Effective service charge settlementas a way to build permanent, positive relations with the tenants
CPD S.A. is a capital group controlling a group od subsidiaries the business of which concentrates on development projects in the office and residential sector. The activity of CPD S.A. consists in purchase of lands and erecting buildings on them for office or residential purposes, or purchase of existing properties with potential additional value for creation that can be released by means of change of the property intended application or through increase of its standard and optimisation of the lease area or sale. The group has offices in Warsaw and Budapest.
The service charges and their settlement are one of key processes in the commercial facility management area
„Among multiple requirements we defined, one of the most important was functionality connected with service charges settlement. This area was the most complex and, at the same time, particularly sensitive from the point of view of business relations with tenants and building our image as an effective and reliable property owner” - Member of the Management Board, CPD S.A.
In connection with development of the capital group and number of managed properties and tenants, the management board decided to optimise the processes connected with management of office properties in the company’s asset portfolio. An essential element of optimisation was implementation of a proper IT tool that would support in a comprehensive manner all issues in the document-settlement and report area, concurrently ensuring high data security level and automation of the most time consuming processes connected with property management. The management of the company paid a lot of attention to savings in terms of time and human resources dedicated to property management, with maintenance of high quality of tenant support. This standard includes timeliness and transparency of all types of settlements communicated to the tenants, so as to eliminate all potential doubts that could arise.
„We make all effort to keep high level of trust of our clients. The NOVO Property Management system, through its functionality, supports us in a noticeable manner in performance of this task” - Member of the Management Board, CPD S.A.
The IT solution chosen by CPD S.A. was the software by NOVO Technologies S.A. - NOVO Property Management system. One of the main criteria for system selection was functionality of automatic service charge settlement in models applied by CPD S.A. where various cost categories are settled according to different keys for the particular tenants. The concluded lease agreements provide for distribution of costs, both in terms of the tenant’s share in the property area as well as existence of cost items assigned to tenant groups or single tenants. Moreover, the system implementation had to ensure, in addition to automation of key processes connected with property management, full transparency of settlements for all tenants, providing a guarantee of proper settlement of all provisions arising from the lease agreements and, thus, possibility to build strong, good relations with the tenants.
IT system flexibility as a response to expectations of demanding tenants
„Mechanism of fully automated settlement of the services charges, taking into account all legal requirements, is a functionality fundamental for the NOVO Property Management system. Until now, the standard of the system was generation of specifications of incurred costs and amounts of paid advances, but always per annum, at the level of main cost categories. Presentation of the specifications in monthly terms was a new element and required quite complicated programming works which, due to flexibility of our system, could be done in a very short time” - Norbert Pawlik, System Architect / CTO, NOVO Technologies S.A.
Upon completion of implementation, a new task was set for NOVO Technologies resulting from the approach of CPD S.A. in relation to full transparency of service charge settlement and method of their communication to tenants. This regarded enclosing each settlement specific for the CPD format with a list of all payments incurred for maintenance and functioning of the building, along with the list of advances paid by the tenant and balance informing on additional payment or overpayment. In addition, due to seasonal or cyclic character of certain costs in various time periods, the management of the company decided to introduce a report of annual service charges on a monthly basis as a response to the tenants’ expectations.
„We set high requirements for our suppliers and business partners. In the IT area the NOVO Property Management system is for us a basic work tool and we have high opinion on the benefits resulting from its implementation” - Member of the Management Board, CPD S.A.
NOVO Technologies had only several days to introduce the changes in the system, but they managed to achieve this due to flexibility of the system resulting from the well-designed system architecture. Due to this change, the capital group CPD S.A. could eliminate a great amount of work related to manual preparation of additional specifications for the tenants and obtain a higher level of transparency in the area of service charges. This will surely translate into better relations with tenants of the capital group CPD S.A. in the future.