FIS Powers Autodesk's Real Estate Planning

Where Are Your Employees Located? ... The happy crew to the right knows the answer.  This is the real estate team at Autodesk. That's Walt Spevak, Sr. Director-Corporate Real Estate, in the middle, flanked by Kay Crotty, Sr. Facilities Manager, and Dan Abbate, CAFM Specialist.  On the whiteboard behind them, you can see a flowchart of facilities information coordinated by the team.  I spent an hour with them recently (before September 11) in Autodesk's headquarters in San Rafael, CA, learning how they use the web to better manage their space.

The challenge that Autodesk faces is tracking about 1.1 million square feet occupied by 3,500 employees in 90 offices around the world.  Starting with their larger facilities, the team has recently implemented a Facility Management System (FIS) application.  Essentially FIS takes employee data exported from SAP, which is used by Human Resources, and some information in Excel files and merges both with AutoCad drawings of the physical space.  The resultant reports are fully accessible over the web.   Although this may sound straightforward, it's a hugely complicated task.  (Full Disclosure: Autodesk Ventures is an investor in FIS.)

Three Lessons ... One: The reports are visible to all employees of Autodesk.  So everybody can see where everybody else is sitting and which units have vacant space.  This builds trust with the real estate team.  There's no secret information.  Two: Implementation of such a system requires the active, ongoing participation of Human Resources.  You can't hire or relocate a new employee if there's no desk!   Three: Such a system enables corporate real estate professionals to spend more time understanding their "customer's" business plans and far less administrative time preparing reports. 

--Peter Pike / ppike@pikenet.com