GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: Corfac's New President Outlines Year Ahead

Corfac has outlined its goals 2004 via a new theme, Back to Basics, and Owen's plans as president are very much in line with this premise, which focuses on marshaling existing resources to increase business. "My role as president is to expand the organization and carry on the good work from the last few years," Owen tells GlobeSt.com. In the past year alone, Corfac increased the breadth of its operations to include five new markets, including Mexico City, Greensboro, NC, Las Vegas, Little Rock, AR, and St. Louis. The plan is to continue establishing relationships in previously untapped territories.

But expansion plans extend beyond growing Corfac's territory list, which consists of 60 markets in the US, Canada and Mexico. "We want to leverage Corfac resources, to connect the dots on member firms through an intranet," Owen explains. "We're reworking it to make the computer system more powerful and user-friendly. We're working on putting together resources to help enable target marketing. It's all part of the challenge we're incorporating into our Corfac platform."

Owen says the organization will also rely on its computer-based information exchange system to implement its Investment and Disposition Services Initiative, which involves pinpointing areas where relationships overlap in an effort to provide more in-depth assistance to real estate executives, and a Corporate Services Initiative. The latter, Owen notes, entails, "a more formal approach to corporate service business--target marketing, providing a platform that would allow members to provide real estate executives with such services as lease analysis and lease abstracts."

As Owen sees it, the groundwork for further success has already been laid, and now is the time to take advantage of it. "We've developed a pretty good platform for accessing multi-market business, and that's key," he says. "This year we need to digest the growth of last year and continue the expansion. Let's capitalize on the good work we've already accomplished and increase business."