In today’s economy, under the pressure of tightening margins, every penny must be accounted for. Keeping costs low and occupancy high and making sure leases are on favourable terms, all while scrutinizing maintenance schedules and contractors’ performances, can be overwhelming and exhausting. Join one of our product gurus for a personal tour of 360 Visibility’s Property Management Solutions, being held every other Wednesday at 14:00 PM EST.

360 Visibility can help you manage your properties with:

• Lease Management – automating lease renewal notifications to proactively retain tenants on the most favourable terms possible.
• Forecast Operating Income – presenting accurate project lease revenues and operating expenses up to 24 months out.
• Reduce Administrative Costs­ – automating reporting and routine accounting tasks saves time and your bottom line.
• Maintenance Scheduling – strictly managing schedules and contractors to minimize surprise costs.
• Deal Management­ – automating lease execution from tracking deal negotiations and details.

Eliminate all the inefficiencies of multiple computing platforms, incompatible software, and redundant processes. Information silos become a thing of the past as you move forward with an integrated software solution from 360 Visibility. We simplify the way you do business, so you can for focus on what you do best.

Limited space is available, so register today!

Complete the registration to receive an invitation to our next 360 Property Management tour.

Danish software company Workbook Software A/S can now distribute their solution around the world by working with Microsoft’s cloud system. And they are collaborating with a Canadian Partner, 360 Visibility, to conquer the North American market.

WorkBook is built for professional services firms requiring end-to-end project management, time tracking and financial management. It is delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS) using Microsoft Windows Azure technology, making maintenance simple and affordable, no matter where a client is located.

Expansion to North America Fits Buying Trend

Workbook Software A/S has expanded from exclusively serving Denmark’s advertising industry to currently providing 72% of the IT systems to Danish communications and marketing businesses.

360 Visibility, located in Toronto, Canada, is presenting the WorkBook solution to the professional services industry, including consultants, lawyers and engineers.

More North American businesses are searching online in order to find business management solutions to fit their needs, notes WorkBook Software A/S Director Henrik Skov Pedersen. This is a trend he anticipates will drive sales of WorkBook solutions around the world.

Cloud Forces Change in Tactics

As SaaS grows, it’s becoming more challenging for business software providers to rely exclusively on selling on-premise ERP solutions to maintain a competitive edge. As the transition to the cloud continues, Skov Pedersen (pictured at right) says it is unrealistic to expect a business to thrive on traditional implementations alone. “Instead, we have an advisory role, helping to simplify workflows and optimize projects,” he explains.

WorkBook Software A/S now has partnerships with business management solution providers in eight countries. Their solution has been offered as a service for several years. In addition to now reaching North America with 360 Visibility, they hope to offer the solution across Europe.

Delivering the solution with Azure simplifies this process. Where before, they had to have a hosting partner in order to deliver WorkBook in a particular country, now, “the system is automatically available throughout the world”, says Skov Pedersen.

Azure Simplifies Customer Support

Because Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service (PaaS), it can be used for developing and running applications. This simplifies supporting customers, with just one system to maintain. Previously, WorkBook had to maintain multiple systems and contend with each system’s user names, passwords and remote connections.

The challenge so far, says Skov Pedersen, has been scaling Azure to run WorkBook. “Until now, Azure has mostly been used for smaller applications and testing.” WorkBook Software A/S will maintain their hosting partnership agreements, with the ultimate goal of running all clients on Azure in the next 5-10 years.

The Latest WorkBook Developments

As Workbook moves to Azure, the company is launching WorkBook Release 8. This latest version, developed over the last two years, features a web-based user interface, plus more features for use with an iPad or iPhone. Applications for Windows Mobile and Android are expected later this year.

Skov Pedersen anticipates clients will be moving to Workbook Release 8 within the next few months.

Last week’s Blizzard that Never Was in Toronto may have caught some of us with our snowpants down, but well-fortified property managers suffered no such shock.

The coolest property management technology, along with the clever execution and oversight of same, is capable of handling all things, including cold-weather combat.

After all, a looming dump of snow might inspire a nervous whack of school boards to cancel classes for the day, or office managers to urge similar restraint of their flesh-and-blood tenants. But the physical buildings in question continue to exist regardless of the decisions the humans that occupy them make.

How to Keep Your Cool

Staring down such a frosty scene, firms involved in managing commercial properties need to keep their cool. By working with other players such as on-site building engineers, they can scrutinize the spaces in question, inside and out, for possible problems. Everything from the potential for pipes to leak or freeze to the adequate snow-clearing of on-site sidewalks and parking lots must be addressed.

Add to these requirements the usual expectations of maintenance and management shouldered by a professional engaged in this realm, particularly in a period of financial duress. Now you’ll appreciate powerfully the need for dynamic, of-the-moment technological assistance.

In times of uncertainty or crisis, it’s more important than ever that smart property management come into play.

