Hardwiring Real Estate... How do you manage 59 active transactions covering 3.5 million square feet spread across the U.S for a single client using a single point of contact? Well, if you're NAI and the client is the U.S. Postal Service, you use REALTrac Online, NAI's proprietary "reporting system" for NAI members and affiliates. Notice that I said "reporting" system, not "transaction management system." As Finn Johnson, VP of e-Business, says, it's much easier to grasp the power of a "client reporting tool," as opposed to a "transaction management system." The former sounds like less work. The latter sounds like more work.

Last week Finn Johnson and Bill McCuen of NAI, along with Dave Eales and Randy Alder of the USPS WebEx'd me through a demo of REALTrac in action. Eales directs the USPS Realty Asset Management Group, which seeks to maximize the value of USPS facilities. This might involve a purchase, sale, lease, or sublease -- the whole gamut of real estate transactions.

As we scanned down the list of active transactions, we saw all varieties of properties and locations at all stages of completion. Eales and Alder can roll up a summary or call up details on any deal by category -- for example, Messages, Calendar, Tasks, Prospects, and Documents. McCuen, who manages the USPS account for NAI, and Alder, who manages the NAI relationship for the USPS, obviously have spent a huge amount of time refining the reporting process as they coordinate the hundreds of NAI and USPS professionals involved.

Accomplishing this task pre-Internet, with faxes, voicemail, and (dare I say) FedEx would have been much more cumbersome -- maybe impossible. Johnson states that about 50% of NAI's 3,500 professionals use the system, along with 10,000 clients and third parties. How do you measure the value of the efficiencies gained? Search me. But it's clear that, as the real estate industry becomes more wired, all parties benefit.

Building Your Brand... Thanks to our new sponsor this week, BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting). Would you like to sponsor the PikeNet Dispatch? Dates available starting in January 2003. Send e-mail or call me at 415-485-6700. Thanks!

--Peter Pike