Deployment of the fully automated media billing and invoicing workflow.
MLP Group is the first developer of warehousing areas listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. It has been operating on the commercial real estate market since 1998, specialising in construction and management of modern warehousing centres. The company is a developer, consultant and administrator of properties, being involved at every stage of logistic park development: starting with the first decision on location, through designing, obtaining any required permits, building and commercialisation, up to property management. The position of MLP Group in the sector of warehousing centres in Poland is defined by the portfolio of managed assets in the form of six logistic parks covering ca. nett 388 thousand square meters of warehousing and production area.
Diversity of tenants - various models of settlement for utilities
„Our warehousing parks have very advanced and quite complex methods of settlement of utilities with the tenants. Firstly, this refers to electricity. Reduction and simplification of the utility settlement process was one of the main goals of implementation of the NOVO Property Management system” - Property Management Director, MLP Group
In its logistic practices, MLP Group has a very broad range of tenants. They are both companies renting only areas for storage of their products as well as entities conducting production activities, having a fully equipped machine part, team of employees and packing large quantities of products. Such a diversified portfolio of tenants has an impact on the complex utility consumption settlement system functioning in MLP Group, including consumption and fees for electricity, water and heating. Quite high level of complexity of this process is connected with the fact that some utilities are settled from meters based on difference in readings of two meters, some are settled based on the occupied area, i.e. using the classical method of the so-called “metre” or based on the share in the property area, but there are also cases of settlements depending on the number of persons employed by the tenant (e.g. water in specific cases). Bearing the aforementioned in mind, the need for automation of the settlement system for utilities functioning in MLP Group and for its integration with automated invoicing has become urgent.
Multiple settlement models - one modern work tool
MLP Group, using the NOVO Property Management system for some time in the area of invoicing and management of the lease agreements, turned to NOVO Technologies, developer of the system, with request for automation of the entire utility settlement area within the scope of the NOVO Property Management system. The NOVO Technologies consultants team had to commence their works from a very detailed analysis of all settlement models functioning in the MLP Group.
„Implementation of functionality of utility settlement in MLP Group was one of the most complex implementations we have ever performed taking into account the method of settlement of utilities in the facility” - Marcin Grodzicki, CEO, NOVO Technologies S.A.
Settlement of electricity costs was a particularly challenging task as it required taking into account the losses of energy resulting from conversion of high voltage for the purpose of low voltage installations. Reflecting all practices of utility settlements functioning in MLP Group was possible due to algorithmic architecture of the NOVO Property Management system, allowing to model almost any type of settlement process in which multiple constant and variable elements can be defined and related to multiple dependencies. This makes the system incredibly flexible and open to support of all market practices found in the commercial real estate sector, not only in the utility settlement area, but also in relation to, for instance, settlement of service charges. Upon implementation of changes in the system in MLP Group by NOVO Technologies, the scale of increase of effectiveness of the settlement process was very high. The time necessary for preparation of settlements of utilities allowing to commence re-invoicing of tenants has shortened significantly and, additionally, the transparency of the entire settlement process has improved, where settlement of utilities in the company can be now performed by any person from the property management area of the company, and not only the employee specialising in settlement of utilities and cooperation with tenants in this scope.