360PropertyManager© Solution

Enter 360PropertyManager Solution, a specialized software-based remedy to all your property management ills. With it, property management professionals can more expertly administer all aspects of their operations.

These innovative, people-ready business solutions from Microsoft Dynamics ensure that margins stay strong, tenants feel satisfied and everyone who needs to be is well equipped to handle whatever surprises — weather related or otherwise — come their way.

360 Visibility has long provided comprehensive and sophisticated software to its property management clients, along with the expertise to cleverly exploit it. Our tools:

• Streamline clunky and repetitive management tasks like collecting rent and processing maintenance requests.
• Increase resident satisfaction with instant, wide-ranging offerings.
• Enhance profitability by slashing resident turnover, more closely administering expenses and maximizing the underlying market value of all properties in question.

Get an Insider’s View

360PropertyManager Solution is a cutting-edge new approach to the business that promises much to property managers feeling overwhelmed and under pressure.

An executive briefing on this bit of innovation, held from 2:30-4:30 pm on February 15 at 360 Visibility’s corporate offices in Vaughan, Ont., will unveil this technological marvel.

Plan to attend, and to learn such valuable nuggets as how to:

• Accurately project lease revenues and operating expenses.
• Automatically flag upcoming lease expirations with adequate advance notice.
• Minimize surprise costs by more rigorously managing maintenance schedules.
• Reduce administrative costs by automating routine accounting tasks.

Sign up for the information session today, and see to it that you’re never left in the cold again.

Much of this extraordinary shortfall, according to the survey, is centred in lost productivity among workers who, realizing their data is incorrect, are forced to compensate for the inaccuracies with time- and energy-consuming workarounds.

In the private equity real estate sector, the issue of data quality is particularly acute. Important information such as tenant exposure analyses, occupancy reports and portfolio-wide lease expiration schedules contain an abundance of personal details whose to-the-letter accuracy is critical to their effective application. But these documents are hard to come by and are often manually produced.

Further, most property managers still prepare their information on an annual – or, at best, a quarterly – basis. But rapidly changing market conditions very quickly render these reports outdated and irrelevant, leaving the company in the dark for a significant portion of the year.

More than that, much of the data is put together without the benefit of organizational guidelines that are designed to ensure consistency. In the absence of such structure, it’s virtually impossible for anyone with an interest to accurately consolidate the information, to slice and dice it for analysis purposes or to search across multiple reports.

The solution to this unsatisfying scene rests in the marriage of people and process, with technology the officiating enabler.

Companies that are looking to stay ahead of the competition should consider the following:

Getting on the Same Page

Many companies are locked into an Excel culture in which workers extract data from internal systems and load them to spreadsheets. From there, individuals conduct calculations and perform analyses that are never shared companywide. This produces multiple and oftentimes competing roadmaps. The confusion and potential risk that result from such an approach are legion.

Creating Standards

Ideally, a company’s data management initiative should aim to create a single version of the truth; in reality, many organizations have not even agreed on the definition of such critical particulars as revenue. They exist inside siloed data-management structures that do little more than support the disparate definitions of their current systems.

Landing on a single version of reality requires, at the least, cross-departmental consensus on how business terms (tenants, lease contracts, lease abstracts, service orders, approval processes, customers, products, KPIs, etc.) are defined. Start with published standards like annual reports and spread the word.

Appointing a Business Data Manager

Effective data management is crucial to a firm’s achievement of strategic and tactical goals. A cross-functional position requiring coordination with various company departments, the business data manager is responsible for the implementation and oversight of the company’s data-management goals, standards, practices, processes and technologies. Pick a soul with both the business experience to understand how data can be utilized within the company and the ability to communicate same with corporate executives and staff.

Investing in a Business Review

Every business process that’s broken, being handled by disparate systems, that’s being performed manually or maybe even not at all, is draining your company of cash.

A business review carried out by 360 Visibility will document your processes and facilitate your informed decision on the changes you need in order to get your data right.

Property managers must take a leadership role in this initiative. Only with their full engagement and commitment to cultural change will an investment in data management realize its full potential within their firms.

This solution will allow the Hamilton Port Authority to continue to grow with Dynamics NAV. In implementing 360 PropertyManager© to manage their properties and marina, they expect to gain significant functionality and maximize efficiencies.

Janet Knight, CFO Hamilton Port Authority (Left)/Jens Baun VP Sales 360 Visibility (Right) Capturing the signing of the agreement to deliver 360 PropertyManager© to the Hamilton Port Authority.
360 Visibility was selected by the Hamilton Port Authority (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) for their unique, proprietary property management solution that is built directly into Dynamics NAV 2009, unlike any other Microsoft Partner in North America.

