Executive Summary
CBRE is the world’s largest full-service commercial real estate and investment organisation offering a broad range of integrated services, including; facilities, transaction and project management, property management, investment management, appraisal and valuation, property leasing, strategic consulting, property sales, mortgage services and development services.
Velocity IT have been the partner of choice to deliver an array of low-code development solutions responding to the demand to digitally transform business operations to aid efficiency, reduce operational cost and implement company systems that can be scaled to suit the ever-changing global capacity of CBRE.
Enterprise Client Care Knowledge Base
The Problem
Due to rapid business expansion, the management of CBRE’s complex customer account base became a challenge for the client care team to maintain. The day-to-day account management was maintained via a mixture of manual systems and processes and client account overviews were fragmented with client intelligence residing with multiple sources and systems.
An initiative to deliver a strategic account management system built using low-code technology kicked off in the US. Because of the rapid development and deployment time, the benefits of developing in low-code were quickly recognised and enabled the system to be rolled out globally to Asia and Europe in quick succession. Given the expertise with the K2 platform Velocity IT were able to use a hyper-agile approach to enable the system to rapidly evolve to meet the everchanging requirements and objectives of the business.
The Solution
- Creation of a global client knowledge centre to provide an overview of client account status
- Presented a basis for measuring success through implementing robust account growth KPI’s
- Developed a mobile solution to enable quick access to account intelligence
- Integrated with existing 3rd party systems including Salesforce
- Provided a single portal of knowledge with global access
- Presented a standardised client knowledge solution with global reach
Commercial Loan Administration
The Problem
CBRE’s loan administration team manages commercial loans on behalf of lenders. The long-running loans require accurate covenant management and can often be complicated and prone to issues. In the past, a mixture of manual calendars and lists were used to manage the process. Following a system review, it was recognised that the existing process was not scalable and posed a significant contract breach risk to CBRE. Velocity IT responded to an urgent requirement to provide a loan administration system that tied loan repayment, covenant management and asset management functions of commercial loan servicing together in one system.
Solution
- Implemented an innovative solution with the capability to effectively create and manage loans
- Full integration with loan servicing platform, Finance Active
- Provision of a single debt services management platform
- Sophisticated reporting capabilities detailing loan covenants in one view
- Covenant diary management system to mitigate any contract breaches
- Built-in audit and compliance capabilities to ensure financial regulatory requirements are me
Commercial Property Administration
The Problem
Prior to engaging with Velocity IT, the commercial property administration team managed customer data manually using a selection of on and offline methods. Following a review of internal processes, it was determined that a centralised database was required to capture and maintain all property and tenant information for various stakeholders to collaborate effectively. Velocity IT designed and implemented a low-code solution for the CBRE debt services team that provided a single source of truth to register and maintain all properties and tenants.
Solution
- Created a central repository for all property maintenance and tenant information to improve operational efficiency and reduce the risk of erroneous decisions leading to the potential loss of revenue
- Implemented a record versioning system to present a clear overview of asset changes
- Global access for all stakeholders to enable quick decisions based on accurate asset information
Property Key Performance Management
The Problem
CBRE Spain uses a set of management reports to measure KPIs of shopping centres across EMEA. This includes occupancy, available floor space and retail revenues. The KPIs are key to measure the performance of shopping centres and provide valuable information to ensure tenancy is maximised and vacant space minimised.
From a research perspective, the report provides property performance insight to enable the strategic development of initiatives to grow occupancy and rental income. For example, a poor performing shopping centre is highlighted and projects and campaigns can be created to improve its occupancy.
From a sales and marketing perspective, the KPI data also provides the metrics that are used in marketing brochures that are required when pitching for new business to prospective tenants or investors. The KPI database is very important to provide an overview and relative detail of the performance of a shopping centre.
Capturing and maintaining annual KP data was previously extremely problematic. Each region would log and maintain occupancy, tenancy and sales information using a spreadsheet. Annually, the research team in Barcelona would aggregate all regional data into a master spreadsheet to form the basis of the EMEA KPI reporting. Due to the sensitive nature of the data, securing it in the first instance was a challenge. Once obtained, the source data lacked consistency in how it was captured, cleansed and approved at regional level and mass data migration posed issues for data corruption and data loss.
In answer to the problem, Velocity IT created a centralised database solution whereby data can be uploaded from each region using a spreadsheet, a workflow then orchestrates the approval of the newly uploaded data and posts it to the master dataset that drives the KPIs.
