Portals: A Window to New Efficiencies

Today, top real estate software providers offer an integrated portal solution for website content management, design, and an expandable Web presence as part of their suite of real estate products. This solution delivers numerous marketing and customer functions while simultaneously capturing data directly into a property management system.

Used to their full advantage, portals can drive efficiency into every transaction, delivering a significant competitive advantage to commercial interests.

Advantages for commercial operators
Portals are highly useful to commercial property managers in several ways, including:

• Building calendars: Tenants can post upcoming cultural and entertainment events on building calendars, creating a sense of community. The calendars can also contain key information, such as construction updates and fire drills.
• Concierge services: This marketing-oriented feature lets property managers increase revenue by advertising additional services ranging from package pickup to securing tickets to sporting events.
• Emergency portal: Activating an "emergency portal" is critically important in fires, floods, and other catastrophes. They provide evacuation plans, shelter data and other important information, along with a message board.
• Green orientation: Portals support green initiatives by letting you eliminate the costly storage and distribution of property management documents. Lease-specific documents can be uploaded securely for access by authorized users. Tens of thousands of investors can receive financial reports online. If you're generating a hundred-page report, how much time and money could you, the property owner, save by avoiding production and mailing costs or enlisting third-party help in compiling such a document?
• Retail sales data recording: If you have retail tenants, portals eliminate the hassle of collecting sales data by giving tenants the "Input Sales Data" form. Tenants can enter their information online in seconds. This information is entered directly into the property management software system, streamlining the billing process by automating the percentage rent calculations and reconciliations.
• Security: Commercial property managers seeking to streamline entry procedures for visitors can activate the security pass application feature, which notifies the security desk and the guest of the date/time of visit and the type of identification required to enter the building.
• Space availability: Portals let owners and operators expose available space to the public or to selected brokers. Top-of-the-line real estate software packages transparently handle such back-end tasks as options and encumbrances, ensuring that availability status remains updated. In addition, requests for space can be added to tracking applications that let managers assess their deal pipeline.
• Tenant ledger: Tenants, with proper authorization, can review their base rent, common area maintenance obligations, and ledger information for the current month or any prior period.

Forward-thinking real estate interests are quickly grasping portals' significance in streamlining operations and unifying stakeholders. Competitive advantage, efficiency, customer service, environmental sustainability, return on investment--portals can be a significant factor in helping commercial real estate owners and managers attain all of these business goals.

Richard Malpica is Vice President and General Manager, Eastern Region of Yardi Systems As Vice President and General Manager of the Eastern Region, Richard Malpica is responsible for directly managing all operational aspects of Yardi Systems' presence in the Northeastern United States.

A New York native, Richard joined Yardi Systems in 2002 after a 17-year career in New York real estate and three years as the vice president and CEO of a technology company that provided Internet and wireless services to the real estate industry. Richard has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business from Manhattan College.