Strategic roadmap improves global operations and technology

Ranked in the industry’s top 10 percent for market capitalization, this cloud data services company has more than 12,000 employees in more than 150 offices worldwide. Their clients count on the company for innovative software, systems and services to manage and store data.

In the late 2000’s, the company experienced rapid growth over a period of several years. Upon return to a steady state, they faced a unique set of enterprise-wide corporate real estate (CRE) challenges across their global portfolio. Needing an agnostic partner to help them independently assess their situation, they turned to JLL Digital Solutions to help them evaluate their challenges and the forces behind them and develop a cohesive roadmap of solutions.

The challenges the company faced included:

• Unclear insight into workforce – did they have the right number of the right people to meet their needs
• Inconsistent processes and fragmented systems
• Misuse of technology in ways outside of its original purpose and functionality
• Insufficient real estate optimization and formal governance structure

Together, we completed 70 workshops over two weeks, covering their core workplace service lines: real estate, space management, facility operations, project management, finance and accounting, safety and security, and shipping and receiving. These workshops, along with an industry and peer benchmark provided by JLL, led to the development of a Maturity Analysis that identified where they were versus where they thought they were. Through this process, JLL provided insight into their workforce, revealing a team of highly-skilled real estate delivery personnel whose strong efforts supporting business occupiers had masked the real depth of the issues.

To provide insight into their processes and systems, the workshops also identified 287 opportunities for improvement and efficiencies. These opportunities were analyzed for root cause (people, process, technology) and ranked by four criteria: criticality, effort, cost to resolve, and controlling party.

JLL then identified the five most impactful issues for each service line and ranked them against their ability to impact reduction in occupancy cost, cost-effective long-term solutions, facilitation of strategic planning, global consistency/transparency, and process excellence.

Based upon the information gathered, JLL then developed a strategic roadmap with recommendations for meeting their CRE goals and established a solid business case showing the value of investing in optimizing processes and technology. Through this process, JLL helped to develop holistic alignment between all parties involved, despite separation by service line and geographic location.