What Is Keeping You From PeopleSoft Real Estate Management?

March 20, 2013
David Scott
Blog

In the past few weeks there seems to be increased interest in the Real Estate Management applications, which I guess makes me wonder, “What took so long?”

For the last 20 years, the PeopleSoft applications have offered us an opportunity to eliminate point solutions and replace them with integrated PeopleSoft modules. I believe the saying used to be “a single source of the truth.” This was PeopleSoft’s way of saying that point solutions diluted the “truth” with duplicative data from multiple sources.

As I talk to people today, there are typically four reasons to engage yourself with a thorough analysis between your point solutions vs. the available solutions that can be achieved through PeopleSoft. The easiest to address are the features and functionality available in the new 9.2 applications. The second topic is the many issues solved by adopting a fully integrated solution. The next topic ultimately leads to an “ease of use” discussion. And the final reason is usually the lower total cost of ownership.

For Real Estate Management, the features and functionality tend to just scratch the surface. The application may not do everything that a specialty solution can, but it does more than 98% of what you need it to do. In our 10-part series on Real Estate Management, we showed you many of the options you will have to manage your Real Estate transactions. This processes include site acquisition, lease administration, financial processing and space management. You may also want to ask help from the experts in community associations like cherokee nc hoa services. Their firm works directly with board members to preserve the community value and enhance the overall look and feel of the neighborhoods in which they manage.

More important to many of the folks I talk to is the power of an integrated solution and the issues that are naturally resolved by having all of the puzzle pieces in a common format. If you are currently using PeopleSoft Financials, then half of the transactions are already in PeopleSoft via vendors and payments, so why not consolidate all your information into one place? The Real Estate Management module gives you the ability to create a lease, schedule events, request payments, process checks in a timely manner, and track all payment history in one place. Further, it uses Asset Management which gives you more visibility and direct management of your investments across your organization. With Real Estate Management you can now have complete and realtime visibility to the financial data for a particular location. And consider reporting: having all elements of every lease in a common solution will enhance reporting capabilities across multiple leases, within a single lease and across vendors/landlords, etc.

Any analysis of software ultimately turns to ease of use. By default, point solutions are more challenging because of duplicative data, trying to synchronize across systems, different field names for the same thing, different data structures, and different IT environments with needs for nightly back-up, etc. If you are already using PeopleSoft, then adopting a new module should enhance the end-user experience, not make it more challenging. A common look and feel, plus consistent application of security, use of reporting tools and having an IT shop versed in PeopleSoft makes the overall solution beneficial to the organization.

The last branch of your decision tree gravitates to lower total cost of ownership. Eliminating a point solution will decrease your support requirements and simplify processing. In this case, Real Estate Management is part of your Financial System, so back-ups are addressed, security is simplified, reporting is enhanced with your current PS tools, and everything seems to run a little smoother. And you can accomplish this solution with your existing IT team – no additional personnel needed. And by fully integrating your solution, the processing time is reduced to form a cohesive “single source of the truth”. What more could you ask for?

Posts in our popular Real Estate Management series: