Case Studies

Archstone

Business Challenge:
Archstone is the second largest company of its kind dealing in Luxury apartment investment and operations. The Due Diligence department within Acquisitions and the Disposition department within sales needed systems to manage properties, related resources and documentation during the buying and selling processes. The current method of accumulating hard copies and using overnight services and emails to collaborate with internal personnel and clients slowed the buying and selling processes.  A system that automated processes and workflows needed to be implemented, with digital documentation, and status immediately available to all collaborative resources during buying and selling phases of projects.

Background:
The Acquisition and Disposition departments had processes in place for performing Due Diligence within property buying and selling that worked well, but needed to be streamlined. The time from pipeline to closing or market needed to be shortened, as this time potentially translated to lost revenue. The ability to find and quickly share information among departments and clients, and report up to date status of critical events and related information, was hindered by the manual nature of the current system.

Turpin Solution:
Turpin selected Microsoft’s SharePoint technology to create a company intranet including client extranet sites. Initially developed using the core services (WSS) with Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 as the backend, the platform has been migrated to the expanded MOSS platform. The system focus is dashboards with different views of company information based on the current user access. Available information includes custom list management (pipeline tracking, Calendars of critical dates and events, and other related property information tracking), project and property site creation and management based on custom templates, portfolio property management and archiving, document management while in process before closing for Due Diligence, and after closing for Disposition and other internal departments, and separate client sites for collaborating with potential buyers, brokers and counsel during the Disposition processes.

ROI Statement:
The main business requirement from Archstone was straight forward: shorten our buying and selling processes, as time is money. Turpin delivered a system that automated Due Diligence and Disposition processes, eliminated time previously spent on repetitious and redundant tasks, and allowed more time for each department to service customers and clients. Multiple, unrelated property deals happening at the same time can now be managed with current resources without extending time to closing or market. The time from pipeline to closing for Due Diligence and to market for Disposition has been significantly shortened, and statuses of projects are up to date and available for CXO’s.