Solution
- Each region can upload their KPI data using an online form and submit it to the research team for approval
- The research team has full control over the data in a format that is centralised and fully scalable
- KPI management reports are available in real-time and provide an instant performance review
- Marketing and sales tools are easily created based on accurate data and statistics
- Early warning performance indicators highlight transpiring issues to enable fast response and minimise revenue loss
- The system boasts optimal security features to protect sensitive data
Sales Lead Internal Reference System
The Problem
CBRE sell commercial real estate services to customers in the investor and occupancy sectors via their network of sales managers. These asset products and services are diverse and on many occasions, sales staff gain intelligence that presents a cross-selling opportunity that could be serviced by another division within CBRE.
The internal referral system enables leads to be captured and referred to sales colleagues with the referrer gaining credit for the referral. This system comprised of a simple form hosted online, but lacked the scalability a workflow-driven solution could provide.
Velocity IT implemented an easy to use, low-code, process-driven solution to enable all staff to log new opportunities and refer to colleagues in different divisions.
Solution
- Presented a quick and easy process of logging and submitting a lead for the purpose of effective cross-selling
- Enabled all leads to be tracked through the sales pipeline
- Displayed real-time reporting functionality to view referral volumes by department to encourage lead-generation in the form of a divisional league that was presented in a leaderboard format
- Built in capability for audit and compliancy to avoid fraud and conflicts of interest
- Ease of access via multiple devices
Pursuit and Opportunity Tracking
The Problem
The CBRE EMEA sales team utilises Salesforce as a means to track their sales pipeline opportunities. Due to the sheer size of the sales team, the user access and roll out of Salesforce is extremely costly in both licences and support. As an interim solution, the sales agents are required to log all sales pipeline data in a spreadsheet for periodical review. Upon receipt centrally, the data is aggregated to create a master dataset that is then used to drive sales pipeline reports. This process is cumbersome, difficult to maintain, prone to error and lacks the ability to present real-time sales pipeline data that is crucial to the effective operation of the sales function.
The Velocity IT solution created a simple, secure and centralised platform to replace the existing, highly manual system.]
Solution
- Enabled any region, any agent access to upload, maintain and submit sales data
- Allows central resources to track sales deal performance in real-time
- Provision of template reporting tools to present ease of access for report comparison
Business Case Review System
The Problem
The process of reviewing business cases was challenging due to the nature of the highly manual activities that were necessary to create, submit and sign off a business case request. In addition, the senior management sign off time frame was elongated due to inconsistencies in the delivery of case information to allow an informed sign off decision to be made.
The K2-driven system Velocity IT created ensured that the creation and management of a business case from inception to sign off was fully automated and orchestrated by a pre-defined workflow process.
Solution
- Offers a simple method of tracking new business case submissions from start to finish
- Enables the progress of submissions to be tracked throughout the process
- Presents a pre-formatted meeting agenda for all business case submissions to ensure all relative information was complete to aid speed of sign off
Commercial Real Estate Research Portal
The Problem
CBRE research provides data and insights to divisions across the business to provide direction and support business development initiatives and developments. For commercial real estate, having insights into properties’ key attributes like location, size, tenants and historical deal information allows the division to asses the state of the market and future opportunities for growth, for example, laying out deal hotspots on a map as a function of time might highlight an emerging market that needs to be targeted by sales agents.
The Commercial Real Estate Research Portal provides this capability for EMEA. A suite of filters are applied on real estate data and plotted on a map. Interactive sliders and filters can easily be applied to provide further insight. The CBRE solution relies on data being sourced from disparate systems and then stakeholders to aggregated into a single data source that can be used to feed the reporting tool.
The challenge was to remove the reliance on a legacy spreadsheet-based system. In answer to the problem Velocity IT developed a low-code system in the form of a centralised database that easily allows for the capture of research data into the master reporting database.
Solution
- Presents a hyper agile-developed system to accommodate changing data sources, for example, Excel, SQL, Government data feeds and direct data feeds.
- Low-code development enables the flexibility to change the system at a pace in line with demand for change
- Up to 78% lower cost to develop compared to the conventional IT development approach
Workflow Administration Portal
The Problem
CBRE’s IT department enlisted the support of Velocity IT to partner in the delivery of an initiative to improve the administration and ownership of common workflow-centric tasks across the business.
Holiday task delegation is a typical example of a common task; when a person goes on holiday, all their tasks can be redirected or delegated to someone else. Rather than this request being processed on a case by case by the IT Helpdesk, the objective of the solution is to provide a self-service portal made available to business end users.
Solution
- Empowers the business user to carry out common tasks aided by the pre-set workflow of a task
- Reduces the cost of helpdesk support
- Improves speed of service as the workflow is automated and no intervention by the helpdesk is required
- Improves staff efficiency and increases resource available to respond to other helpdesk requests