Over the next decade Business Intelligence tools are set to rapidly change the corporate world. As real estate professionals, we should all understand the new technologies that are coming and how they can make positive changes to the way we work and make decisions. Here is your chance to find out more and make a difference to your organisation. Continue Reading

Last March, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued a joint discussion paper highlighting proposed changes to the accounting treatment of operating leases. The financial accounting standards for leases (FAS 13) changes outlined could have an enormous impact on the balance sheets and income statements of most companies.

Read the full story to learn how this important change could affect the real estate strategy of your company.

The Economist reports 55 percent of organizations have policies to reduce energy consumption. Yet, a mere 19 percent have made any measurable progress against their goals.

Real estate and facility costs rank in the four highest costs of business within most organizations and continue to rise. At the same time, senior executives have experienced reduced operating budgets and must attain greater levels of return on their managed assets. Continue Reading

Today we have a guest post of Jim Turner who continues with the FM Notes from the field. Today he addresses FM in any Economy.

It’s rare to encounter a real estate or facilities management professional that hasn’t experienced a hard time due to the poor economic conditions over the last year.  There is plenty of discussion of how we’ve finally gotten to a place in the business cycle where we can forecast growth – what has the impact of federal stimulus and recovery funding, for example – but a consensus does seem to be forming that we can expect a moderate recovery. Continue Reading

Thanks to Nancy Sanquist of Manhattan Software, Inc. iwmsnews.com is able to publish their latest whitepaper: The New Workplace Imperative: A Call to Action for Business, the Environment and People. To download the full-length paper, please visit http://usa.manhattansoftware.com/mobility.

Mobility Now

The new workplace imperative has been evolving over the last fifteen years. Work became untethered to a specific location and began to be performed in all sorts of places outside of the traditional office building. The business drivers include employees’ new expectations of the workplace, mature technology, embracement of sustainable practices for real estate, an increase in global competition and, most recently, the economic recession. The concept of mobility as a work style in which a person can choose to use multiple spaces and places to do their work is a well established, ever-evolving work practice.

Initially known as telework or telecommuting, morphing into “work from home,” and continuing to evolve under such terms as “alternative” or “distributed workplace strategies,” this work practice is part of an accelerating series of advances in tools and technologies that add worker choice to the workplace. In some cases, however, it is not about choice. If you are part of a global project team, you do not go back to the office to make that midnight call to Australia, but do it from the comfort of your home, hotel or local café – wherever you happen to be. Work is where people are – not where the office is located.

Continue Reading

If you want to continue reading, please download the Executive Summary or visit: http://usa.manhattansoftware.com/mobility

Questions regarding this whitepaper can be directed to Manhattan Software, Inc.

A substantial innovation in business management over the last decade is the innovation of business performance management (BPM), which combines performance metrics and analysis with disciplined process design and management. Workplace performance management (WPM) is a subset of BPM and is applied to drive business improvements within real estate and facility assets and operations, which rank in the four highest costs of business within most organizations.

This whitepaper shows the benefits received and minimum requirements a Workplace Performance Management system should provide. Learn how WPM delivers advanced financial, operational, portfolio, customer and environmental performance analytics, which measure and evaluate the value contribution of real estate to the organization. This whitepaper discusses:

1. The need for a decision-support platform of facility portfolio analysis and performance management to align real estate and facility management operations with business strategy
2. Critical success factors for a the implementation of a workplace performance management system
3. Typical costs savings and return on investment derived from a workplace performance management system

If you have ever asked “Why implement workplace performance management?”, we think you will benefit from this whitepaper.

Download

Click to download the whitepaper (pdf) .

Today, the retail industry faces daunting challenges as a result of current economic conditions and conflicting market influences. There has been a steady trend over the last five years by progressive retailers to move away from point solutions such as market analysis and planning tools, lease management applications, project management tools, and stand alone maintenance systems toward lifecycle management functionality that is the hallmark of store lifecycle management (SLM) systems. Continue Reading

When your organization selected a particular Integrated Workplace Management System there undoubtedly were lots of dreams about how the IWMS would improve the lives of the Facilities Management / Real Estate professionals in your organization.

And? Did the IWMS improve the lives of these professionals? Not really? Don’t worry, you are not alone.

31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation is a new project of iwmsnews.com which we will run throughout the month of August 2009.

What is the project about?

The 31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation Project is about maximizing the contribution of the IWMS to your organization by a 31 daily tasks and teachings.

Each day in August iwmsnews.com will provide you with:

1. A task to immediately improve your IWMS
2. Teaching about how and why you do this.

Following the project ensures that you effectively work on professionalizing and optimizing your IWMS immediately.

What will be discussed in the project?

There are a lot of important factors which contribute to the success of your IWMS implementation. Topics that will be discussed in the 31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation Project include:

• Evaluation
• Waste
• Processes
• Vendors
• Information Technology
• Functionality
• Financials

What will I end up with?

By participating in the project you will end up with an extensive amount of knowledge and practical skills to improve your IWMS implementation.

By the end of the 31 days you’ll have:

• Evaluated your IWMS from different perspectives
• Identified inefficiencies in your IWMS
• Eliminated minor inefficiencies
• Made plans to cyclically eliminate major inefficiencies
• Focused your attention
• Optimized functionality in different areas
• Made multiple plans
• Etc.

Completing the project will empower you as a professional and support your organization in an optimal way.

About the authors

My name is Steven Hanks and I’m extremely enthusiastic about Integrated Workplace Management Systems. I have more than two decades of industry experience in the area of Facilities Management and Corporate Real Estate.

I’ve been involved in sales and consultancy projects for various Integrated Workplace Management Systems Vendors mostly as an independent consultant. In this role I was fortunate to be involved in all kinds of interesting environments and I have met hundreds of extremely interesting professionals.

Some of those interesting professionals contribute to the 31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation Project as well.