Building Engineers on the Frontlines... What happens when you introduce a new communications tool that enables tenants to process service requests over the Internet? Well, all of a sudden your engineers become relationship managers -- a big cultural change. That's according to Jim Whalen, CIO at Boston Properties. And Scott Morey, CIO at Equity Office agreed, pointing out that it's now important to get engineers back into the building office to insure good internal communications.

Both Whalen and Morey made these comments at the PikeNet Forum during a Roundtable discussion of the Boston Properties case study, Streamlining Management Workflow and Increasing Tenant Satisfaction. Quoting from the case study, which was prepared by John McMahan at Centerprise, "The technical complexities were secondary to the challenges of changing processes and workflow, implementing data standards, and increasing the technical skills of personnel." Yep, it's the people that make the difference.

McMahan summarized the benefits to Boston Properties as three-fold: reduced transaction costs, greater staff responsiveness and higher tenant satisfaction. Interestingly, larger tenants with dedicated facilities staffs realized the greatest benefits. Up until now, the Boston Properties system has been entirely home grown. But in the future, they will consider an ASP model (where the data is hosted on an outside server), as technologies mature (e.g., wireless) and preventative maintenance systems can be integrated into a service order management system. ... If you'd like to purchase all three case studies (Boston Properties, Jones Lang LaSalle, and Sprint) for $95, click here to order online.

--Peter Pike