Contents
1. Grubb's There -- Extranet II
2. CTMT "Rydes" Web Success

1. Grubb's There -- Extranet II... Wow, my July 28 Dispatch generated some lively e-mails. You'll remember that's where I commented on the efforts (or lack thereof) by national service providers to develop strong extranet connectivity.

Bob Bach of Grubb & Ellis writes that his firm "... connected its first extranet (eNet) client, Archon, about a year ago, and we have been adding clients since then. We utilize our eNet to exchange documents and files with our clients, keep them up to date on project status, and provide them with the full range of Grubb & Ellis market research reports. We have had clients participate in forum discussions with G&E professionals and staff regarding various topics of interest to them, such as the status of a particular market." ... Scott Williams, CIO of Grubb & Ellis, made an interesting point: "Our extranet is indistinguishable from our intranet." In fact, at PikeNet 98 in San Francisco, Williams demonstrated how G&E's internal information system was web enabled. So that makes it relatively easy to provide clients access to it, thus creating an extranet.

Last Thursday I spoke at NACORE's Institute for Corporate Real Estate in San Francisco. One of the participants mentioned that his company (a major distributor in the Midwest) was told by CB Richard Ellis that they offered extranet connectivity "so we can check the status of our projects." The day before a CB Richard Ellis broker in the Midwest had written that she was headed to a training class on "our new extranet capability." And a Philadelphia CB broker writes enthusiastically, "CB Richard Ellis does indeed utilize a form of extranet, available to clients and employees!" ... So it sounds like something's happening. But I'm not exactly sure what.

2. CTMT "Rydes" Web Success... Regional firms can also develop strong extranet tools, and it's actually easier to implement an extranet on a smaller scale. Case in point: Colliers Turley Martin Tucker which covers the Midwest. ... Here's how Kevin Hughes of CTMT Cincinnati describes the benefits of his extranet: "We ... are'wired' to all of our Corporate Services clients ...some (like Ryder) are totally integrated via password protected, web-based data bases. Some companies prefer that our people, and therefore the data, reside within their facilities, others like the data to be 'housed' on our servers w/ access thru an extranet ... some clients desire access that is restricted to certain data bases (or sometimes only specific data fields) while others are completely interactive. Whatever, however ...it is their call." ... Keep your extranet stories coming in. Send e-mail to me at . I'll write more.

--Peter