We’ve talked about PeopleSoft Real Estate Management (REM) before, but I  want to take a moment to highlight an example of two common pains that many companies endure before realizing they need a full REM solution.  Like everything else, this is an exercise in tipping points: your tools work well enough until one day, frustration and complexity and lack of functionality gain critical mass and you begin searching for something better.

Let me be clear: Microsoft Excel – what most companies use until they realize they have created a bit of an XLS monster – is a great tool, but it quickly crumbles under its own weight when its forced to keep track of buildings, valuations, depreciation and lease renewals across lots of physical locations.

Below is an illustration of only two pain points that I see very frequently with clients who are looking to graduate to a full REM solution.

Help Manage Complexity

For a moment, let’s assume you are a retailer with 1,000 physical, leased locations to manage.  We know Excel is a standard at many companies to track Accounts Payable (AP) transactions. That’s fine and well, but under our lease scenario, keeping track of lease renewals (and the overall process for doing so) is almost impossible using Excel.  Typically, customers need at least six months to begin the lease renegotiation process comfortably, and if they wait too long, they lose massive leverage, which in turn quickly translates to too much money spent.  With a system like PeopleSoft REM, you can set up multiple alerts for each of your 1,000 locations to help kick off the lease renegotiation process.  This may seem like a minor thing until you calculate what 1,000 poorly-negotiated new leases would cost you over the length of whatever terms bind your agreements.  You’re quickly talking real money in a very serious way.

Reporting

This is self-evident to some degree, but massively useful when it comes to managing 1,000 locations and looking at those assets in terms of the data that’s important to you.  Excel has no built-in reporting, let alone out-of-box reporting that gives you insight into real estate-specific operations or KPIs.  Managing 1,000 locations via manual Excel reports would be nothing short of a nightmare, and it has no built-in real estate contexts, so building them in the first place would be difficult to all but the seasoned Excel/real estate expert.  This problem is obviously circumvented by a REM system such as PeopleSoft’s, as reporting is built-in and natively understands many REM operations.  This seems like a luxury until you see everything PeopleSoft REM can do, when you suddenly ask yourself how you’ve been able to limp along without it.

You might say, “Yeah, so what?” to both of these until you realize the absolute weight of performing these tasks manually with a tool ill-prepared for the job.  In my client engagements, when I illustrate the benefits of an REM system from these standpoints, people truly get excited.  Why?  Because they realize how much internal/staff bandwidth they can free up for other projects while letting an intelligent REM system pull the levers behind the curtain with no babysitting.

It’s a very, very powerful thing.  Remember, with enterprise tech, the gods often live in the details.

If any of this sounds like something you’re wrestling with, please email me (seriously!) or give us a call at 800-774-5187.  I’d love to help you sort your plans out.

Previously by David Brunet:

Quantifying the Value of Integration With PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Real Life Example
Quick Look: PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) 9.1 Enhancements
PeopleSoft ‘Edge of the Enterprise’ Applications: eSupplier Connection & eSettlements
PeopleSoft Financials: Source-to-Settle 9.1 Enhancements
PeopleSoft IT Asset Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Real Estate Management: A Deeper Look
An Introduction to PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management
Sneak Peek: PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.1
PeopleTools 8.5: A Look Inside

Related whitepapers (PDF):

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits

Related web content:

MiPro Consulting: PeopleSoft Services
MiPro Consulting: Resources

We had a huge response to our high-level discussion of what’s coming in the upcoming release of PeopleSoft Financials 9.1.  Today, we will focus on PeopleSoft’s Asset Life Cycle Management (ALM) product line. If you have been reading any of our previous posts, you understand that the ALM suite consists of the following products:

• Asset Management – this is the core application within the ALM suite. It is the asset repository of record and provides the ability to track all the information related to an asset, including both operational and financial data.
• Maintenance Management (MM) – the Maintenance Management module allows you to track service requests, work orders and preventive maintenance in addition to reporting and analysis of asset TCO.
• IT Asset Management (ITAM) – Provides the ability to track and manage your IT assets (both hardware and software) and their financial impacts to the organization.
• Real Estate Management (REM) – Provides the ability to track leases (as either the landlord or as a tenant) and to manage costs intelligently.

For the upcoming 9.1 release of PeopleSoft ALM, I have highlighted the key enhancements for each product. Note that I have not listed all of them, but you can always hit Metalink3 (login required) for the (far) more granular picture.

Asset Management 9.1 Enhancements

• Retirement Options Enhancements – Provides some advanced options for handling of asset gains/losses
• Capitalization Thresholds – Provides the ability to define capitalization thresholds to better ensure compliance with company capitalization rules
• Group Asset Enhancements – provides a bevy of new features to better track group assets
• Global Reporting– Enhancements to track IAS 40, FAS 157 and Bonus Depreciation

IT Asset Management 9.1 Enhancements

• Improvements to Global Reporting
• Improvement to GUI and overall usability
• Improvements related to integration with discovery software providers

Maintenance Management 9.1 Enhancements

• Improvements to usability – Better GUI for Service Requests and Work Orders, all developed from customer feedback
• Equipment Parts Lists refinement – improvements that make it easier to update and manage the EPL
• Improved integration with third-party mobile providers (open API, so no lock-in)
• GIS Integration – delivers integration to third-party GIS applications along with the ability to display asset information on a map
• Improved Preventive Maintenance – more options for managing preventive maintenance including tracking of major and minor schedules and the ability to mass update preventive maintenance schedules

Real Estate Management 9.1 Enhancements

• New Business Process – support for the property site selection and acquisition process
• Advanced lease monitoring options
• Additional options for overriding lease accounting rules
• Added seven (7) additional percentage rent calculation methods
• Improvement to the common area maintenance audit process

That’s the high level stuff.  Again, Metalink3 has the PeopleSoft Release Release Value Proposition document (login required), and it goes into a far deeper picture than I can here.

Another reminder: we get asked everyday about PeopleSoft 9.1, and interest is only growing (if our server logs are credible).  I invite you to email me (seriously!) or leave a comment below if you’d like to talk to us about upgrading or implementing 9.1 for your organization, especially if you’re looking at the PeopleSoft ALM suite.  We’d love to talk to you, and we’re confident we can help you formulate a strategy around your PeopleSoft 9.1 plans.  We’ve done so for many clients already, and Oracle turns to us for ALM expertise with increasing frequency.

Previously by David Brunet:

PeopleSoft ‘Edge of the Enterprise’ Applications: eSupplier Connection & eSettlements
PeopleSoft Financials: Source-to-Settle 9.1 Enhancements
PeopleSoft IT Asset Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Real Estate Management: A Deeper Look
An Introduction to PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management
Sneak Peek: PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.1
PeopleTools 8.5: A Look Inside

Related whitepapers (PDF):

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits

Related web content:

MiPro Consulting: PeopleSoft Services
MiPro Consulting: Resources

If you’ll allow us a quick moment of self-indulgence: we’re thrilled to announce that we have achieved Certified Advantage Partner (CAP) within the Oracle PartnerNetwork ecosystem.  This comes after making Certified Partner (CP) last year and redoubling our efforts to make Certified Advantage Partner (CAP) this year.

MiPro achieved CAP status by excelling in two focus areas: PeopleSoft Enterprise and Business Intelligence.  On the Oracle side of our business, this is where we have most of our discussions and form long-term relationships with clients of all sizes.  From a company culture standpoint, it’s rewarding to see clients recognize we’re a different kind of consulting company and one that goes well beyond lip service to prove it.

A good portion of this accomplishment is a result of our strong push into the Oracle/PeopleSoft ALM product domain (specifically: Maintenance Management, Real Estate Management and IT Asset Management), an area in which we are rapidly building a strong reputation.  Making CAP puts MiPro in the top tier of Oracle partners, a small percentage who consistently demonstrate superior product knowledge, technical expertise, and commitment to Oracle solutions.

An official press release is forthcoming, but we’d like to take a moment to thank all of our customers and the Oracle field, channel and partner reps who helped us accomplish this.  We’re ingratiated and cannot thank you enough.

Related posts:

PeopleSoft
Ditch Your Spreadsheets! Why PeopleSoft Retail and Hospitality Industry Customers Have an Opportunity Right Now
The Value of Integration for PeopleSoft Customers in Asset-Intensive Industries
PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Real Estate Management: A Deeper Look
An Introduction to PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management
Sneak Peek: PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.1
PeopleTools 8.5: A Look Inside

Business Intelligence
Art Meets Science: Business Intelligence Requirements Gathering
Business Intelligence Apps: Build vs. Buy
Business Intelligence: A Picture (or Flash Demo) Is Worth a Thousand Words
Twitter vs. Enterprise Software
Living Together: Oracle BI and PeopleSoft
Back to basics: Why choose an enterprise Business Intelligence tool, anyway?
Using BI to Survive the Recession, Part I
Using BI to Survive the Recession, Part II
Business Intelligence in the real world: Aligning metrics (Part I)
Business Intelligence in the real world: Aligning metrics (Part II)

Related whitepapers (PDF):

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits
MiPro’s Business Intelligence Manifesto: Six Requirements for an Effective BI Deployment

Related web content:

MiPro Consulting: PeopleSoft Services
MiPro Consulting: Business Intelligence Services
MiPro Consulting: Resources

PeopleSoft retail and hospitality industry customers: it’s time to ditch your homegrown, sprawling spreadsheet farm and start enjoying the benefits of PeopleSoft’s Real Estate Management (REM) solution.  There is an easier way, and it’s here, now.

It’s an understatement that the tough economy is severely impacting the retail and hospitality industries.  The consumer is scared and discretionary spending has been cut to the bone.  In the words of a good friend of mine, 2009 is turning out to be a “character building” year.

If you are PeopleSoft customer, PeopleSoft’s REM solution provides you with a very cost effective way to manage what is likely to be your largest asset — your individual store locations.  While the benefits offered to retail and hospitality customers are significant and covered in more detail below, allow me to take a small step back and provide you with a quick history lesson.

Prior to the JDEdwards acquisition, PeopleSoft didn’t have a real estate management solution.   JDEdwards on the other hand had a great solution.  Originally developed in the 1990s, JDEdwards had developed a robust solution for real estate management.  The solution was so well accepted in the marketplace that JDE created a separate business unit and field sales organization to focus solely on real estate management opportunities.

After acquiring JDEdwards, PeopleSoft realized they had a great opportunity to increase the value of their retail and hospitality customers’ investment in PeopleSoft applications.  PeopleSoft quickly made the decision to rewrite the JD Edwards Real Estate Management solution in PeopleTools and integrate it with the PeopleSoft Financials, Supply Chain, and HCM applications.

Fast forward to the realities of a challenging, uncertain 2009.  PeopleSoft customers have the opportunity right now to really manage their real estate portfolio and not just throw hordes of spreadsheets at the problem.   If you’re not convinced and still think spreadsheets are good enough for your organization, have you considered the following?

• Can your spreadsheets manage common area maintenance costs accurately so you can ensure you are not overpaying?
• Can spreadsheets effectively ensure FASB compliance?
• Do your spreadsheets alert you to impending events such as lease renewals?
• And speaking of lease renewals, do your spreadsheets capture the information you need so you are sufficiently prepared for a lease renewal negotiation?
• Are your spreadsheets integrated into your PeopleSoft Financials systems so you have true enterprise visibility of your real estate portfolio?
• Do your spreadsheets provide you with the reporting and business intelligence capabilities needed to make smart decisions?

Still not convinced?  Well, it could be that your competitor is convinced and has already invested in real estate management solutions.  Consider this quote from an excellent 2008 AMR Research report entitled Retailers Take New Approaches To Real Estate Management:

“The retail industry is making a massive shift from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and homegrown technology to packaged applications for managing the entire lifecycle of properties.  In 2006, 25% of retailers used enterprise software applications for the purpose of real estate management. That number grew significantly to 36% in 2007.”

That’s a 44% year-over-year increase!

