RealPrompt and Workspeed Seek
to Change Hearts and Minds

Workflow Automation... One of the fun things about being located "virtually" in San Francisco (I'm actually in Marin County, north of the Golden Gate Bridge) is visiting new real estate dot-coms hatching in the San Francisco Bay Area. So last Friday I met with two new companies. The first was Workspeed, located in the Financial District high-rise, and the second was RealPrompt, located South of Market in the heart of dot-com land. Both radiated major brainpower committed to streamlining the real estate process. Cool.

Workspeed aims to automate the workflow between owners, managers, tenants and vendors. Backed by real estate players like Insignia Financial Group, Mack-Cali and the Lawrence Ruben Company in New York City, Workspeed will initially focus on tenant service requests. Too hot? Too cold? Light fixture out? Need to reserve the elevator for furniture delivery? All of these requests will be initiated, managed and closed online. Not rocket science perhaps, but still an incredibly complex process that must be totally customizable for each owner. And when you see Fran Fernandez, Director of Product Support, demo the system, you realize how much more efficient it is than a series of phone calls and paper documents floating around. Workspeed's revenue will come from subscription fees paid by landlords based upon the size of the property.

RealPrompt provides a collaborative transaction management platform for the entire disposition cycle, including listing a property, preparing a marketing package, qualifying buyers, negotiating a sale and closing a transaction. One neat feature of RealPrompt will enable a seller to process standardized RFPs from brokers electronically. RealPrompt's revenue will primarily come from subscription fees paid by sellers. Mo Barzegar, CEO of RealPrompt, has a strong background in investment sales, most recently at AMB, and is backed by principals at Highridge Partners and Secured Capital.

Wow, no question that these are impressive systems. Both seem pretty intuitive once they're populated with data. And the actual usage costs seems minimal for the value delivered. But they both require a serious commitment to digital connectivity. Your professional life will now revolve around your web browser. That's a cultural change for the real estate industry, and it will not be painless. Creating incentives for that change is the biggest challenge to the growth of these workflow automation services.

Full Disclosure: Both Workspeed and RealPrompt will exhibit at the Expo, along with a hundred other companies. But (please) don't blast me with e-mails about too much Expo marketing. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that the Expo and the Dispatch have similar goals -- to help you make sense of the blizzard of new products, services and ideas that are changing the commercial real estate industry. It kills me that I won't have time myself to see every Parade, attend every Meet-the-Player session and see every Exhibitor demo. ... But you can still register online for the Expo, October 23-24 at the New York Hilton.

--Peter Pike