupier clients, and why is it important the have an integrated group that servers them specifically?

Whitley Collins: If you look at the spectrum of our clients, on one end you have the local market clients, which only had needs in the local market for many years and that meant helping them negotiate a lease in the local market. What has changed in the last few years is that some of these bigger companies, particularly that have national or global footprints, need a lot more. Some of the big fortune 400 or fortune 500 companies want services all over the globe; they want us doing transactions; they want us doing project management; they want us doing strategy; they want us managing all of their information; they want to do outsourcing. And with that big change over last few years, there are also more and more smaller companies that want all of those services, too. Companies with smaller footprints and regional firms look at those larger companies and say that they also want to do all they can to maximize their real estate.

Mackay: A lot of the people that are forming these smaller companies are coming from a larger company environment, and they are used to being able to buy with scale and leveraging the community. When they move into bigger roles in a smaller company, they are pretty savvy about our services. They are expecting more from the industry and they are expecting more from providers then what has historically been provided to the smaller cap space, not just in terms of services but also exposing those lessons learned and best practices that those larger companies have already figured out over the last two decades.

GlobeSt.com: This is a new platform for CBRE. Is it also a new idea for the industry?

Mackay: This is a new and leading concept in the industry. We have heard some of our competitors talk about it, but we have essentially taken two divisions in the company and put them together. So, we have fully restructured our leadership, organization, the way we manage our P&L and the way the platform is deployed. CBRE is a pretty nimble and innovative company. We are not afraid to make bold moves, and I think we are very much at the forefront of this.

Collins: I would add that we are trying to take all of these services that these big companies want and bring them to all of our occupier clients. The reality is that if you look at the real estate landscape of firms that can provide global integrated services like we are talking about, there are really just two: us and JLL. It is not just these global integrated firms that want all of these services. We are finding that the local market firms want to know the trends in workplace, trends in labor in other markets, etc. All of  these things had only been provided to the big integrated accounts are now being stretched across.

GlobeSt.com: The new platform also comes with a role shift for each of you. Tell me why you are excited to be a part of leading and developing this integrated platform, and what you will be doing.

Collins: Darcie and I still have very similar responsibilities, it is just now more integrated. Our focus continues to be growing this business for our company and to continue to scale the platform, so all of these services are available to all of our clients. We are also looking to continue to focus on hiring. As this business grows, talent remains a focus of ours. We are finding opportunities within the company to transfer into what we are doing. Those have been our focus for the past few years now, but it is easier to accomplish those goals now that we are more aligned.

Mackay: I come from a different background because I have come up through the consulting and advisory business, and I have lived and worked in other regions of the world, so I am very familiar with global operations. For the last few years, I have been in transaction management and portfolio services, which is our data management and lease administration business, as well as the consulting functions. I think Whitely and I are quite complementary together because we come from different backgrounds, and all of those skill sets are needed to build a fully integrated occupier platform and make sure that we're delivering that in the best way possible to our full range of clients.

GlobeSt.com: What are your immediate goals in integrating these two platforms?

Mackay: We have what I think is the world's best platform for serving our occupier clients. It is very rich and very deep. We are not trying to recreate our platform, but we are trying to advance it as we always do. We want to make sure that the occupier client is able to tap into our full range of services, even without asking for it. It becomes the CBRE way and the CBRE advantage. We are often asked: what is the advantage of scale. As the most profitable real estate company in our space, we have the ability to reinvest a lot of that profit back into a platform that is serving the clients, and at the same time because we have touched so many clients, we have the benefit of seeing what is going on in each of those portfolios in terms of efficiency, in terms of trends in workplace, in terms of the actual operating costs. It is our responsibility to bring that back to all of our clients irrespective of their size and irrespective of whether they have asked for it.

Collins: I have a saying that we can solve any company's problem anywhere in the world, we just need to know what it is. We have all of the pieces now—we have so many services—so we are really focused on integrating it. That is a challenge—how do you integrate it globally. Now that the occupier clients are starting to blend together and they are all asking for the same things, the challenge for us is figuring how to take all of these services and integrate them. Our goal now is to make sure that we are delivering great outcomes for our clients, and that means equipping all our professionals with the knowledge of all of the resources and capabilities that we have. We don't just want to say that we are the biggest, but we want to have clients really feel it.

GlobeSt.com: Last thoughts?

Collins: The biggest cost that companies have is their people, and companies want to know how to get access to the right talent. What we are seeing now more than ever before, and I think technology has a lot to do with it, is companies will have 500 or 1,000 jobs in a back-office department or a call center, and they want to know where in the world they should locate it. That is becoming a huge area of our focus.