Mobile Strategies for CRE
•
0 likes•408 views
Learn how to define and implement a successful mobile program for better service, improved equipment maintenance, and efficient operations. Watch the webinar on-demand: http://be.buildingengines.com/Mobility-OnDemand-Webinar-Reg.html
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (19)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to Mobile Strategies for CRE
Similar to Mobile Strategies for CRE (20)
More from Building Engines
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Mobile Strategies for CRE
- 1. Must Have Mobile Strategies for Modern Real Estate Organizations Conquering the Code!
- 2. Real Estate Operations Masters Series 2012 Real Estate Operations Masters Series! Register for the complete series at www.buildingengines.com! Sarah Fisher sfisher@buildingengines.com Director, Marketing & Communications Building Engines
- 3. Matthew Brogie Owner & Principal Consultant, Mobility CIO About Mat: Mat has over 25 years of high tech and business process experience, with over 10 years specifically focused on Mobile Application design and work process optimization. As part of the founding team of Eleven Technology, Mat was responsible for all aspects of the mobile design and implementation efforts for global scale Mobility projects at Coca- Cola and Procter & Gamble, and lead the design of Eleven’s core Field Service and Direct Store Delivery solutions.
- 4. Tim Curran CEO, Vela Systems About Tim: Tim has almost 25 years experience in the software industry, and has been implementing mobile technologies for the past ten years. Vela Systems provides Field Management Software for construction by combining mobile and web-based technologies at the point of construction with reporting for management. Prior to joining Vela, Tim served as CEO of Eleven Technology, the leader in next generation mobile field applications for the retail & consumer goods industry. Prior to Eleven, Tim spent five years as the number two executive of I-many, Inc., an enterprise contract management software company that grew from $6MM to $60MM in sales and went public during his tenure . Additionally, Tim spent eight years with Accenture and a year with EMC Corporation.
- 5. Lisa Panzenhagen Property Management, KIRCO About Lisa: As medical leasing and property manager for KIRCO, a real estate development and management company, Lisa is responsible for managing owned and client buildings- specializing in the area of management of medical office space. KIRCO has implemented a comprehensive mobility program to drive efficiency and improve tenant service using the Building Engines mobility solution.
- 6. Mobile Operations in Your Pocket: Must-have strategies for modern real estate organizations Today’s Webinar Topics • Why a mobility program is becoming more and more important every day • What made a mobility program a priority for one of your peers • The areas of your building operations where mobility can make an impact • How best in class property management teams are approaching their mobility programs – what to do first and how to approach the project
- 7. Instructions Insert GoToMeeting Chat Window Slide
- 8. Key Trends Impacting Rise in Mobility • 65% of all adult Americans now have • Increase in a smart phone “Bring Your Own Device” • Average user is more mobile savvy • Staff is being • End users are asked to do expecting more more with mobile tools from less their companies to get their job done easier
- 9. Mobility: Key Trends Work as an action… not a place
- 10. Real-Time Data at Your Fingertips Respond immediately to tenant Update the questions status on a service request Access data while inspecting equipment Solve Problems in Real-Time
- 11. Why was mobility a priority? • Geographically dispersed portfolio • On-the-go maintenance teams • Property managers assigned to multiple buildings • Tenant demand for immediate access to work order submission and status • Central location for data capture- better communication, tracking, and billing
- 12. Biggest Impact of Mobile Applications Speed: communication, work assignment, work completion Collaboration: Real-time Information: insights Related documentation, Instructions, schedules
- 13. Using Mobility to Impact Operations Tenant Management Answer any question a tenant might have on the spot: • Lease details • Status of a work order • Resource scheduling • Building events • Visitor Access • Etc. Provides a professional face to your building
- 14. Using Mobility to Impact Operations Risk Management Manage Incidents as they happen: • Record details in real-time • Notify appropriate parties as the incident happens • Store and access incident documents in a central, online repository • Broadcast message tenants when necessary Ushers issues toward resolution and reduce your liability.
