Full-Service Real Estate Company with 11M sq ft of Class A Commercial Real Estate Property – Operational Excellence Strategy
The Challenge
A full-service real estate company with 11 million square feet of office space and over 800 building staff employees wanted to create one culture among their employees and vendor staff. Their goal was to reduce employee turnover, inspire a greater level of customer service, retain current tenants and attract new tenants to their buildings.
The Client asked Teel StratVisor Group (StratVisor) to perform an Operational Strategy to develop this “Culture of Excellence.”
What We Did
The first step for this strategy was to understand the current state, or base case, of the property operations. Information on the current state was collected with employee satisfaction/customer service surveys and one-on-one interviews. Over 150 surveys were completed and 90 interviews were conducted with the corporate, property, asset management and vendor staff.
Once the base case was complete, StratVisor developed the future state based upon the Client’s stated goals. The gap between the base case and future state led to the documentation of 100 initiatives that would promote the Client’s Culture of Excellence.
The team condensed these 100 initiatives into 6 high-level categories:
- Formal Communications
- Tenant Relations
- Operations/Training
- Employee Satisfaction
- Vendor Satisfaction
- Technology Enhancements
The findings and recommendations were presented to Management. Subsequently, 100% of Property Management and Vendor Supervisors participated in surveys and workshops to prioritize the initiatives. The top initiatives after the prioritization were:
- Communicate corporate goals through the mission statement and make it visible at all properties*
- Develop a corporate-wide Tenant Welcome Package (tenant manual) for all new tenants. Include property specific information for this welcome package *
- Implement a new staff/vendor employee incentive (B.E.S.T) program that has measurable metrics and benchmark review annually. The goal is to standardize the management of the program and keep administrative work to a minimum *
- Conduct ongoing Customer Service training annually to maintain momentum and motivation *
- Develop a Corporate Welcome Package for new assets *
- Develop accounting standard policies and procedures for all properties *
- Develop job descriptions for all new hires *
- Standard work order system *
- Conduct annual analysis of tenant survey results and determine initiative(s) for management to implement for the next year based on those results *
- Implement process for managers to follow up on tenant survey results with tenants*
- Develop a streamlined process for tenant updates *
- Develop a Corporate Welcome Package for all new employees including customer service program video
- Develop and implement portfolio-wide Web presence and standardized property Web sites
* Initiative completed as of October 2007
The Result
As a result of working with Teel StratVisor Group, the Client received the following in the Operational Excellence Strategy:
- A comprehensive Base Case Analysis including:
- Documentation of current customer service process
- Documentation of current tools
- Prioritized initiatives with a 3-5 year horizon to reach Excellence
- Summary of interview themes
- Facilitated initiative prioritization workshop(s) with Property Management and Vendor Supervisors
- Roadmap and Milestone development for the company to move toward Operational Excellence
- Cost analysis (one-time and annual) for implementing top initiatives
Timing: 16 weeks for initial roadmap; individual projects had separate timelines
