The Saybrook Point Inn, Marina & Spa faced the challenge of maintaining high-quality guest services while managing a variety of amenities and facilities. The property needed a solution that could streamline operations, improve efficiency, and enhance the overall guest experience. The management team sought to integrate technology that would allow for seamless service delivery across different areas, including the Marina Bar, poolside, and dining areas. Additionally, they required a system that could handle front office operations, guest history, housekeeping, and reservations management without causing disruptions or requiring intrusive communication methods.

The newly-opened music venue 172 in the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino needed a robust point-of-sale (POS) system to manage their operations efficiently. With the grand opening fast approaching, the property operators required a solution that could be implemented quickly and meet their high demands. They needed a system that could handle secure financial transactions and optimize guest service, ensuring a seamless experience for patrons. The challenge was to deploy a POS system that could go live on a tight timeline while providing comprehensive reporting and analytics to control costs and streamline operations.

The desire to better manage First National’s growth has accelerated in recent years as they make a transition from leased to owned property, add space on an ongoing basis, and increase facility-related accountability. Those trends have all helped drive their expanding use of ARCHIBUS. Prior to the implementation of ARCHIBUS in the late 1990s, FNBI’s space data was maintained manually, which often resulted in inaccurate or inconsistent information. The maintenance and operations systems then in place did not tie directly back into the building portfolio information or provide the access and detail that was increasingly important for management purposes. In addition, the lack of a preventative maintenance system had them responding to exponentially more – and more costly – equipment failures. Another point of pain, parking management for over 2,500 parking stalls also presented a challenge, as did establishing a reliable methodology for overall strategic master planning.

The Telefónica Inmobilario (TI) group faced the challenge of managing an extensive real estate portfolio spread across 50 countries. The primary issues included geographical disparity of employees and locations, incomplete and scattered property data, and the need for a consolidated view of all real estate assets. The existing data was fragmented across multiple databases, making it difficult to manage space usage, lease contracts, and building operations efficiently. The TI group aimed to bring all this information together in one system to save time and money, optimize space usage, and provide a self-service portal for employees and subcontractors.

The story of Progressive Casualty Insurance’s implementation of ARCHIBUS is one of learning from challenges to achieve great success. When the company first adopted ARCHIBUS, the attempt wasn’t able to fully meet the customer’s needs due to a lack of customization, communication, and stakeholder involvement. However, the team at the Real Estate Department closely examined what had made the first project fail and used the lessons they learned to, subsequently, drive a stunningly successful implementation. Before implementing ARCHIBUS, Progressive Casualty used various internal systems to track building operations and accommodate work groups in the real estate organization. Employee moves, meanwhile, were managed on a third party platform. Progressive’s Real Estate Department decided that the company would benefit from a unified approach to building operations and turned to ARCHIBUS to supply this solution. The first project took a “one-size-fits-all” approach that didn’t initially meet the organization’s needs and created several hurdles that would need to be improved upon going forward. The initial project was also inhibited by a lack of communication and mistimed communication during implementation. For example, the staff was trained before the rollout to support the implementation but, by the time the project went live, they had forgotten what they learned, or were not as involved in the project. Additionally, due to project delays and deadlines, reporting options were not addressed that could save time and resources. As a result of these issues, the project did not meet key deadlines and the solution it provided was incomplete and did not match the company’s needs. Because of these issues, key stakeholders within the company found their old methods easier to understand and use than the new solution provided by ARCHIBUS.

Every hospital faces the twin challenges of maintaining its facilities from both a strictly operational as well as regulatory compliance standpoint. The challenges just get bigger the larger the institution in question happens to be, and they don’t come much bigger – or better – than The Nebraska Medical Center (TNMC) in Omaha, Nebraska. TNMC, in fact, was recently named to the list of “100 Great Hospitals in America” by Becker’s Hospital Review.\n\nTNMC’s enviable reputation is supported in part by the expertise of that healthcare provider’s facilities department. The facilities team is responsible for a nearly 4 million square foot main campus with an additional 600,000+ square feet at other educational, hospital and clinic facilities in and around Omaha, points out Michelle Stalker, TNMC’s Senior Systems Engineer. That means placing added emphasis on preventive maintenance that complies with state and professional regulatory requirements.

The capital project challenge for an organization as large as SDG&E, with its diverse facility types, is considerable given its more than 2 million square feet of office buildings, operating bases, substations, and payment centers. Upgrading the existing system to manage that function required a plan equally large to connect its multiple platforms and make them work as one. The legacy project management system in place, along with Microsoft Project, ARCHIBUS applications, Maximo for processing work orders, and SAP handling the company’s financials, created a fragmented environment. This setup couldn't easily perform automated, bi-directional data interchanges with other systems, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of integration.

