Today’s post is thanks to our friends at the Source which is by NAR. They have an interesting post up that talks about the benefits of Tririga and IBM to the CRE scene. I’m always a bit surprised by these posts from non-technical blogs because I rarely come across end users that are absolutely in love with Tririga or Manhattan (or SAP or Oracle for that matter). There are certainly some great examples of Tririga in use throughout many organizations but all of the best came with a top down change management approach – not just a roll-out of Tririga.
Big enterprise CRE systems have not found a home in enterprise yet. IBM bought Tririga in 2011 with an intention of changing that to some degree. IBM is enterprise. Tririga wanted to be enterprise. It seems like a natural fit. The problem is CRE as a function is not usually enterprise yet – even in Fortune 500 organizations.
CRE is still getting there but it isn’t because of great professionals, good systems, or lack of capabilities. It’s still getting there because the C-suite is still trying to understand the role of real estate in the corporate hierarchy.
Back to the article though, the primary justification is that Tririga solves the problem of making information visible because:
What won’t get you there is a pile of spreadsheets, schedules and word processing docs scattered everywhere. Icebergs have a funny way of introducing themselves to the hull of your ship while you or your team spend days distractedly lining up just the right view of contracts, contacts, events and leases.
But there is always a Door #3. You don’t have to be all spreadsheets or move to the Cadillac of CRE systems. You could go somewhere in the middle! The Source even brings up the fact that Tririga costs 5 figures a month after it is setup and running (not even taking into account the initial setup time and cost).
There are many, many excellent options in the middle (I would argue for most companies that those options are better than a full blown iWMS). Keep an open mind and explore them all.