Comment:

Essention Inc. a Seattle-based software and service provider, claims it provides a state-of-the-art Web-based property management system with three advantages over other systems: It is multifunctional, multi-audience, and it has a 24/7 customer service center.

By "multifunctional," company spokespeople mean that the system not only handles the usual workflow management, including service requests, but it also provides a robust preventive maintenance capability and an archival function for office layout diagrams, O&M manuals and other vital information. By "multi-audience," they mean that InfoCentre can be accessed and used collaboratively by property managers, owners, tenants and vendors.

But the system's most intriguing attribute is its customer service desk, InfoCentre, which handles service requests from as far away as Washington, DC via E-mail, phone or fax--and, Essention claims, it does it faster than if the request had been implemented face-to-face.

Here's how it works: A tenant spots an overflowing toilet on the 15th floor. She goes to her computer, accesses InfoCentre in Seattle and logs in a service request via E-mail. Fifteen minutes later, a plumber arrives at the her location to fix the toilet, report the job done to Seattle via his pager and gets his next assignment.

"Tenants don't have to track down the building manager, who is no doubt juggling 10 to 12 other service requests while trying to track costs and write out reports," explains Lee Schoentrup, a spokesperson for Essention. "Now tenants can go online, log in and submit a service request via E-mail. It takes five seconds."

That's when InfoCentre's Seattle-based service representative springs into action. The issue--Essention-speak for a building problem--is logged in immediately and comes onto the viewer's screen with a ping. It's like instant messaging," says Schoentrup.

"We know how to get in touch with the plumber whether it's by pager, cell phone or E-mail," explains Schoentrup. "If we can't reach him immediately, our protocols indicate the second or third person to contact, whereas the tenant may not know who to call if she can't reach the building manager. We have the rules of who to call no matter what time it is." The tenant may also dial the 1-800 number and be hooked up to a service rep who knows her building.

Meanwhile, the building's on-site manager can go online and view a list of every service request within his building. "He knows what's going on with maintenance in his building that day," says Schoentrup, "and he doesn't have to field all these phone calls himself or try to reach plumbers and other vendors. If he happens to be at home, he can take a look at his laptop and see what's happening in his building at any given moment. All this is done in real time so he knows up to the minute what's happening." The log is also archived so the building manager can pull up reports, spot trends and schedule preventative maintenance.

This reporter found the tenant communication system with Seattle very easy to maneuver and the service request simple to submit. However, the demo provided by the company could not verify, ostensibly for security purposes, how fast the Seattle reps responded to an actual service request or how swiftly the issue was resolved. "Usually we get a response within five minutes," asserts COO Karen Little. "We tell our customers to expect it to take 15 minutes, but typically, we're able to get some action within five or 10 minutes."

It was interesting to note that an authorized user can summon up a wealth of information online, including building news, events in the building that day, maps and directions, emergency contacts and history of the equipment.

COO Little avows that there is greater vendor accountability with the InfoCentre system. "On the work order notes, we'll write, 'Dispatched Joe's Plumbing via pager'," she explains. "Joe answers that he'll be there in 30 minutes. We record his response; so the accountability comes in because we date and time-stamp exactly when we dispatched Joe via pager."

Essention is a spin-off of the Seattle-based McKinstry Co., a 40-year-old Northwest supplier of contract mechanical construction services, which originally used a similar Web-based system to track and maintain the heating, air conditioning and plumbing equipment it installed. Realizing that this idea could be expanded to manage buildings thousands of miles away, McKinstry began pilot trials of its InfoCentre idea in 1999. In June 2001, CarrAmerica Realty Corp., with more than 300 operating office properties nationwide, chose InfoCentre as its portfolio-wide software management system after several months' trial in Carr's Pacific Northwest buildings.

Carr officials state that among the InfoCentre functions they found "exciting" was the digital archiving of all building-specific documentation including O&M manuals, building drawings, preventive maintenance scheduling and warranties for all equipment. "Instead of having to find a set of drawings in storage or pull a three-ring binder off a shelf, we can access resources immediately when we need them, even if we're standing on a rooftop," says Clete Casper, CarrAmerica's Pacific Northwest managing director.

Other InfoCentre customers include Nordstrom, Transwestern Commercial Services and the Muckleshoot Casino, owned and operated by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in Auburn, WA.

Can a customer-service desk with a total round-the-clock staff of some 50 people effectively manage 300 buildings nationwide? "That's the beauty of our service," says Karen Little. "We don't need 300 people to manage 300 buildings. We get economies of scale and a cost savings because one person can handle multiple buildings."

Can a Web-based Property Management System Help in Disasters?
We asked Karen Little, chief operating officer of Seattle-based Essention, if a Web-based property management system can aid in building evacuations during a disaster such as the September 11th terrorist attacks. In fact, she stated, InfoCentre helped CarrAmerica evacuate its Washington DC buildings after the attack on the Pentagon that day. Following is a summary of that interview:

 

GlobeSt.com: You were instrumental in helping CarrAmerica evacuate its buildings in Washington DC on September 11th, right?

Karen Little: When that plane hit the Pentagon, CarrAmerica called us and said, "We want to evacuate all of our buildings." We sent a group E-mail message to all of the tenants and all the contacts at each of the buildings, advising them to evacuate, and we reminded them of their emergency procedures. The building managers were also doing some things on the spot, but we were reinforcing it.

GlobeSt.com: Had you had previous experience with such an emergency effort?

Little: Yes. We helped evacuate buildings when we had the earthquake in Seattle. Again, the CarrAmerica folks called us and said, "We want people to leave the buildings because we need structural engineers to check the building out." So we had two calls to action: Telling our tenants to evacuate the building and calling structural engineers. We knew whom to call.

GlobeSt.com: But what if people aren't looking at their e-mail when you send messages to evacuate?

Little: What people did, during both the earthquake and the terrorist event, was reach for their phone. That worked for maybe 5% to 10% of the people. The majority couldn't get through because phone lines jammed quickly. But people have learned that the Internet still works even when their phone doesn't. At the Twin Towers, once the buildings collapsed, there was nothing anyone could do. But there was a window of time after the planes hit and some floors were burning but people did have phones and their computers worked. We know this because people sent E-mail messages to their families.

GlobeSt.com: Is there any advantage to doing this from Seattle in these disasters?

Little: On September 11th, if we were in the building with the customers, we would have had to evacuate. And then who was going to communicate with the tenants? Also, people needed to know if they should go to work the following day. But there was no one in the offices for them to contact. So people logged on to the Web site with at home to see if there was news. Actually, people started phoning us at 10:20 pm, but Carr had not heard yet from the Secret Service whether they would be allowed to re-open the next day because some of their buildings are very close to the Capitol and the White House. So we took the names and phone numbers of all of the callers and offered them the option of a phone call or an E-mail message as soon as we had information. We got the information they needed about 11:30 pm, and by midnight we had contacted everybody who had phoned us. We also informed them that they would need two pieces of ID, including a photo ID, and their card access key, to get into their buildings.

Throughout, we worked directly with a single CarrAmerica representative who gave us the information and we communicated that back to their tenants. If Carr had given the task of communicating that information to many different people, the chance of errors would have increased.

Readers can contact the writer at jeverhart@globest.com