In sales for nearly a quarter century, Bobby Russo was the quintessential road warrior. Then he got remarried to a woman who wanted to start a family. Settling in Hershey, Pennsylvania, they had two boys — Caleb (now almost 4) and Cory (now almost 2). Something had to give. “I travelled roughly 165,000 miles per year, 235 hotel nights per year,” Russo recalls. “Four years ago, I remarried. And I married a younger woman who wanted children.” In October 2012, Russo came home from another long stint on the road. A successful businessman, Russo had built up a sporting goods company, sold it in 2000 after eight years, and retired at age 36. He was lured out of retirement in 2002 to become North American sales manager for a large multinational electronics company, a position he held for a decade. When Russo came back home for a few days in late 2012, his wife sat him down and asked him two questions that changed his life for the better. “’What are you doing?’” he recalls her asking him. “‘You’ve got two beautiful kids. You don’t need to do this. Why don’t you retire and spend more time with your family?’” Russo did just that. “Caleb, who was three, was saying, ‘Daddy come home. Daddy, come home,’ and every time we’d pass a black Lincoln Town Car, he’d say, ‘Daddy, don’t go to the airport,’ because that’s what would come to the house to take me to the airport. And every time he saw one, he’d go, ‘Daddy, don’t leave.’ And then we’d see an airplane, and he’d say, ‘Daddy, don’t leave.’ So that was tough.” He planned to relocate his young family to Charleston, South Carolina, putting down an offer on a house, and planning to take the next decade off until his boys began high school. Then Russo’s father got wind of his son’s plans. “’You’re really retiring? What’s the big issue?’” he recalled his father asking him. “I told him it was travel,” Russo says. “There are only about 35 weeknights a year when I’m in my own bed, at home with my family. I don’t want to do what I did with Nikki [his 22 year-old daughter] and not be around all the time.” His father replied, “‘Well if the only issue’s travel, I need your help with this property management company I have out here [in Florence, Arizona]. We can run the business together.’” Russo had a short retirement. He and his family relocated to the Phoenix area in early 2013. Impulse Property Management, the company he took over, has 7 real estate agents, 2 property managers, and then the Russos as owners. They manage 122 buildings with 136 total units. In early 2013, however, his father had shoulder surgery and left the day-to-day operations of the property management business to the two property managers on staff. By April 1, when Bobby Russo was due to take over the property management side of the business, it was a mess. “I inherited a company with ticked off tenants because their deposits had been stolen. We had owners ticked off because we had property managers who weren’t paying owner payments, and we had no way of tracking payments if the owners called in. Our property managers were so confused, they blew off the owners. When I started on April 1, there were four messages on the voicemail from customers looking for information. In all, there were 25 messages going back two months. Checks were on the floor. Checks were piled on desks. Who’s current? We couldn’t get a rent roll to save our lives. No work orders were being used, so vendors were coming in and dropping off invoices, and an audit we did showed at least one vendor who had billed us for work he’d never done.” “We needed to completely turn around how people looked at this company,” Russo recalls. “Here we were, two basically retired guys with a business that’s worth something that maybe I can give to my kids someday, and a market (property management) that’s growing — it’s the fastest growing segment of the real estate business. Owners and tenants needed 24/7 access to their accounts, to be able to list vacant houses, owners should be able to see the houses are listed right away, how we market them and what we’re doing, and they should be able to see the rental applications. They need to have full visibility into our activities.” When Russo took over the business on April 1, he knew he needed to clean house. “I looked at the accounting in our legacy property management software program, and it was a disaster. I called them up. I saw $700,000 in security deposits, $800,000 in income, leases with no expiration dates.There was no double entry bookkeeping going on. The legacy property management software company said we’d need to do a complete reset of the software, wipe out all the data, and start out as if we were a brand new company. I said to them, ‘If I’m going to do that, I’m going to do it with another company.’” “So I started calling around to other property management software companies,” Russo recalls. He even called Salesforce.com, which his previous company had used as an early adopter since 2005, to see if they could help him manage the property management side of the business. “On the real estate side of the business, they’d be perfect,” he says, “but for property management, all they could really provide is a cloud background, and creating as custom solution for us would have cost at least $50,000.”

Depending on the number of times they post, an on-site associate can spend several hours each day posting apartment ads on Craigslist. That’s a significant amount of time, much of which could be put to use on other revenue-generating activities, such as following up on leads. But the real tragedy is when Craigslist “ghosts” those ads based on an algorithm designed to prevent fraudulent ads and spam. When an ad is ghosted on Craigslist, it is visible to the poster but invisible to everybody else who visits the site.

Grainger plc, the UK's largest listed specialist residential landlord and property management company, faced a significant challenge in managing their first purpose-designed build-to-rent property, Abbeville Apartments, in Barking, East London. The company needed a robust system to handle the 'sales' process of finding, processing, and installing new tenants into the property. Their existing structures were not sufficient to track applicants or prospective tenants efficiently, leading to manual processes that were prone to errors, time-consuming, and demotivating for staff. Grainger required a solution that could integrate seamlessly with their existing Qube PM application to streamline these processes and support their rapid expansion into the Private Rented Sector (PRS).

Before implementing the Qube Global Software solution in 2012, HSS Hire did not have an existing property management system in place. Instead, estate information had been kept in different spreadsheets and files, leading to multiple versions of the truth. With multiple new branches opening every year, HSS Hire needed to implement a property management system to accommodate company growth.

