Buyer Beware: Tips for Choosing the Best Real Property Software

By Jean Boles

As the federal government continues to scrutinize real property assets and the transactions related to them (such as enhanced use leasing or surplus disposition), facilities management or real estate software vendors might approach your department or agency. Do you know which questions to ask to make an informed decision?

Purchasing facilities management and real estate software systems (here referred to as "real property software solutions") is a long-term decision - one that ought to be useful for at least ten years. This article will lead you through that process.

COTS or Custom: Pros and Cons

A commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) system is typically selected over a custom system for reasons of cost. A best-of-class COTS tool should cost roughly one-tenth as much to acquire and sustain as custom-built software.

The approach to system specification, selection and implementation of a COTS product is decidedly different from a custom solution. Instead of laying out your requirements in detail and specifying each view and data element, as you would a custom application, the determination of fit for a COTS system is much simpler. In fact, it would be a mistake to impose your own (custom) design on a COTS system. It will prevent you from learning and accepting the practices embodied in the COTS product which may be improvements over your own.

The downside to COTS software is obvious: The product will never be a perfect match to all your specific requirements. Of course, when trying to pull several regions or sub-organizations into the same work process, a COTS system serves as a leveling device. All regions will of necessity move toward the COTS-implied process.

If you have a legacy system, the most important aspect to consider is "fit verification" - that is, mapping data from one system to the other to verify that the new system can handle the size and nature of your data and additional data elements that will be part of the implementation.

The best approach is to let the new system dictate how to structure your data. For these situations, the fit considerations are often minimal when the system under consideration is robust.

When to Ask Hard Questions

When selecting a real property software solution, the most important questions are related to functionality. The more you can identify your situation in terms of data and reporting requirements, the better any software provider will be able to give you a complete answer to your functionality questions.

But, to prevent the acquisition process from turning into an implementation process, limit the items evaluated in detail to just a few. Be sure to ask vendors how your work process would be treated if:

• Your process is structured differently than in the product (such as by time-frame, or level of detail)
• Your process includes judgmental steps which would be hard to codify.
• Your process maintains conceptually similar data in more than one way (by level of detail, source, time-frame)
• You are keeping much more data than might be typical
• Your organization has added complexity over several years and now has a highly evolved and tightly controlled process.

If your existing process is rudimentary and not complex, little analysis is required.

If a particular functionality is extremely important to you, ask for the provider to describe his suggested approach in writing. This makes it easier to circulate the responses to key subject-matter experts in your organization to get their feedback.

Now, the question is how to carefully read the answers that the supplier provides.

How to Get Good Answers

Good answers are complete and accurate, not necessarily favorable. A good answer should accomplish the following:

Specifically answer your question. Consider the question "Can your product handle both receivable and payable leases on the same space?" and the answer, "Yes, the product specifically handles multiple leases." The question has been interpreted slightly differently. Does this mean "yes" to all aspects of your question, both the issue of payable and receivable and the issue of both leases being for the same space? A better answer would have been, "Yes, each space may be assigned any number of leases, with each lease designated as either payable or receivable."

Describe the activities to be performed by the customer in order to accomplish the task. Compare the language in "Our system can retrieve key personnel data from your HR system" with "Using our data integration tool, the customer can easily write routines which will retrieve data at pre-scheduled times from standard data bases, such as your HR system."

Disclose any limitations of the approach. Consider "Our product can work with most standard reporting packages" versus "Our product will work successfully with any reporting package that is certified by the base platform provider."

Questions about overall suitability and structural soundness will be very important to your decision. However, much of the detailed information you collect in the acquisition investigation will not present show stoppers but will assist you in setting up your implementation plan and guide your process development. Do not allow these details to derail or extend the selection timeframe.

Jean Boles is the Product Manager for Space and Real Estate Management Products at FAMIS Software, Inc. She can be reached at jean.boles@famis.com.