Have I piqued your interest?

For more information on the benefits of the PeopleSoft Real Estate Management solution, please email me or give us a call at 800-774-5187.  In addition, you can check out Oracle’s website and download some of the collateral related to the product.

Of course, if social media is more  your thing, you can follow us on Twitter or become our fan on Facebook.  Or, if old school RSS is your gig, you can subscribe here.

Previously:

The Value of Integration for PeopleSoft Customers in Asset-Intensive Industries
PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Real Estate Management: A Deeper Look
An Introduction to PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management
Sneak Peek: PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.1
PeopleTools 8.5: A Look Inside

Related whitepapers (PDF):

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits

Related web content:

MiPro Consulting: PeopleSoft Services
MiPro Consulting: Resources

If you can remember last week through the Pre and iPhone hype, you’ll recall I discussed PeopleSoft’s ALM product suite at an introductory level. This  week we’ll take a deeper dive into Real Estate Management (REM), one of the modules included within the ALM suite. At the 10,000 foot level, PeopleSoft REM enables organizations to manage and track lease contracts, monitor and optimize space utilization and allocations, and ensure compliance with FASB and other regulatory entities.

The REM system also allows PeopleSoft customers to manage leases both as a landlord and/or a tenant, providing flexibility and visibility into all their lease obligations.  Many organizations we have worked with use a third-party application or Excel spreadsheets to manage their leases, which forces them to manually enter their lease payment information into the PeopleSoft Accounts Payable/Billing application.  This redundant data entry is completely eliminated with PeopleSoft Real Estate Management system, mainly because of prebuilt integrations to:

• PeopleSoft Asset Management
• PeopleSoft General Ledger
• PeopleSoft Accounts Payable
• PeopleSoft Customer Contracts
• PeopleSoft Billing

With this level of workflow integration, customers can take advantage of their current PeopleSoft investment and eliminate both the rekeying of information and/or the cost of interfacing to a third-party application.  In addition, PeopleSoft customers gain access to the workflow technologies built into PeopleSoft, allowing automatic notifications of lease expirations, options, key milestones, and other user defined events.  From a reporting perspective, there are a number of predefined pagelets available that give a user insight into the status of their leases, as well as query capabilities to meet the needs of even the most complex organizations.

Not only does REM make it easy to manage lease obligations, but it makes easy work of tracking and managing the operating expenses related to the lease. The system is designed so that operating expenses can be predefined or entered ad-hoc as they occur against the related lease.  It also provides the ability to reconcile operating expenses that have been incurred over a period of time and “true them up” based on actual values.

The PeopleSoft REM system also supports Computer-Aided Facilities Management (CAFM), with prebuilt integrations to CenterStone’s facility management system.  This allows users to update and review a company’s physical assets and their related occupancy and space information.  If your organization is not using CenterStone, the prebuilt integrations can be fitted to support most other facility management applications.

If your organization has multiple lease obligations, such as a retailer with multiple store locations, a bank or financial institution with multiple branches, a healthcare organization with multiple clinics or locations, or a restaurant or hotel chain with many locations, you should take the time to check out PeopleSoft’s Real Estate Management system. The functionality rivals or exceeds that of a best of breed third-party system with none of the integration headaches, and there is typically a strong ROI.

To gain more information on the PeopleSoft Real Estate Product, please email me or give us a call at 800-774-5187.  In addition, you can check out Oracle’s website and download some of the collateral related to the product.

Next week I’ll discuss the features and functions of the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management application, so be sure to come back (or subscribe to our RSS) if you’re interested.  Alternatively, if you’re into social media, hit us up on Twitter or become our fan on Facebook.

We’re asked very frequently about PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM), so perhaps it’s time to lay down a few primer posts about what ALM is and why enterprises are becoming so interested in it.