- 15. Using Mobility to Impact Operations Service Request & Maintenance Management Automate your service & maintenance: • Always have a list of scheduled PM’s in hand, as well as any needed equipment history and documentation • Receive emergency service requests on-the-go • Free up time completing paperwork to build more meaningful relationships with tenants • Tenants value the insight into their service requests and live status updates Improves tenant service and extends the lifecycle of your equipment
- 16. Using Mobility to Impact Operations Work Distribution Put work in the hands of someone who can complete it- immediately. • Receive service request alerts anywhere, anytime • Immediately reassign tasks to someone else if you are busy • Assign tasks to staff member who is closest in the building • Respond to leaks, incidents, and other escalated situations in less time. Improve staff productivity and comply with Service Level Agreements
- 17. A Real Life Example- KIRCO Improved tenant communications & visibility “What we’ve found over the years is communicating with customers no matter how you do it always gives them a better impression of your company and how you take care of them...it’s making you more visible in their workday.”
- 18. A Real Life Example- KIRCO Tenant Feedback to Mobility Program Tenants appreciate: • Being able to log work orders on their time • Receiving immediate confirmation that their request was received • Visibility into the status of their request- anytime they want it • Being able to manage their work load on their time
- 19. Business Process Re-engineering Approaching Your Mobility Program Technology Adoption in Real Estate Step 1: Determine Step 2: your Create strategies business around those pressures business pressures- i.e. Improve tenant satisfaction by How do communicating with them more we get frequently started? Step 3: Determine Step 4: the mobile tactics that What Build it out tactics in order of can help you priority- i.e. start achieve our should we with giving tenants online strategies be doing service requests first?
- 20. Business Process Re-engineering Approaching Your Mobility Program Technology Adoption in Real Estate 1. Mobile program success is not about software, devices, features, or technology- it’s about role- based workflows: - What steps do users currently take - Where are they working - Etc. 2. Senior Management involvement is critical 3. Use Outside Resources: partner with firms that have true mobile or web application experience
- 21. Consider Your Workforce Environment What kind of devices do my workers carry around? What is the demographic of my mobile workers? What are the web- based solutions that are compatible Can we with our leverage management what we already systems? own?
- 22. Consider Your Workforce Environment What are the capabilities of my back end systems? What are the platforms I need to support? My software provider has a My system provider is a solution that runs only on SaaS application, already a specific device. available on web browsers. Buying Decision Use what’s in your pocket!
- 23. What KIRKO has accomplished through mobility Customer Service Team Management
- 24. The Panelists Matthew Brogie Tim Curran Lisa Panzenhagen Owner CEO Property Management Mobility CIO Vela Systems KIRCO
- 25. Must Have Mobile Strategies for Modern Real Estate Organizations Conquering the Code!
Editor's Notes
- Sarah: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. Today’s topic is Mobile Operations In Your Pocket- a look at the must have mobile strategies for competitive real estate organizations.
- My name is Sarah Fisher, Director of Marketing Communications at Building Engines, and we are sponsoring today’s presentation. This Webinar is part of our webinar masters series, where we bring you a detailed look at specific technology enabled best practices for commercial real estate operations, at no charge to you.We have an exciting format for today’s webinar. We have three guests with us who bring different perspectives on mobility in commercial real estate today, and we’ll be talking to them in a roundtable format.
- First, we have Mat Brogie who is the owner and principle consultant at Mobility CIO. Mobility CEO works with customers to create strategies and solutions that leverage mobility to make their companies more efficient and competitive. Mat brings a deep wealth of knowledge of trends and opportunities in the mobile area.
- Our second guest is Tim Curran. Tim is CEO of Vela Systems who provides mobility based field management applications for the construction industry. Tim brings the perspective of an executive who develops and manages software applications used by multiple on-site workers including construction workers and engineers.
- And our third guest is Lisa Panzenhagen from KIRCO Management Services. Lisa brings the perspective of a property manager who has been able to take advantage of mobility within her building operations through the Building Engines mobility solution KIRCO is responsible for managing owned and client buildings and have been specializing in the area of management of medical office space for almost a decade.
