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Companies have begun to search for ways to shorten their lease cycle times by standardizing leasing documents, using technology to streamline deal paper flow, and implementing document management solutions for retrieval of customer interactions and documents. A number of companies, including Equity Office, have established more standardized lease forms in the hopes of reducing attorney fees, as well as encouraging earlier occupancies, and shorter, less contentious negotiations. By taking an overall approach to document management and choosing the right form of technology, companies can create real efficiencies for themselves, customers and partners. Initiatives in this area must align with the overall business strategy and complement the current direction of a company's leasing activities, identify initial solutions that provide more immediate value, are most easily achievable and provide a foundation for growth in the future.

Every industry has sales activities at some level. Some sales are highly formal and involve complex legal documents. Other less formal processes support or lead directly to the exchange of goods or services. As real estate companies have matured, a number of organizations have begun to focus on their sales processes in an attempt to shorten the overall leasing cycle and simplify how leases are administered.

Property and financial accounting systems provide a consolidated view of overall earnings and property performance as well as tools to streamline accounting-related processes. Using the accounting system information as the foundation, companies have begun to search for ways to shorten their lease cycle times by standardizing leasing documents, using technology to streamline deal paper flow, and implementing document management solutions for retrieval of customer interactions and documents.

A number of companies, including Equity Office, have established more standardized lease forms in the hopes of reducing attorney fees, as well as encouraging earlier occupancies, and shorter, less contentious negotiations. At Equity Office, a shorter lease was created by eliminating redundant language and generally making the lease easier to read. Some leasing departments have not embraced the short form standardized lease. In other instances, the form has been used inappropriately with customers who seek to modify and obtain specific additional information as part of the deal.

Automating lease transactions is probably one of the more complex challenges for a leasing department as streamlining leasing documents requires the balance of an art form with a focused discipline, not to mention strong executive support. Few companies have been able to successfully resolve these issues.

In the mid-1990s, several technology solutions focused on streamlining the leasing process from initial point of customer contact through lease execution. Typically, these solutions focused on two areas: incorporating management-level transparency into the leasing process by better understanding cycle times and overall lease status and automating the development and editing of the actual leasing documents. Since that time, more companies have had success providing management-level transparency using off-the-shelf packages like Onyx, Siebel and other traditional CRM solutions or by developing custom in-house solutions. A number of real estate companies have implemented document management systems toprovide enterprise access to all customer-related documents. Those documents include leases, customer correspondence, tenant improvement plans, amendments and letters of credit.

Any electronic document strategy must be a part of a larger document management strategy that also defines physical storage requirements, retention policies and filing processes. By taking an overall approach to document management and choosing the right form of technology, companies can create real efficiencies for themselves, customers and partners. Initiatives in this area must align with the overall business strategy and complement the current direction of a company's leasing activities, identify initial solutions that provide more immediate value, are most easily achievable and provide a foundation for growth in the future.

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[Author Affiliation]

Scott Morey (scott_morey@equityoffice.com) is the chief information officer for Equity Office Properties Trust.