This post, the first of four parts, will discuss PeopleSoft’s ALM solution suite.  As a general intro, the product was released in 2005 as part of the PeopleSoft 8.9 release.  ALM is sometimes referred to as Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (related: Wikipedia’s take on EAM).  These two terms – ALM and EAM – are used interchangeably and really are reflective of the process of managing a company’s assets, defined as:

• Software and IT hardware
• Capital equipment
• Buildings/real estate
• Vehicles
• Furniture

PeopleSoft ALM offers a significant value proposition for the PeopleSoft customer base.  Primarily, from an enterprise IT/portfolio standpoint, it brings one of the final areas of an organization into the enterprise applications realm. Prior to this release, many PeopleSoft customers were forced to look to third-party applications that required interfacing (a very time consuming and expensive undertaking) with their existing PeopleSoft applications.

At the highest level, the suite of ALM products includes, as excerpted from Oracle’s website:

Maintenance Management

“Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Maintenance Management is a fully integrated solution for the maintenance of infrastructure, plant, and equipment—enabling organizations to streamline operations, facilitate compliance, and eliminate costly, inadequate custom integrations to third-party systems. Through out-of-the-box integration with other PeopleSoft Enterprise applications such as Project Costing, Asset Management, Purchasing, and Inventory, PeopleSoft Maintenance Management enables you to prioritize assets and ensure the right level of investment to meet utilization and financial goals.”

IT Asset Management

“Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise IT Asset Management manages distributed IT assets, including software, servers, laptops, desktops, and PDAs. PeopleSoft IT Asset Management integrates with Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management and Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM IT Help Desk to automatically reconcile physical and financial IT inventory, redeploy underutilized software, provide service agents with visibility into actual hardware/software configurations and help divisions meet growing compliance requirements.”

Real Estate Management

“Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Real Estate Management streamlines and automates lease administration and space management. Whether you are a corporate or a retail/franchise operation, PeopleSoft Real Estate Management offers a comprehensive solution for reducing costs and minimizing contractual and financial risk.”

(To learn more, Oracle has all the information you could ever want.)

Each of these products can provide a significant cost savings for PeopleSoft customers.  Why?  Well, for starters, the need for interfaces is eliminated.  Also, in many cases, the cost of licensing and maintaining the applications is less than that of third-party applications providing similar functionality.  Finally, information about a company’s assets is stored in a single shared set of PeopleSoft applications, providing visibility throughout the enterprise.  Even though ALM requires other PeopleSoft applications to be present in a company’s applications footprint, it provides a single pane of glass when deployed correctly.  And that’s something every company wants.

Another item to note about these products is that they were released with key functionality that immediately made them a viable alternative to the best-of-breed vendors.  For example, Real Estate Management was highly ranked in the IREM 2006 JPM Real Estate Technology Study, going toe-to-toe with the best-of-breeds in its first year of release. This type of depth didn’t just happen overnight – it was a result of Oracle’s foresight to leverage the IP it acquired through the JD Edwards acquisition.  The same type of depth has been achieved in the other ALM products as well.

We can only wonder what Oracle has in store for these upcoming stars.  MiPro has been fortunate enough to have gained some in-depth knowledge and experience in implementing the ALM products (particularly Maintenance Management), and we have published a Maintenance Management whitepaper that provides a simple but solid introduction and overview of the product.

Next week I’ll jump into the Real Estate Management application, so be sure to come back (or subscribe to our RSS) if you’re interested.  Alternatively, if you’re into social media, hit us up on Twitter or become our fan on Facebook.

Of course, all questions and comments welcome. Fire away.

If you’ll indulge me a moment: our firm has become a noted authority on the PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution suite, particularly along the Maintenance Management (MM) and Real Estate Management (REM) lines.  (Our own PeopleSoft Maintenance Management whitepaper is a popular download.)

It’s in this context that I’m going to recommend Joshua Greenbaum’s excellent PDF whitepaper about why companies should be looking at an enterprise approach to real estate management.  It doesn’t delve into the PeopleSoft side of the market – where we specialize – but it does do an excellent job of illustrating why companies should be looking at REM for cost control, managing large real estate portfolios and making the most of revenue opportunities.

Incidentally, Greenbaum has an excellent blog.  Check out Enterprise Matters (or his old ZDNet blog) if you’re interested in some astute analysis of enterprise happenings.

(Via Tom A.)