Delivering a high level of service means having the right support systems – that’s why four years ago JAI decided to invest in software and technology to help the business even better serve its customers. The company has always been extremely ambitious and it realised that this investment would help it achieve further success and take the business to the next level. For Corin Jenkins, Head of Property Management at JAI, the choice was clear. Corin had known of Qube from past roles due to its strong reputation in the market, which meant it was therefore on the initial shortlist of solutions for consideration. Crucially, the company required a system that had all of the right functionality from the outset. Corin explains: “Qube not only brings together property management and accounting functions, it’s also a superb business process management tool. Qube offered an unrivalled set of features that would really cement and enhance our processes.” These points were key drivers in the selection of the software and continue to bring extensive and significant benefits to JAI.

Lean UX methods, although agile and flexible, can run counter to organizational principles needed to operate large organizations. For example, Lean UX relies on rapid learning through experimentation, but CarMax’s success partly depends on precise implementation of procedures to ensure a uniformly high-quality customer service experience across its 155 stores. CarMax needed to introduce Lean UX in a way that would not conflict with its existing culture, while still taking full advantage of the speed and adaptability of working lean.

One Care was challenged with poor solutions for effective client communications and services coordination. Information sharing was inconsistent and governance structure varied from one agency to another. At the time, each agency had unique eligibility criteria, funders, funding levels, values, interests, and vehicle and equipment. Under their fragmented operations structure, other agencies and potential clients found it difficult to access One Care’s services. As a result, business was suffering. One Care urgently needed a management system and software solution to keep communication strong and access to information a priority. Another challenge that One Care faced was gaining consensus from their clients and partners. As small Community Support Service Agencies typically have staffing limitations, finding the time to gather and present proposed solutions to agencies was a major undertaking.

The Community Transit Program of Western Community Action faced the challenge of operating at capacity with their dial-a-ride services. To continue their commitment to 'Connecting People and Communities,' they needed to create a flexible fixed route bus service in the City of Marshall. This was necessary to offset the maxed-out dial-a-ride system and ensure availability for all who needed transportation. The program had to work with community partners to implement these changes effectively.

As they have grown over the years, Circle of Care began to employ more staff and volunteers, making for a more complex schedule. It became increasingly difficult to provide the same level of service to each of its members while keeping costs within acceptable amounts. Suddenly, managing the sheer number of people and transportation needed became a burden on schedulers. In the early days, it was sufficient to have a person in the office with a spreadsheet and a phone in order to keep everything running smoothly. But this was evidently no longer the best option.\n\nGrowing the number of members and caregivers is one of Circle of Care’s important and supported values and they have achieved this through the years. But suddenly, they found themselves with a staff of 500 and more than 300 volunteers, spread over a diverse collection of home support and community programs including: Homemaking, Personal support, Social work services, Meals on Wheels, Transportation, Day programs for seniors with dementia. As is usually the case for all non-profits, savings are felt directly at the ground level, with members seeing the benefit to fiscal responsibility. They are mainly funded by community resources and the City of Toronto. This means that transparency and reporting are highly important features and challenges that needed to be addressed.

The initial issue that spurred GoBus to look for a new technology partner was that their previous vendor’s scheduling and routing software was not reliably updating their in-vehicle mobile data terminals, TripSpark’s Rangers. A customer would call in using IVR to book or cancel their trip, but scheduling changes would not be reflected in the driver’s manifest, resulting in missed or unnecessary trips. The second motivating factor was the limited range of available functionality. Some riders were requesting an online option because they had experienced booking errors due to miscommunications or disability-related communication challenges when speaking with calltakers. “Customers felt that being able to control [their trip booking] themselves through an online option would correct some of those errors and give them more independence and control over their GoBus service,” said Power. Together, Notifications and Passenger Portal have led to reduced booking and ‘where’s the bus’ calls to dispatch, while portal-users are reporting that they are able to avoid booking errors by managing their own trips.

West Fargo Public Schools faced the challenge of consistently increasing school board enrollment and the complexity of delivering constantly changing routes. The district operates 29 regular education routes, contracts 24 routes with Valley Bus, and has 12 special education routes. The special education routes are particularly challenging as they serve children with disabilities, who may have different drop-off locations on different days of the week. This requires constant re-routing and the addition of new buses. The district also buses all of their own field trips and sporting events, adding to the complexity of their transportation needs.

Texas A&M University faced several challenges with its transit system, including the need to adjust services to avoid running empty buses, splitting shifts on short notice, and reducing complaints from riders. The university needed a solution to maximize route efficiency, manage real-time rostering changes, and improve on-time performance to enhance rider satisfaction.

In 2016, the City of Lone Tree launched a pilot on-demand transit solution called Lone Tree Link to provide residents with convenient access to Denver’s regional transportation network and destinations within the City. By late 2018, the City sought to make service improvements, including increasing ridership and reducing cost per passenger, by seeking a new technology provider. The challenge was to enhance the existing service to better meet the needs of a diverse suburban population, which includes long-time residents, first-generation Americans, and young families. The City also needed to cater to several major employers, including a regional office of Charles Schwab, SkyRidge and UCHealth Lone Tree medical centers, the University of Colorado-South Denver, and the Park Meadows and Heritage Hills shopping centers.