- Sarah: Some of the key questions that may be on your mind we will be addressing with our panel include: why a mobility program is becoming more and more important every daywhat made a mobility program a priority for one of your peers the areas of your building operations you should look to for mobility to make an impacthow best in class property management teams are approaching their mobility programs – what to do first and how to approach the project
- Before we begin, I want share a few notes with the audience. Our session today is a one-way Webinar, meaning that you will be able to hear us speak, but we cannot hear you. However, you will be able to write questions in the GoToWebinar “Chat” window on the right hand side of your screen. You can also close the chat pane window to see more of the screen. I will monitor the Chat window to answer any logistical questions you might have. We will open the meeting up to Q&A at the end. We are recording this webinar, and you will receive a copy of the webinar, as well as an mp3 version and transcript for you and your colleagues as part of our follow-up after the webinar. We also have prepared content on in-depth subjects including how to approach the decisions around devices and what future developments in mobility should you be thinking about --- we know you have team members that you would want to share this content with so we have prepared it all on a microsite that we will be sharing with you later in the webinar.
- Sarah: Matt, we’re going to bring you up to the podium first, Matt thanks for being with us today. Mat: Thank you, Sarah; it’s great to be here.Sarah: Mat, our audiences today is senior management and IT personnel within property management and building operations. First thing I’d like to ask you is can you take us through key trends in the work place that are impacting the rise in mobility that our audience today should be aware of. Mat: The explosion in mobility is driven in large part to the fact that Smart Phones are becoming ubiquitous. Over the last couple of years we’ve seen an increase in the adoption of Smart Phones by individuals where estimates are that over 65 percent of all adult Americans now have a Smart Phone. And because people have Smart Phones in their personal lives it’s done a couple of things. One is it’s increased the savvy of the average user. They’re not scared of the technology anymore. They’re expecting the small computer that they’re holding in their hands to be able to do quite a bit for them. And so the expectation is that if I can do a Google search when I’m home or I can get directions when I’m home on my phone or when I’m out I can get a review on a restaurant why can’t I have that same kind of power when I’m at work. I want to have specific questions answered at work -- why do I have to go back to my desk or why do I have to make a phone call to ask someone or why do I have to look something else in a binder someplace? Why can’t I just access that information on the phone when it’s clearly “easy to do” on my personal phone at home?
- Work today is much more an action as opposed to a place where you’re not chained to your desk anymore. You don’t have to go to your desktop computer in order to complete work that you do. Instead you’re out working with your constituents or your customers. In the building management space you’re out with your tenants. And questions come up in real time, issues come up in real time and you’re dealing with those issues in real time. You’re out anywhere in your organization answering questions, solving problems in real time as opposed to going to a place to sit down and work on a stack of paper or to access records through a tethered computer.
- Sarah: How are building operations teams responding to this? What are the best of the best doing about this? Mat: In the building operations space we’re seeing quite a few things. first we think about the pressures that they’re under. There’s competition for the space. There’s competition for lease pricing. There’s pressure to get more work out of individuals. So what they’re doing is they’re trying to figure out how to bring the ability to answer questions out to the workers. And that’s really what mobility is all about is putting the power of information right at someone’s fingertips so that when they come across any kind of issue whether it’s a property manager that’s walking the floor, runs into a tenant who has a question about a lease payment or maybe has a question about an expansion that they’re doing to their office and the status of what that expansion is. What they’re looking for are solutions where they can answer those questions right there in the moment. So we’re seeing management carrying wireless tablets and with those wireless tablets they can access the full application that they would normally have to go back to their desk to look up the answers to those questions or to make notes about a request that came from a tenant that they ran into. In the field for the maintenance workers and the people that are completing the service requests we’re seeing maintenance workers walking around with their Smart Phones and accessing systems that have service requests in them. Looking up information about how to complete a maintenance activity, recording information about what they’ve done for work. Maybe recording a new service request from a tenant that they ran into out on the floor. So in the past when you talked about extending knowledge down to the worker that meant extending the knowledge out to the desktop and giving them access to data that’s tied up someplace. Today when we talk about extending knowledge out to the worker we’re extending that wirelessly out into the hands of people that are out on the floor working to solve problems in real time.
