While software designed expressly for back-office users has evolved over the past three decades into robust platforms, the commercial real estate sector has attempted to address middle-office users' needs in part through business intelligence solutions. “There are two problems with that,” says James. “Number one, historically only about 10% or 15% of the entire real estate industry has implemented business software solutions; they've been slow to adopt because of cost. And number two, it still doesn't address the on-demand, real-time capabilities that somebody like an asset manager would need. So even though BI is still a great component and an important piece of the overall solution, it doesn't solve everything.”

Along with providing asset managers with a number of capabilities, the new platform was designed to enable users to bring themselves up to speed in, well, speedy fashion. “We strived for the lowest possible cost of ownership for clients in the small to mid- markets,” says James. “That particular marketplace can't afford lengthy implementations, can't afford large capital expenditures to put new software in, can't afford long disruption of their business—they just don't have the resources or people to do so. So we wanted to make sure that whatever we developed was very intuitive, with a very quick uptime in terms of the implementation and the adoption by the user community.”

An early adopter of the newly introduced platform is Paul Dubord, VP of information technology at Goldrich Kest in Culver City, CA, one of Southern California's largest and oldest development and management companies. “We found it to be a very solid mid-market product,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “When you're a big player in real estate, you're going to have a new product and it has to integrate somehow with your accounting and then your asset management functionality. Well, this mid-market product is fully integrated.”

From the standpoint of property management, accounting or asset management, “I can look at dashboards that all have the same data, look at KPIs, look at reporting without needing an army of people to set it up or support it. It's just out of the box functionality that's there,” he continues.

Dubord points to the speed and ease with which his team adopted the new platform. “When you do a system implementation, you generally spend hours and hours on training,” says Dubord. In fact, he adds, it may take weeks. “We've actually spent a total of three days training asset managers, property managers and accountants on how to use this system; that's how intuitive it is. I've never seen that happen in real estate before. You set it all up once, and you run it from there.

“One thing we haven't looked at yet is how easy or difficult it would be to customize if we had to do that,” he adds. “But because of the back end, the database, the architecture and the reporting platform that RealPage provides, I just don't anticipate that there's a report I wouldn't be able to create or get from them.”

RICHARDSON, TX—Arguably overlooked in the realm of software solutions, asset managers and portfolio managers now have a platform tailored to their requirements. RealPage's recently introduced Commercial Property Management solution has been designed specifically for owners and managers with mid-market commercial office, industrial and retail assets.

Historically, says RealPage's Alan James, “the types of solutions that had been available in the marketplace predominantly focused on one user class, and I would call that the back office user.” In developing the new platform, “we were keen on addressing the asset manager, the stakeholder that's focused on responsibilities of asset management.

“The asset manager user and the back-office user are two very different users,” continues James, SVP of investment management and commercial at RealPage. “There's a lot of software being built for the front office and a lot for the back office, but there's not a lot being built for the middle office. Historically, they've been the ones that have been forgotten.” As a result, he says, asset managers have had to take the “rich” data generated by the back office and aggregate it onto Excel spreadsheets.

Introduced in early April, the RealPage Commercial Property Management solution is intended to provide asset managers with capabilities to which they haven't had ready access. Its features include an asset management component that allows critical data to be shared between all system components; a robust accounting and property management system supporting multiple entity accounting, full-lease tracking, AP and AR management and budget variance reporting; customizable dashboards; tenant-level information tracking and reporting; and support for both real estate and non-real estate corporate entities.

While software designed expressly for back-office users has evolved over the past three decades into robust platforms, the commercial real estate sector has attempted to address middle-office users' needs in part through business intelligence solutions. “There are two problems with that,” says James. “Number one, historically only about 10% or 15% of the entire real estate industry has implemented business software solutions; they've been slow to adopt because of cost. And number two, it still doesn't address the on-demand, real-time capabilities that somebody like an asset manager would need. So even though BI is still a great component and an important piece of the overall solution, it doesn't solve everything.”

Along with providing asset managers with a number of capabilities, the new platform was designed to enable users to bring themselves up to speed in, well, speedy fashion. “We strived for the lowest possible cost of ownership for clients in the small to mid- markets,” says James. “That particular marketplace can't afford lengthy implementations, can't afford large capital expenditures to put new software in, can't afford long disruption of their business—they just don't have the resources or people to do so. So we wanted to make sure that whatever we developed was very intuitive, with a very quick uptime in terms of the implementation and the adoption by the user community.”

An early adopter of the newly introduced platform is Paul Dubord, VP of information technology at Goldrich Kest in Culver City, CA, one of Southern California's largest and oldest development and management companies. “We found it to be a very solid mid-market product,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “When you're a big player in real estate, you're going to have a new product and it has to integrate somehow with your accounting and then your asset management functionality. Well, this mid-market product is fully integrated.”

From the standpoint of property management, accounting or asset management, “I can look at dashboards that all have the same data, look at KPIs, look at reporting without needing an army of people to set it up or support it. It's just out of the box functionality that's there,” he continues.

Dubord points to the speed and ease with which his team adopted the new platform. “When you do a system implementation, you generally spend hours and hours on training,” says Dubord. In fact, he adds, it may take weeks. “We've actually spent a total of three days training asset managers, property managers and accountants on how to use this system; that's how intuitive it is. I've never seen that happen in real estate before. You set it all up once, and you run it from there.

“One thing we haven't looked at yet is how easy or difficult it would be to customize if we had to do that,” he adds. “But because of the back end, the database, the architecture and the reporting platform that RealPage provides, I just don't anticipate that there's a report I wouldn't be able to create or get from them.”