“Dynamics NAV is familiar to our people, is reliable for standard business activities, flexible for our non-standard needs and scalable enough to grow along with us. With 360 PropertyManager we can continue to stay on our single-application platform with NAV, and we can keep integrating more and more of our business processes into the solution. 360 Visibility’s expertise with 360 PropertyManager and Microsoft Dynamics NAV makes them the right choice for this project’s success,” said Janet Knight, Hamilton Port Authority CFO. “We expect the move to 360 PropertyManager to provide significant value for our company.”

The current version of Dynamics NAV 2009 will have to be installed for the first phase of the project, upgrading Hamilton Port Authority from existing Dynamics NAV version 4.0.

360 PropertyManager for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009©
“360 PropertyManager for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 is a turn-key solution based on traditional NAV architecture, enabling us to provide Hamilton Port Authority and our other customers the benefits of implementing an out-of-the box solution that remains flexible and can be tailored to meet their needs” says Jens Baun, 360 Visibility Inc., Vice President of Sales.
360 Visibility is dedicated to offering industry-specific customized enterprise solutions to Canadian businesses. They are a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and located in Toronto, Canada. 360 Visibility’s Business Management Specialist provide businesses with the tools to efficiently manage their business, enabling them to seize new opportunities and circumvent common downfalls.

“We are proud to team up with Hamilton Port Authority and to provide them with a solution that will make it possible to integrate each of their business processes into NAV 2009 and 360 PropertyManager, ” declared Lynn Cooke, President and CEO of 360 Visibility.

Hamilton Port Authority
Since 1912, Hamilton Port Authority (formerly Hamilton Harbour Commissioners) has managed the busiest of Canada’s Great Lakes ports, Hamilton’s industrial port lands. The yearly cargo passing through Hamilton’s ports is approximately 12-million tonnes on more than 700 vessels. This accounts for over a 1/4 of all St. Lawrence Seaway Systems movements annually.

With approximately 150,000 square feet of office space, around 2,000,000 square feet of warehouse space, more than 9,000 metres of wharf and exceeding 600 acres of land, the Hamilton Port Authority manages an extensive real estate portfolio. Striving to be “The Great Lakes Port of Choice”, the Hamilton Port Authority lives by their strong mission statement of “Partnering for Progress”.

For more information:
Jens Baun, VP Sales and Business Development
Telephone: (905) 907- 3617
jbaun@360visibility.com

Janet Knight, Chief Financial Officer
Telephone: (905) 525-4330 #226
jknight@hamiltonport.ca

No Harmony for Property Managers

Harmony is in particularly short supply in the property management field these days, as those professionals charged with overseeing large-scale physical interests struggle to understand this new layer of complication the government has seen fit to impose on their lives.

There are some who say that no segment of the population will feel the effects of the HST more acutely than landlords. Not only are they now paying 8% more to heat their properties (and some 85% of landlords include heat in their rent), they will be charged HST on a slew of other necessities of life, including: utilities, repairs, legal services, garbage disposal, snow removal, cleaning services, landscaping, accounting and property management.

Protecting the Tenants – Not the Property Managers

More than that, the Ontario government has seen to it that these folks are not in a position to recoup the money from their tenants. In a move largely speculated to be motivated by a desire to avoid widespread unrest among tenants, Premier Dalton McGuinty has chosen to exempt people living in rental housing—at least for the short term—from the HST’s sting.

Those folks holding the mortgage documents for those properties, meanwhile, will absorb the true effects of this adjustment to overall housing costs.

The Burden to the Property Owner

It’s a ridiculous move, this, not only for the way it unfairly burdens property owners, but for the inevitable roosting in which these chickens will eventually come home to engage. The HST will catch up with rents eventually, and drive them up too.

In the meantime, property managers will wrestle with how to fold the 8% sales tax increase, along with the hike to the heating fuel bill itself and the anticipated 2% inflation, into their lives. The provincial landlords’ association says the HST, once the dust has cleared, will amount to a 5% increase in the overall costs of operating a rental building; the potential for the occasional HST-inspired saving notwithstanding.

Restricted Increase for Rental Rates

More than that, landlords in this province are restricted with regards to how much they can increase their rental rates. The government has put a 0.7% cap on this, the most onerous since rent regulation was introduced to Ontario. Landlords cannot exercise this increase until next year.

And to make matters worse, the McGuinty Liberals canceled the provision for landlords to raise rents more than guidelines dictate in the face of extraordinary costs, calling it a “loophole”.

Property managers are going to be juggling price hikes on a number of fronts, as the rest of us are. Only thing is, they can’t make compensations for it elsewhere, while the rest of us can.

What a quagmire.

To my mind, this new tax is an affront to property managers in this province since it blends the 8% PST with the 5% GST. It puts an unfair limitation on how much their business can earn—and it is a business, after all.

Before this HST nonsense overwhelms you entirely, let 360 Visibility step in with its comprehensive property management software solutions to tightly manage your expenses, leases, invoices, assets, documents, reporting, maintenance schedules and—yes, the ever-lovin’ HST.