Going Green

The importance of "going green" by reducing facility carbon footprints, lowering electricity, cutting down on water use, encouraging carpooling and public transportation has never been stronger, and efforts to limit activities that produce greenhouse gases may soon be law in the United States.
How can property owners and occupants begin the process of going green?
It's all about information -- knowing what your current position is, knowing what your goals are and then looking at ways to get from here to there.
And an IWMS system like Bricsnet can be an important part of the process.
In fact, your system may already be tracking many of the numbers you need in order to assess your current status. If you are recording your energy and other utility costs and consumption in your IWMS system, you already have much of the information you need.
Clients who take advantage of Bricsnet's partnership with VFA may have even more information available to them that will help in the effort to assess their current status and set goals for improvement.
Your leases and other property agreements may also contain vital information. Parking clauses may provide special spaces for hybrid vehicles, or carpool vehicles, or guarantee that public transportation is available within a certain distance of your site. Cleaning provisions may specify the use of agents that don't contain environmentally harmful substances. If your current leases don't have such provisions and they have become a priority for you, a system like Bricsnet can help you to track these priorities through the site selection and transaction process.
OSCRE, the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate, has recently begun a couple of efforts to standardize data elements and exchanges for tracking green lease provisions and for monitoring and reporting on compliance with these provisions. An OSCRE workgroup is in the process of defining standard elements for data exchange and a subgroup is looking at the reporting side of the requirements. Look for announcements from OSCRE about progress, or better yet, join the effort to define standards that can be used by ny organization interested in tracking their greening efforts.
You can learn more about OSCRE by clicking this link.
And you can learn more about how Bricsnet can help you in your efforts to green up your business environment by contacting us.

OSCRE at the National Academy of Science

Andy Fuhrman, CEO of the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE), reports that on June 24 he will be speaking at the National Academy of Science - Federal Facilities Council. Topic of his address is, "Warfighter or Office Worker -- Converting Operating Dollars to Mission Funding by Leveraging Emerging Technologies for Real Property Asset Management."
Also speaking with Andy will be Lt. Col. Mark Madaus, USAF - Asset Management Optimization Branch.
Andy's talk will focus on the "unsexy" behind-the-scenes work that organizations need to do to move to a higher level of operational excellence, while Lt. Col. Madaus will provide a look at his mission to reduce operating expense and Real Estate portfolio size by 20 percent by the year 2020. A key component of the Air Force's mission is use of the OSCRE Space Classification Standard.
The session will be held in Room 109 of the Kirk Center at the National Academy of Science in Washington DC. Start time is 9 am on June 24 and the session is open to the public.

How Can You Control Real Estate Costs?

The website iwmsnews has published an interesting piece with the intriguing title, "10 Ways To Reduce Costs Immediately". It's worth a look. The advice may be common sense, but it touches on issues that organizations may not be acting on even though they know it makes sense: Eliminating non-performing assets and contracts; charging back internally for use of space; cutting underutilized space from the portfolio; implementing virtual meetings and the like.
One of the author's key points is that when it comes to cost reductions, organizations tend to look first at cutting valuable human capital rather than looking around them at a real estate burden that may be already taking far more out of the business than it should. And, given the cost of real estate, many jobs could potentially be saved by right-sizing the portfolio.
The word "immediately" may be misleading. Analysis of the portfolio and understanding where opportunities to divest, sublease or otherwise dispose of underperforming leases and assets takes time.
But that's where an IWMS system can provide enormous time-savings. With at-a-glance reports highlighting the occupancy and utilization of facilities, cost of leases in various markets and costs of equipment repair and replacement, organizations can gain a rapid -- if not immediate -- sense of where savings can be made.
As the article says: "Accountability is the key concept for cost reductions. You have to ensure that you can compare figures and that people are accountable for those figures. Therefore you have to identify cost reductions possibilities and start eliminating these costs now!"
Technology such as IWMS provides that level of accountability that organizations need to begin making the good decisions that can save millions of dollars and ensure a business that can survive a difficult economy.

