Case Study: The Leasing Center by Leo Software

Two and a half years ago ACG Management, a Commercial Real Estate owner and operator, started looking for technology to improve their internal processes. Since ACG Management is relatively small, automating processes would not have been very cost effective, as none of the processes had the volume to justify the expanse, but it was discovered that a significant amount of time was being expended filing, requesting, copying and searching for information.

This issue was exacerbated by the fact that the ACG 'team' consisted mostly of members who worked in other locations and for different companies. The team often included leasing brokers, owners, managers, architects, lawyers, and contractors. In addition, the make-up of each team was different for each building.

Although collaboration tools already existed, none was focused on the Commercial Real Estate market, nor did they allow team members to view their portfolios in a single, concise and informative manner. ACG Management discovered that there was not a true "Team–Tool" available for the Commercial Real Estate industry. They could not find an easy to use software product that would allow owners and managers to store, share and transmit all the details needed to make quick day-to-day business decisions. After determining that there was an industry need for such a tool, ACG Management began collaborating with Leo Software to fill this void.

Figure 1: Portfolio Summary

The Leasing Center is a one of a kind product with no real competition. It is not an accounting system, or a database, or a calendaring system, or a true collaborative application, but in some sense it is all these things. With its patented Stacking Plan navigation device The Leasing Center is a tool that enables the team to file, share, transmit and keep up-to-date and accurate information for the hundreds of buildings and thousands of available spaces for which an enterprise might be responsible. Everyone has access to the data, but each member uses The Leasing Center differently. Some team members use it to store data and to perform property analyses; others use it to retrieve and transmit data or build custom web sites and still others use it to look top-down at all the activities of the leasing and management team members.

Figure 2: Stacking Plan

The Leasing Center contains a sophisticated security and permission foundation that defines users as 'building key-holders' who are able to give other users access to their buildings, control what information they can see, and what functions they can perform. These permissions are unique for each 'user-building' relationship.

Figure 3: Lease Abstract

Leo Software wanted to offer a product that every enterprise, whether large or small, would find robust and dependable while at the same time affordable, scalable and easy to use. We knew that whatever we brought to the market would have to hold up scrutiny regarding security, dependability and speed. It had to continue to grow and evolve and there could never be a question in the user's mind regarding its reliability.

During the initial design stage the requirements for security, performance, and user interface changed the model from a browser based client to a desktop based client. The need to support this architecture led us to choose RemObjects Software, and we have never looked back. After 18 months of development with the RemObjects SDK, Data Abstract, and Hydra we have been very satisfied. Our developers continue to rave about their ease of use and the responsiveness of the RemObjects team. In addition, from a management perspective, the short learning curve has been greatly appreciated.

We believe that having based our product on this technology provides us with a great security model and a solid architectural platform. Using the SDK we have implemented an auto-update component that insures that our users are running up-to-date clients at all times. This ability alone has significantly reduced our maintenance and support costs.

We are currently completing a second component, which will allow us to interface with a client's existing data by extracting, transforming and loading it into The Leasing Center, therefore enabling them to keep it synchronized with their current applications without the need to reenter it. This product uses Data Abstract for field mapping and Pascal Script as the scripting language.

RemObjects Software has created an excellent suite of products, which have provided us with a cost-effective way of solving a number of technical issues and hiding their inherent underlying complexities.

© Leo Software — reprinted with kind permission.