- Sarah: Lisa, this is a good point to bring you into the conversation. Matt has talked about mobility trends impacting property managers and building operations – can you tell us what made a mobility program a must-do priority for you at KIRKO? We know that buildings can typically only deal with things that are their top 1 or 2 on the priority list, what made this such a high priority for you? Lisa: Because we service so many locations, we have a traveling maintenance team. We have three full time employees who are outfitted with service vans and equipment and they go to buildings as needed. Some of our buildings are not large enough to have onsite maintenance. So it makes it crucial for us to be able to have these men who are on the road and to be able to communicate with them, have them communicate back is a key factor in the success of our business and how we service our clients. Especially in the medical buildings where there is often not a lot of time to spare in responding to a tenant need. So a work order system that had a mobility function became an absolute requirement. Our number one priority is being able to communicate on the road with the maintenance technicians. I should even mention our property managers are people who are often on the road. Property managers can be assigned one to eight buildings and so they are having to communicate and place work orders from any building they may be at or from their cars. It became a priority because customers are demanding immediate access to place a work order and hoping for immediate response to those work orders. In the last couple years the amount of people who e-mail requests even if those requests are somewhat urgent that number has gone up. There are people who just say this technology is here we want to use it. So now replacing e-mail which is not an effective way to communicate work needs, replacing that with a system that offers mobility gave our customers, our tenants, our internal property management maintenance teams a way to communicate more immediately, a way to identify the difference between a work request and a regular e-mail and a way to track and bill these items. So it tied all these pieces that we had to treat very separately into one package so it makes everything work better, makes it work more efficient. And it opened up a private form of communication between us and our tenants. So when you know you’re receiving something from the work order system you know it’s a tenant who needs some type of service. We all realize that to compete in our industry, to be able to show people that we are the best management company we had to be able to say that we bring systems with us. We found customers or potential customers that we were seeking contracts with asking us if we offered a web based work order system with a mobility piece because they wanted to be assured that we have a system that allowed those communications to happen all the time even if our staff was on the road. We looked at it as a priority just because it makes good business sense. But additionally our customers were asking for it at the same time.
- Sarah: Risk management is a huge issue today. How does the statement of conditions call out specific risks? PETER HARROD: So specifically it’s working to cite section and verse of the applicable codes in which we have noncompliant conditions, whether it’s associated with a fire life safety system or it’s associated with a building component, meaning perhaps we have an open stairway that otherwise should be enclosed. Specifically outlining not just that you should have two enclosed means of egress but identifying the specific code section and verse so that we know for sure here is where and why it’s going to be applicable. The other risks that this process will make you aware of is any existing and known violations. If we’re representing the owner you might very well be aware of those items. But if we’re representing the purchaser these items may not be transparent as of yet and there’s some level of due diligence that’s done by way of the building and fire departments as well as interviewing key staff associated with the facility as it stands today. The other risks that it will make you aware of is again not only perhaps recognizing that yes this building is fully sprinklered but is it sprinklered and provided with an appropriate level of water supply given the use of occupancy and commodity storage. So taking a step beyond just yes it’s provided with active suppression but it’s provided with active suppression appropriate for the commodity. Identifying risks relative to the appropriateness of the fire alarm systems and the smoke control systems moving forward in ability to get replacement costs and/or whether or not there are particular recalls associated with a vendor’s fire alarm panel or remote panel. And whether there’s issues and/or recalls associated with equipment that is tied to those fire life safety systems.