Integrated Project Delivery

Here's a link to an interesting post today from the folks at Tradeline on Integrated Project Delivery (IDP). http://www.tradelineinc.com/reports/63186B14-D0E4-FDA2-6DA5927B9B479B68
IDP is a way of managing projects that brings together all parties -- owner, architect, engineer, contractors and agencies -- at the very inception of a project. They work as a team through the design and construction phases, solving problems on a team basis as the project proceeds.
In the words of the article, "Their relationship becomes a partnership rather than the traditional one of adversarial roles."
Bricsnet Enterprise and Bricsnet Retail offer support for IDP project management methodology through the concept of project teams, which can be formed at any stage in the project process, and provide team members with streamlined ways to communicate and update each other.
Team members can have varied roles that give them capabilities focused on their areas of expertise, or all team members can have the same privileges.
Tradeline Inc. points out that by using IDP, project teams can begin looking at cost controls earlier in the process. The design process becomes front-loaded, in a sense, so that from the very beginning, as ideas are being developed, some team members are looking at cost ramifications and providing alternates that could save money.
This is an idea that makes a lot of sense in difficult economic times.

Collaboration: More Important Than Ever

As Bricsnet's ProjectCenter celebrates its 10th birthday this month, it's interesting to remember how times have changed since this application was introduced in 1998.
The Internet dominates the business world in a way that was almost inconceivable a decade ago. And as a result, online collaboration has become a way of life for many people. Although the Web was a familiar place in 1998, it was -- compared to today -- a relatively static environment. The dynamic, interactive applications we know on today's Internet were, for the most part, a few years away. Although attempts were being made to "webify" some business applications, the applications were, for the most part, crude and simplistic.
In that world, ProjectCenter was a groundbreaking advance. And the product has kept pace. As expectations of Internet applications have grown, ProjectCenter's functionality and user interface have continued to develop. The new release takes advantage of the latest technologies to bring customers new scheduling and communication functionality that makes this tool more powerful and easier to use.
Here are some of the new and enhanced features you will find in ProjectCenter 6.0:

New User Interface
Icon Driven User Experience
Moveable / Adjustable / Collapsible Panels
Option Skin Color Themes
Anchored Pop-up Windows
Wizard Driving Administration

Project Schedule / Milestone Tracking
Parent and Child Events
Task Assignment
Gantt Chart

Project Calendar Enhancements
New interface
Event Export to Outlook
Action Item Due Date View
Milestone Item Due Date View
Enhanced Email Notifications

Administration Enhancements
New Wizard Driven Interface
Role Based Security Available
Drag and Drop – Team Directory & Folder Structure
Username/Password Notification Allows Attachments

Document Management Enhancement
File Listing Custom Fields (Text, Drop-Down, Date, Memo, and Radio Button)
File Upload Progress Indicator
Selected File User Notification (Post Upload)
Enhanced Document “Expanded” View
Enhanced Commenting Functionality

Workflow & Configurable Form Enhancements
Added Additional Custom Field (Memo, Date and Radio Button)
Additional Task Management
From a Single Screen a User can see:
Tasks Assigned to Them
Tasks They Have Assigned
All of Their Action Items

With all of the advances of the past decade, we can only imagine what the next 10 years will bring. But looking at the new ProjectCenter release, you can begin to believe that whatever new paths web technology forges, ProjectCenter will be there.

On the Owner vs. Tenant Battleground with Bricsnet

In the commercial real estate industry, owner vs. tenant obligations are battle-hardened topics. The subject has been weighed thoroughly from diametrically opposed perspectives. While the owner fights for renewal rights and reclaiming space for better deals, tenants perform lease audits against CAM reconciliations and OPEX charges.

In the retail industry, landlord/tenant contracts get even more complex. In a mall environment, for example, CAM charges reign as a constant battle, forcing some retailers to seek free-standing stores over malls based on fees alone. These contracts are often extremely complex, with things like termination clauses if the anchor store closes, CAM fee percentages, flat CAMS and other intricacies. The variables in these cases are infinite. Regardless of the outcome and changes from this continuous struggle, one thing remains constant: tenants need flexible and agile technology to effectively enable, enforce and normalize lease operations. Bricsnet helps retailers:

Enable
· Avoid unnecessary expenses by thoroughly understanding terms, conditions and landlord vs. tenant responsibilities
· Make-informed decisions on lease renewals, extensions, terminations, options and opportunities
· Keep responsible parties informed about critical dates and scheduled actions

Enforce
· Ensure that deadlines and critical dates are met without exception.
· Track improvements, including budgets, expenses, landlord vs. tenant contributions, and other details
· Enforce approval chains

Normalize
· Retain a complete audit trail for every lease
· Define and manage roles and responsibilities in lease administration
· Manage lease-related insurance policies and details
· Calculate and manage specialized rents such as indexed and percent-based rents

Most importantly, Bricsnet provides a flexible and stable platform that adjusts with constant change. While Bricsnet offers standard lease management capabilities built from years of customer interaction and best practices, customers can fine-tune the solution without touching the source code. With Bricsnet, you can easily modify workflows, add data elements specific to your business, manage security and access rights for internal and external users, classify information in ways that make sorting and filtering easier – even change the look and feel of the application to match your standards. To learn more about how Bricsnet can enable, enforce and normalize your lease operations, contact Bricsnet at (415) 321-2650 or www.Bricsnet.com.

