More than 1,200 industry executives are convening April 18-20 in New Orleans to find out what's really working in today's unsettled economic environment. That's partly why this upcoming CoreNet Global Summit is based on the growing dialogue - and body of actual cases - surrounding "Business Unusual."
Here's one example of a senior-level person who's playing a 'hands-on' role, as excerpted from the May edition of LEADER Magazine's Industry Tracker.
Craig Gillespie insists, “We like business unusual.” The CEO of Manhattan Software claims the company does best in periods of change – good or bad.
“One of our big advantages in the marketplace is our continued belief that real estate is a core discipline within organizations and that the need for real estate technologies to support it will grow in conjunction with the maturity of those disciplines.”
In status-quo markets, ironically, real estate is often under-leveraged. But today, economic pressure has again raised the ante for real estate to step up.
Management by Exception
“We live in a period of management by exception whereby executives are constantly managing the outliers. So, if an expense item matches the budgeted amount – great.”
But in periods of change, Gillespie observes, “Real estate becomes an outlier as the short-term elasticity simply isn’t there. Forward thinking organizations actually spend to implement comprehensive real estate solutions.”
This helps clients better understand their real estate portfolios, enabling them to make better short and long term decisions. For instance, in this latest downturn, companies needed to better understand their real estate portfolio. “With an IWMS implementation,” as Gillespie puts it, “they could make more educated decisions around consolidations that would have the greatest amount of short term cost savings.”
Being ready for the next growth wave is the main point, according to Gillespie. “When the market turns around, flexibility to adapt to market changes in lower cost regions or places where organizations see opportunities for expansion” will spell the difference.