- Sarah: Mat, I’m going to address this next question to you – how do you see mobility specifically impacting the different areas of business operations? Where should the members of our audience today be thinking about for how mobile solutions can help improve operations? Mat: There’s kind of an endless limit to the specific mobile capabilities that you’d be able to bring out in the building management space. But some of the key highlights, let’s take it by role. I’m a big believer in solving problems based on the business need and the business function as opposed to just dropping a piece of technology into someone’s hands. So if we look at it from a role perspective that makes the most sense. A property manager walking the floor may need to answer questions that come to him from a tenant. Instead of having to make a phone call or go back to the office and get back to that tenant later on they can go right into their tenant management system from a tablet based application that they carry around with them all the time. They can answer questions about lease details, about work orders that have been placed on that tenant’s behalf, building schedule’s, really anything that they would normally have to get back to the tenant with an answer later on. And what this does is it gives a higher level of service to the tenant. It gives them a feeling that the management of the building knows what’s going on and has their finger on the pulse and makes for a more satisfied tenant.
- Another good example is incident tracking and incident management. If someone’s out on the floor and there’s let’s say a slip and fall in the lobby being able to 1) get that recorded and documented in real time using mobile technology is very helpful in managing as it moves forward. Also being able to notify other people that may need to be notified about that particular incident. Being able to do that wirelessly and through mobile applications enhances the process for getting resolution and getting those things addressed quickly as well.
- One of the key ones we see where there’s the most dollar savings is in service request management and maintenance management. Where maintenance workers while they’re out on the floor they can get notified of new emergency situations that come up that need immediate attention. They can get a continuous listing of maintenance service items that need to be completed. It increases the amount of compliance of getting things serviced. As far as completing the paperwork that would normally go along with service records and maintenance records if that’s all done on a mobile application it reduces the amount of time that workers have to spend sitting at a desk at the end of the day completing the forms that typically need to be filled out, which, in turn, reduces the amount of overtime that you see people spending.
- Another key related to service is the distribution of the work. a few years ago, it was very common for maintenance workers to have to walk up to a central location and go to a printer or a fax machine and pick up service tickets. Once they picked up that service ticket they would go and manage whatever needs to be managed about that ticket. Now when they’re mobile enabled the work can be electronically sent to them and if they’re busy doing something and they’re not going to be able to get to that piece of work quickly they can reassign it to someone else or bump it back up to a supervisor who will reassign it someone else. And what that does is it allows for work to be put into the hands of who can actually get that work done much more quickly and much more intelligently than ever before. That has two major implications. One, the work gets done much more efficiently and whenever something’s done more efficiently clearly the costs go down. And two, it helps building management organizations comply with service level agreements that they have in place on a lease. If a call comes in for an emergency leak problem it can be responded to very, very quickly because it’s been put in the right hands very quickly, which will enable those service level agreements to be met. And possibly save the management organization fines and fees associated with missing SLAs.
- Sarah: Lisa, is there a specific area that Matt has been speaking to that has made a real difference for you and your team with your mobility program? Lisa: It increased communications with our tenants so it gave us visibility. Through the system they’re notified more than ever before. For instance if we responded to a service request and the tenant who placed that request was out to lunch, they may have in the past just come back to see the item that they needed repaired, maybe something as simple as a light bulb replacement. They’ve come back and they would see that it was done but there wasn’t necessarily any real communication between our group and the customer for items that are that simple. With this system we can respond to the service request, indicating that it’s been closed and they’re getting real time communication. So even if we miss them in a face-to-face interaction they’re still receiving a communication from us. What we’ve found over the years is communicating with customers no matter how you do it always gives them a better impression of your company and how you take care of them. So they’re definitely seeing our name and our services, explanations of our services, completion of our services, they’re seeing a lot more information from us. So it making us more visible in their workday.
- Sarah: Have you received any specific feedback or stories from your tenants that you can share with our audience today? Lisa: Because we work with so much medical space we have tenants who their time is taken during the day, the hands-on patient care and their commitment to that they sometimes don’t have time to make a phone call for something they need or get on a computer for something they need. And they’ll closing out their day and next thing you know it’s 7:00 at night and they remember that they needed to make a call about something or they needed to place a work order. In the past they needed to write a note to call or e-mail one of us the next day. But what I’ve heard back from tenants that they like about this is even if they’re driving home they can access the system and place a work order 7-8:00 at night and that they can then see that work order is in, they know we’re going to respond. They usually receive their notification back from us immediately and the feedback we’ve heard is that it’s really helped our customers organize the way they need to reach out to us. So it’s no longer even a thought for them they can do it at the end of the day, they can do it in a number of different ways. They can always feel secure that their request got to us because they can look at the system and check it. But it did open up an opportunity for them to communicate differently and on off hours without feeling like they were using our on call lines inappropriately, no one wants to call the emergency line for a simple work order request. We received great feedback from people, it helps them manage their work load because they felt more like they had 24 hour access to place work orders and even receive communications back.
