A CoreNet Global CRE Leader article by Bob Sawhill, which features HP\'s 2005 RE information systems consolidation and integration "Toward an Integrated Technology Solution for Real Estate, The HP Journey Continues". An article based on 2005 CoreNet Global Summit presentation in Toronto.

1. LEADER SEPTEMBER 2005
The BBC’s Chris Kane
Charting a New Course
for Real Estate
Alternative Workplaces at BellSouth
Lowering Costs, Increasing Efficiencies
HP’s Integrated Management System
Decision Support for Real Estate
Outsourcing at Microsoft
Partner Performance Management

2. LEADER
Toward an Integrated Technology Solution for Real Estate
The HP Journey Continues
Real Estate Management
By Bob Sawhill
A
bout two years ago, Hewlett-Packard (HP) would pick the best practice from either HP or Compaq
began a journey toward creating an integrated and go with it. We had to balance doing what was right
management system for our corporate real from a strategic and tactical level with executing quickly.
estate portfolio. Today we are still on that journey, but
we have accomplished a great deal since our first steps. Not only were we trying to deliver on economies of scale
Our key accomplishments include significant cost savings in the merger, we were also trying to be our own best
and effective information management as a result of customer of our own services. So rather than having our
consolidating global systems, implementing an integrated real estate organization worry about all the headaches of
system architecture, and capitalizing on HP’s own products managing the IT infrastructure for real estate and having
and services. In addition, we now have the potential to the skill sets and abilities to do it, we outsourced servers,
leverage the system in other workplace services processes. data center and database administration and support to
our own HP Managed Services group. This allowed our
It all began with the HP-Compaq merger. The merger real estate staff to focus on running the portfolio.
imperatives were to deliver on economies of scale across
the corporation, obviously in our products and services Overcoming Challenges
and additionally in the technology tools that we use
internally. Creating an integrated technology system to manage the
consolidated portfolio was a large undertaking, to say
At that time, we had decentralized systems, disparate data the least (see Figure 1). Good project management and
and a lack of a complete, consistent and integrated system communications were essential. By working with executive
for corporate real estate. As
a result, the quality of the
output wasn’t as good as we
would have liked, and the cost
to operate the systems was
much higher than it needed
to be. These were some of the
underlying pain points we
were trying to resolve.
However, we knew that we
could not get into a full
reinvention effort. It would
take too much time. Speedy
and efficient execution was
key. Thus we followed the
same guiding principles
that applied to all of the
merger integration, such as
“Adopt and Go” and “Perfect
Enough.” This meant that we Figure 1
30 LEADER September 2005

3. Real Estate Management
sponsors and the project team, we developed a project plan Results to Date
that achieved a balance between priorities, resources, and
time to execute. In addition, our solution needed to be Our real estate portfolio information aided the decision-
truly global, covering our entire portfolio of more than 50 making process around consolidating our real estate
million sq. ft. (4.6 million sq. m.) worldwide. Therefore, portfolio following the merger. We reduced our portfolio
good communications and management of change by 17 million sq. ft. (1.6 million sq. m.) globally, which
principles were important to our roll-out success. equated to approximately $200 million a year in annual
savings. As we continue to seek further efficiencies, we
Another challenge we ran into as we got into the project may find that we are beyond the obvious low hanging fruit.
was that the software application we had standardized for Thus, we will need to rely more on this information to lead
space management, or Computer Automated Facilities us to further optimization opportunities (see Figure 2).
Management (CAFM), did
not perform well in a global
environment over a Wide Area
Network. As with many other
similar CAFM applications, it
just really was not designed to
work in that environment. We
needed to have a centralized
system and infrastructure,
but we had a dispersed user
organization across the world.
If we had been forced to go with
a very decentralized system to
gain adequate performance,
it would have been difficult to
manage, costly to implement,
and inefficient to support. Figure 2
Fortunately, our own HP Consolidated Client One of the key innovations that contributed to the success
Infrastructure group provided a solution that shifted of the project is that we truly consolidated our entire
the PC computing and network traffic to HP Blade system: the software, the hardware and the support itself.
PCs within the data center. This enabled us to have both We moved technology and process management to global
the economical centralized system and the application programs rather than individual site programs or business
performance we needed. divisions. This had significant results as far as reducing
Another challenge we ran into was data standardization, our overall infrastructure and applications, and therefore,
a typical industry problem. It took a lot of work to considerable cost reductions.
standardize our process and then to integrate all the
systems we had within the two corporations. We were also In fact, with this project and other projects in the Real
working with external service providers that were doing Estate and Workplace Services organization, we reduced
lease management for us, and they would track information our applications and our cost by 70 percent. Because we
differently. So getting all these databases linked up and shut down the servers and their support, we no longer had
consolidated was a key challenge to overcome. It does maintenance contracts or require staff to add to support
not need to be that difficult. As an industry, it serves all the applications.
of us to get behind data standardization and the Open
Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE), which The other aspect that was innovative and led to success
was spawned out of CoreNet Global. was the fact that we put into play an integrated solution
September 2005 LEADER 31

4. Real Estate Management
architecture that is flexible and agile. It really helped additional opportunities to consolidate infrastructure,
enable the integration between applications, and we programs, and information systems. We’ll be working
now have a good foundation to further leverage for with finance, procurement, and human resources IT
other functions beyond real estate. groups who have similar Business Intelligence systems to
determine IT consolidation opportunities across corporate
As well, our system is agile and adaptable beyond our infrastructure silos.
internal applications. For instance, we pull data from our
outsourced lease management provider into our system Finally, there is always continuous improvement in
instead of maintaining a duplicate system internally. terms of how the systems are managed. We will further
It’s more important to utilize the information than to institutionalize programs and mature processes and
do the day-to-day management of the data. For lease technologies to assure data quality, simplify use, and
management, we no longer have any internal systems. broaden usability to all audiences. We will also strive to
enable operational excellence with effective information.
In our space management applications, we went LEADER
from over six worldwide applications to one standard
application. The databases and servers went from About the Author
dozens of servers across the world down to three. The
integration points went from these many dozens of Bob Sawhill, CFM, is Program Manager with HP’s Real
servers down to a few. There was a lot of manual data Estate and Workplace Services’ Information Technology
entry that was done previously because we did not have Department. A key part of Bob’s role is to bring business
integration in some places, and we’ve eliminated all that. process and information technology — which often speak
At the same time, our user base is growing. Now that it different languages — together.
is a global tool, real estate and other staff can adopt it
very easily. We’re seeing a big usage increase in Europe,
Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region.
Next Steps
We have put a good foundation in place that we can further
leverage and use in other workplace services functions.
For example, I am now beginning a project in facilities
operations for our data centers. Our mission critical
data centers require good information around how we’re
tracking on performance indicators, reliability, building
systems maintenance service levels, capacity analysis
(space/cooling/electrical), and so forth. Our facilities
operations group and our information technology group
partner in managing the data centers that we operate for
HP’s customers and our internal business systems. They
have some good processes in place now, but they are
highly manual in data collecting and reporting. So, we are
looking at leveraging the new real estate portfolio system
architecture and our central information reporting system
to further automate data and information, and provide
dashboard metrics and data center management.
To further the IT consolidation effort, we will be
investigating other internal corporate systems for
32 LEADER September 2005