‘Increasing shareholder value through integrated workplace management system solutions’ by authors Hoefsmit and Yoa of Bearingpoint is a straight forward look at how one of  the major consulting companies regard this software solution. They have described the complexity of corporate real estate environments and how IWMS can simplify the problems and save money in the process.  The paper also describes a fundamental problem when CREs and FMs go to create a business case for IWMS and they are used to speaking in a spatial language (sf, meters) while the CFO talks in financial terms. This is where the value proposition needs to be defined in different terms than it is often done.

Bearingpoint has defined that a good return on investment (ROI) analysis can be the basis for the IWMS implementation.  The main thing is to start with the mission, vision, strategies and objectives of the business and then understand the strategies of each of the organizational units.  Then they can map what is required to the applications on the market (they advise against ‘niche’ solutions).  Also important in the design is the choice of value-based performance measures and tracking the key performance indicators (KPIs).

Hoefsmit and Yoa also site examples of Bearingpoint projects and research where they have seen IWMS improve the performance of real estate assets, including:

•    Creating visibility of leases which can reduce escalation costs by c. 6%
•    More efficient management of space costs and utilization saving c. 8%
•    More effective automation of operational processes saving c. 5%
•    True valuation and costs of real assets rolled up to enterprise financial systems for accurate depreciation and cash flow numbers saving c. 5%

These savings numbers are excellent and are in line with those presented in a work by Mike Bell on IWMS for Gartner a few years ago.  

Click on this link to read the entire whitepaper.  Let me know if you have any questions of the authors and we can contact them for answers.  This is a great addition to the IWMS knowledge base.