- Sarah: All good stuff, where I want to take us next is back to Mat. We’ve talked about a lot of the reasons why a mobility program is moving to the top of the list of importance, I’d like to now rely on Mat’s expertise to talk through – how should executives start thinking about approaching a mobility program. How do you get started, what should they be doing first? Mat: The key thing to consider one is why are you investing in mobility in the first place. A lot of people make that mistake where they’ll say well, everybody’s doing mobility I got to do it too. And then they’ll try and think of ways to apply mobile technology into their organization and that’s really been the wrong way to go about it. The right way to go about it is to start at the top with the business pressures. Things like pressure to improve tenant acquisitions satisfaction and retention. That’s a real business pressure that property management organizations are under. Pressure to reduce operations cost. Pressure to maximize efficiency of workers. Pressures to increase the longevity of capital assets that you have in the organization. And then think about how do you address those pressures. What kind of things do you need to do from a strategic perspective to address those pressures? how do you make your tenants more satisfied and retain them and how do you acquire more tenants than your competitors will acquire. So you say, a good way to do that might be to improve the amount of visibility and interaction that my building management has with tenants. Increase the level of tenant touch. Do things like improve the ability to address issues in the moment. Improve your ability to meet service level agreements and exceed service level agreement expectations. So you start to put together strategies like that that will address those business pressures that you’ve cataloged earlier. Then once you’ve got those strategies down then you can start to think about what are the tactics that I would need in order to implement those strategies? What kind of things can I apply in order to get those strategies met? And you might start thinking about things like, if I had wireless connectivity to my back end systems for everybody that’s out on the floor they could answer questions for tenants very quickly. Automatically notifying workers when a service ticket has reached an escalation point, has been created by a tenant or if there’s some incident that’s occurring in the building automatically notifying the right people at the right time. Giving maintenance workers the ability to electronically close a ticket or advance a ticket to the next stage. That again will improve service level agreement performance, which in turn improves tenant satisfaction and relieves some of those higher-level pressures.
- Sarah: This is great Mat. Tim I’d like to ask you to weigh in for your reaction to what Mat’s saying and the approach he’s outlining. You bring the senior executive perspective – how do you recommend our audience approaches their mobile initiatives? Tim: In terms of tackling a business process or business problem it should start with process analysis and requirements analysis. And, looking at the workflow that users take part in, in doing their job. I often look at what are they physically doing when they’re doing their job? Are they sitting down? Are they standing up? And, analyzing the steps they take, the tools they use today and the various options or technology that might be deployed around that word process. Sarah: And who should be involved? Tim: With any initiative senior management involvement is critical. So, they’re the owner, they’re the champion of the initiative and it’s going to always be based on business needs and business requirements, not on particular software technologies or even particular computer devices or mobile technology. It’s a combination of business and IT partnering together and when mobility expertise and specific deep levels of expertise are required, that’s when you can go outside of the IT department of a company and hire various experts. The software vendors in an industry can be relied on to give strong advice on different ways to approach a mobility initiative. I would tend, as an executive, to look towards partners whether it’s consulting firms or software companies that have a true deep level of expertise and mobility versus it being secondary or in the case of many software companies as playing catch up. A lot of companies are that old and they tend to be scrambling even to catch up with web applications, never mind mobility. So, I look towards firms that have a true mobile first orientation and have expertise with web applications as well.
