Software upgrades company's real estate operations

Transcription

1 10/2/13 Software upgrades company's real estate operations - Houston Chronicle REAL ESTATE FREE ACCESS VIEW You've been granted free access to this Houston Chronicle article. Subscribe today for full access to the Houston Chronicle in print, online and on your ipad. SUBSCRIBE Software upgrades company's real estate operations Eric Kayne Justin Segal of Boxer Property Management says its system prices office space, manages workloads and tracks energy costs. 1/5

2 By Nancy Sarnoff October 2, 2013 Boxer Property's roots in real estate are sprouting in a new direction: technology. The Houston-based commercial property firm, known for its trademark yellow and black 777- RENT signs, has developed a software system that allows it to manage just about every aspect of its operations - from responding to a tenant's maintenance request to tracking leads for new business. "It's a crime to miss opportunities," said Boxer Property Management Corp.'s chief operating officer, Justin Segal, who spent several years working in Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom. The company, which was founded in 1992 and now has 750 employees across the country, started working on the technology a few years ago when the cost to develop such systems became more affordable to smaller businesses. Boxer hired several people to develop the system, which uses analytics to do things like price office space, manage employee workloads and track energy costs. Surprisingly, the first hire was a librarian. "These people are experts in information management," Segal said. "Having a librarian on staff got us into a whole new vocabulary of how we discussed and thought about and worked with information, and that was really a breakthrough for us." The team eventually included a couple of software developers and a business analyst who helped develop a system meant to make the business run more efficiently by connecting such departments as leasing, maintenance and accounting within one platform that everyone can access. "Real estate on the surface seems simple, but it's a fairly complex animal," said Boxer's Stephen Kradjian, an asset manager. To-do lists When the company takes over a property, more than 200 "tasks" are generated and directed electronically to a number of departments, from construction to design to management. 2/5

3 10/2/13 Software upgrades company's real estate operations - Houston Chronicle Eric Kayne Chief operating officer of Boxer Property Justin Segal, Oct. 1, 2013 in Houston. (Eric Kayne/For the Chronicle) "We can track all of that literally on one page," Kradjian said. The software is also set up to catch problems before they happen and react to requests quickly. When a property manager enters data about a building and its tenants, that information is then directed to other departments. Repair requests are immediately directed to the maintenance department, for example. Similarly, pending lease expirations trigger visits from Boxer leasing agents. By looking at trends generated by the software, Boxer can determine which property might need more staffing or capital investment. 'Customer-centric' "They're very customer-centric," Ken Jones, director of undergraduate programs at University of Houston's Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship, said of the company. "Everything they do essentially retains people paying rent." 3/5

4 Across the board, the system has helped the company improve its operations "virtually by any measure," Segal said. He wouldn't disclose the cost of the system but said, "The benefits far outweigh the costs." Segal said the company has been approached about adapting the system to other industries, but that's not a consideration at this point. 145 properties Boxer owns and manages 145 properties, including 70 office buildings in the Houston area. At the company's headquarters near the West Loop and Interstate 10, many employees have multiple computer monitors on their desks, and the folks who run the company's website sit in front of an oversized screen that consistently updates traffic coming to the site. "This is by far the most fast-forward real estate company I've ever worked for from an innovation standpoint," said Kradjian, who has also worked for a large commercial property brokerage and a private equity firm and in the real estate department of a major airline. Handling calls During a recent office tour, Segal demonstrated how the company deals with incoming calls from potential customers looking for space. An employee pushes a button on her computer, and a dozen or so live video feeds from individual leasing offices pop up on the screen. This way, when calls come in from the outside, operators can route them to an actual person and not someone's voice- mail. "The purpose of the cameras is to allow us to figure out who's available to take a call from a prospect," Segal explained, "not just by seeing whether they're on the phone but whether they have somebody in their office." 4/5

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