Software as a Service Makes Sense for Business

Software as a Service (SaaS) is not a new concept. As soon as the Internet became a common part of our lives in the 1990s, software companies began promoting the benefits of hosted software applications. First touted as ASP (Application Service Provider) delivery, the concept has evolved over the last decade to what we now commonly refer to as SaaS.

Elimination of in-house IT burdens provided and still provides – the primary rationale for hosted software. With IT staff often in short supply and older buildings often not equipped for uninterrupted power and the significant cooling and other environmental requirements of server rooms, Software as a Service offers the possibility of offloading applications to experts whose core business is in care and maintenance of IT environments.

There were justifiable fears and undeniable problems with early ASP delivery. Internet connections were still slow and unreliable. Applications weren’t designed for Internet delivery, and so performance and user interfaces were less attractive than the client-server appications that were dominant at the time.

But the world has changed in a decade. Today, Software as a Service fulfills its early promise, and can provide the most reliable and economic for companies to access their business systems. Here are some of the reasons the picture has been so thoroughly transformed:

• Internet connectivity has improved: When business applications were first offered over the web a decade ago, many people – and many businesses – were still relying on dial-up connections to reach the Internet. Access was difficult, limited to locations where phone jacks were readily available, and subject to frequent dropped connections. Today, with high-speed and WiFi connections becoming ubiquitous – in hotel rooms, airports, cafes and even public parks – people really can work anytime and just about anywhere. Internet security has improved too; business today is conducted over secure Internet connections that have little risk
• Web-based applications have matured: Unlike early web-enabling technologies, which often took minutes to move from screen to screen or to update data, applications today can be built – like Bricsnet – from the ground up to perform quickly and effectively over the web. Technologies such as AJAX have eliminated long waits for screen refreshes, and today’s web applications provide graphics, spreadsheets and other common formats with speed and ease of use. And unlike early web-hosted applications that were rigid and limited, today’s applications offer the same flexibility, configurability and upgradeability as applications housed inside corporate firewalls.
• Data Centers have come of age: The collocation environments that began to spring up in the late 1990s have become solid, highly reliable environments focused on uninterrupted connectivity. Because they can leverage the benefits of housing many customers in one environment, today’s data centers typically offer stronger fail-over and recovery processes than most in-house data centers can, as well as strong data backup and audit procedures. Bricsnet’s data center in Novato, California, for example, has a strong record of better than 99.9 percent uptime, and meets the stringent requirements of the SAS 70 Type II standard.
• Security is more than just a word: One of the early reactions to hosted software was a reluctance to house sensitive corporate data “outside the firewall.” But contemporary Internect security protocols and encryption have eliminated that concern. Led by demands for online banking and procurement, security has improved to the point that any organization can be confident its data is safely transmitted to and from hosted servers.
• Interoperability is a reality: In the early days of ASP offerings, customers were pretty much limited to stand-alone applications that couldn’t connect outward to other important business systems. Even with in-house systems, integration and interoperability was often limited to flat file data transfers that required significant manual intervention. SOA architecture and Web Services have changed that. Now, applications leverage Web Services to make calls to each other, seeking and receiving data instantaneously and honoring business processes across application boundaries. It has become nearly as easy for two data center-based applications to communicate with each other as it is for two workers to talk on the phone.
• SaaS Delivery provides real economy: Self-hosted applications require investment not only in software, but in hardware, support personnel and maintenance. With Software as a Service, companies have the chance to reduce risk by contracting for annual or monthly payment terms that easily fit into operating budgets and thus bypass the need for approval of capital investment. In terms of Speed to Value, the elimination of lengthy capital approval processes can provide one of the greatest shortcuts, giving companies the chance to be up and running on a new system in record time.

For all of these reasons, Bricsnet's Software as a Service option is a key component in our ability to provide Speed to Value to customers. To learn more, contact Bricsnet sales at +1-415-321-2650 or salesinfo@bricsnet.com. We look forward to showing your organization the benefits of Software as a Service.