In our “Thought Leader Interviews” series iwmsnews.com interviews all important Thought Leaders from the IWMS industry. In our fourth interview we have interviewed George Ahn, CEO of Tririga.
1. Please introduce yourself to our readers
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My name is George Ahn. As CEO and president of TRIRIGA, I’m responsible for the management and strategic direction of the organization. It is my goal to help companies use innovative, cutting-edge technology to raise their bottom-line through improvements to their real estate assets and operations. In addition, I have a heightened awareness of the convergence between environmental and financial health, especially in today’s economy. |
Today, organizations must improve their environmental performance because, with ever-rising energy costs, environmental performance drives financial performance. It is a business imperative to improve environmental performance, and I’m eager to educate companies about how technology can help them reduce their carbon footprint and their operating costs.
2. Can you explain a bit about your background and your career?
I have taken a lead role at enterprise application software companies for most of my twenty-year career, so I have a deep awareness of what it takes to drive bottom-line performance. Before coming to TRIRIGA, I was the group vice president and general manager for PeopleSoft, where I led the CRM division and was responsible for the revenue growth, marketing, product engineering, and the overall success of that division. Prior to that, I held leadership roles at TIBCO Software, Inc., Siebel Systems and IBM. At TRIRIGA, my mission is to help companies capitalize on the benefits of IWMS to create a leaner and greener enterprise.
3. Can you elaborate a bit more about your company? What makes your company unique?
Since its inception in 2000, TRIRIGA has been dedicated to helping organizations achieve outstanding ROI on their real estate and facility assets, through operational and systemic improvements. Our core product line includes the traditional IWMS applications of project, facility, operations and real estate management, and in recent years, we’ve expanded our offerings to include application extensions in the areas of condition assessment, handheld and offline applications. We complement these products with an industrial-strength configuration system and enterprise-class application platform, as well as a complete set of professional services, ranging from pre-implementation planning, project management, training and post-production support.
What makes our organization unique is our experience and our expertise in the IWMS field, which we’ve demonstrated through our pioneering development of new IWMS technologies. For example, in 2007 we led the advancement of IWMS with our suite of Workplace Performance Management products to drive executive-level decision support and Return on Workplace Assets. In 2008, we delivered TREES (TRIRIGA Real Estate Environmental Sustainability), the first IWMS software to help measure, manage and reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint for buildings. With TREES, our goal is to show companies that buildings present the single greatest opportunity to improve energy efficiency and operating profits, and to help them take full advantage of this opportunity.
4. What motivates you as a person?
I’m motivated by the opportunity to help customers solve their most challenging business problems. As a business leader, I strive to deliver automated assistance to new, emerging, and critically important markets. In the IWMS space, environmental sustainability epitomizes this challenge: it represents a new market that organizations are slowly recognizing, and until we introduced TREES, technologies didn’t exist that could help monitor, manage, and reduce the carbon emissions of buildings. At IBM and Peoplesoft, I tackled similar challenges, with small businesses representing the new market.
5. How do you want to be seen by your employees, the competition and independent business analysts?
I want TRIRIGA to be seen by employees, competitors and analysts as an innovator, an organization that companies can trust completely for delivering high-return, reliable, enterprise-class software systems. We have pioneered IWMS, most recently with the introduction of TREES, and we have developed a significant amount of experience that we want to share. We have the ability to help organizations meet their environmental and financial objectives through real estate and facility management, and see it as a significant opportunity for customers and for TRIRIGA.
6. What does the term Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) mean to you?
We like to break IWMS down to its most basic level, thinking specifically about each individual term. IWMS is a suite of products (Integrated) specific to the people and assets for real estate and facilities management (Workplace), which monitors, manages, and improves operations (Management) through a process-based, automated system (System). The system drives the outcome of a given process to continual improvement. Advanced IWMS drives both operational improvement and financial return on workplace assets.
Taken one step further, the most advanced IWMS solutions incorporate emerging operations such as environmental performance, with consideration of carbon reduction, GHG reduction, and energy efficiency for workplace assets. In a time when buildings represent such a significant expense for operations, IWMS helps deliver ROI for a leaner, greener organization.
7. What do you think of the Credit Crunch? What impact does it have on FM and RE?
Buildings cost money, and the price of energy drives these costs higher each year. While capital projects will not increase – in fact, they will likely decrease during this economic climate – they will still exist. Only those with the highest potential ROI will be funded, as they should be. TREES helps project this cost-benefit analysis, and presents, in priority order, those projects with the highest potential ROI. Management can then compare these with other possible capital projects. With high energy costs, and the very real prospect of even higher costs, it is likely that green projects will make the cut. In fact, it is becoming clearer each day that they need to make the cut.
8. What is your opinion about Sustainability and IWMS?
Environmental sustainability improvements will derive from three sources of carbon emissions: chemical/manufacturing, transportation and buildings. ERP systems may someday provide the foundation for improving the first; specialized asset management systems may drive improvement in the second; and IWMS clearly drives improvement in the third, particularly in automating how organizations measure, manage and reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.
9. How do you see IWMS in the year 2015?
First, organizations will demand very smart buildings. To achieve this, they will build or retrofit buildings to acquire and centralize a wide range of information about lighting, space utilization, energy consumption, and emissions. In addition, organizations will use systems to analyze the many variables along many different dimensions to produce the optimal mix of near-term and long-term methods of improving “building performance.” Furthermore, these extended integrated systems will include “expert system” intelligence to automatically generate some improvements, and provide “headlights” to decision-makers on important trends in their real estate and facilities, thereby allowing them to make the best tactical and strategic changes at the right time, and with the highest return. If IWMS systems continue to advance, they will serve as the backbone and information infrastructure for the management systems.
10. What would be your Million Dollar Tip for our readers?
There is no distinction between being environmentally smart and financially smart. In this economic environment, the two are inseparable.
Next interview
In our “Thought Leader Interviews” Graig Gillespie, CEO Manhattan Software Inc., will be interviewed next week.
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[...] Again, I want to personally thank Traci Doane, Pierre Guelen, Michael Schley, Craig Gillespie, George Ahn, Michael T. Swanstrom and Andy Fuhrman for participating in this wonderful [...]
[...] not all are actually taking that essential next step, the way New York City is,” said George Ahn, CEO, TRIRIGA. “Our partnership will allow New York City to effectively measure energy use and carbon [...]