- Sarah: Great, that gives some good perspective to compliment what Mat is saying. Mat let’s take it back to you. After you’ve looked at and prioritized the business pressures, what’s next? Mat: Once you got a good solid list of the tactics that you want to take and let’s use allowing a maintenance worker to complete a service ticket electronically on his phone as an example. then you got to start looking at okay, how do I implement this tactic? What’s the right solution that I need to put in place to do this? Part of it will be dependent upon what you’ve already got in place. And up to a few years ago to do something like that meant evaluating what kind of mobile handsets to buy and to implement for your workers. Today probably a more relevant question to ask, is what kind of devices do my workers carry around? What’s the demographic of my mobile workers? Are they already carrying powerful computers in their pockets that I can leverage? And if they are if it is within the demographic of your workers to carry Smart Phones with them for the particular business problem that you’re trying to solve then you should look at web based solutions that are compatible with your building management systems that those people could access through the browsers that they are carrying around with them in their pockets. If the demographic of your users does not lend itself to people that carry Smart Phones around with them then you might want to take a different path and focus more on what are the options available to extend the data out to my workers given the existing systems that I carry. You may be in a situation where your back end service provider only has mobile solutions that are a native application for a Windows mobile device for example. In which case you have to go down a path of determining where to buy these mobile devices and how much to invest in them. So break it down from the top to the bottom. Starting at the top with business pressures, working down to the specific tactic that you would implement in order to meet the strategies to resolve those business pressures, and then look at the environment, the environment of your workers and the environment of your existing service providers to see what they offer and where the compatibilities lie.
- Mat: Once you’ve identified specifically what it is that you want to get accomplished and let’s use the maintenance worker who we want to enable to electronically close service tickets as an example. Then you need to look at two things 1) from a systems perspective what are the capabilities of your back end systems to be able to extend that workflow out to the individual worker. Are there already existing solutions that you can implement? And then 2) what are the platforms that you would need to be able to support? The decision there oftentimes is do I provide a mobile device for my users? There may be a corporate edict that says mobile workers are not allowed to use their own personal devices. There may be exactly the opposite edict that says whenever a mobile worker has a Smart Phone we should do everything we can to leverage that technology that they’re carrying around with them. Once you’ve completed this assessment it starts to become fairly clear. Your back end software provider, they may have canned solutions that run only on specific devices, in which case it becomes a buying decision on how to acquire those devices and put them in place. On the other hand your back end system provider may be a web based SaaS orientated application provider in which case their applications are already available through web browsers. And you don’t have to go through a process of buying devices for your users because they’re probably already carrying around a very powerful web browser in their pocket and will be able to access the systems through that mechanism.
- Sarah: Thanks Mat. I’d like to wrap up with Lisa – one of the questions I suspect our audience would like you to answer is in addition to what you’ve already discussed in terms of tenant communications, how else can you describe the impact your mobility program has had? Lisa: We can now communicate in real time with our service teams and get them to our tenants and our customers who need services. And it’s as simple as placing that work order and they’re receiving it on their mobile device. Not only that they can respond to it and they can respond to it in a way that we’re notifying the office, me the property manager and our customer all at the same time. So instead of the traditional format of phone calls, trying to find everybody we’ve got this mobility piece that makes everything a lot more efficient, a lot cleaner. It makes communicating better. It also allows us to provide more information to the person who’s completing a service who have to have it. So whether it’s a site plan that needs to be shared with them, there are things that we can communicate mobilely that we couldn’t before because we were really stuck with traditional trying to explain things over the phone or through e-mail which just wasn’t as effective as this system makes us.
- Sarah: Great, I want to thank all three speakers, Mat, Tim & Lisa, for sharing their insights with us today. We will be opening it up for Q&A in a few moments, and you can submit questions for any of our guests via the chat panel. I want to also mention that mobility is such a rich topic that there are some key areas that we could not get to in our webinar today that we will be sharing with you after the webinar. These include insights from our panel around: Mat’s comparison of devices – iPad vs. Android vs. Blackberry A discussion from Tim around device convergence An explanation of HTML5 and how that will impact mobility A look at future trends in mobility This will be a key resource for you to share with anyone on your teams preparing for projects or programs in mobility. So with that, we’ll open it up to questions.
- Questions…