Avaya is a global technology company, delivering superior communications experiences to its customers. With 15,000 employees occupying more than two million square feet around the globe, Avaya wanted to optimize its portfolio to reduce real estate costs and increase productivity. Learn how Avaya eliminated nearly a quarter of its real estate portfolio and improved employee experience using Serraview’s Workplace Optimization and Workforce Enablement solutions.
Suncorp saw the potential for large reductions in real-estate costs, but required accurate data to implement a proactive property strategy. The implementation of Serraview’s Workplace Management system provided them with a single portal that accurately displayed all of their property data, and track flexible work spaces with higher capacity than traditional models of one seat per person. This combination enabled Suncorp to accurately identify underused spaces, increase occupancy by 40%, and stretch their overall portfolio capacity, and ultimately deploy a more productive and modern workplace for their people.
Suncorp can now easily share property information amongst multiple departments and service providers. This provides the system with live knowledge of vacancies, locations and costs providing the organisation with a true 360-degree view of employee occupancy.
Buy-in to property strategy has improved immensely, as executives are now confident that decisions are based on accurate forecasts. Suncorp’s ROI on the Serraview solution has been rapid, and is borne out by improvements in portfolio performance.
“The real success story for Suncorp has been the ability to manage and optimise our portfolio, allowing us to move to a flexible work environment which has significantly reduced annual costs. Serraview’s powerful graphical representations have handed proactive engagement back to the business and increased executive buy-in. We can now clearly identify vacant work points and see how long these vacancies have existed.” – Chris Sutcliffe, Executive Manager Workplace Delivery
Suncorp Group comprises leading general insurance, banking, life insurance, superannuation and investment brands in Australia and New Zealand. The Group has over 15,000 employees and interfaces with nine million customers. It is a Top 25 ASX listed company with over $95 billion in assets.
Suncorp has five core businesses: Personal Insurance; Commercial Insurance; Vero New Zealand; Suncorp Bank and Suncorp Life. Corporate and shared services divisions support all of these businesses.
Suncorp’s business strategy is to realise the marketing benefits of a portfolio of leading brands at the same time as the economy of scale benefits associated with operating a single group structure. Suncorp are the largest general insurance group in Australia and the second largest in New Zealand. Suncorp Bank is Australia’s leading regional bank. Suncorp Life specialises in life insurance, and also operates leading superannuation and investment business.
“We are now confident doing large moves. Previously, moving 700 people in one move without Serraview would have been logistically monumental.” – Chris Sutcliffe
With more than 15,000 employees, 650 buildings and widespread use of traditional systems such as paper plans and Excel spreadsheets, Suncorp faced significant challenges managing their property portfolio.
The lack of a single, accurate view of occupancy – caused by isolated silos of data and manual processes.
Tedious strategic planning – manual spreadsheets lacked links between people, workstations, and vacancies. Planning was slow and reworking often had unforseen impacts on other data sets.
Limited executive buy-in – no automated tools existed to facilitate proactive strategy, causing difficulties in clearly demonstrating strategy to management.
Suncorp saw Serraview’s solution as a compelling proposition, due to its ability to enhance strategy and increase the bottom line.
“The Serraview team has the attitude that nothing is too hard and is keen to learn from clients. Serraview works collaboratively with Suncorp and with a shared purpose – to get feedback, build functionality, and achieve innovation.”
Suncorp has enjoyed significant financial savings and operational benefits as a result of implementing Serraview’s solution.
Significant property savings – The Serraview solution has provided Suncorp with enterprisewide visibility of vacancies and underutilised work points. The portal includes automated accuracy controls. Suncorp was able to leverage existing space to optimise the financial performance of their portfolio.
A streamlined move process – Suncorp needed to streamline their moves and complete them in less time to reduce costs.
Improved strategic planning and executive buy-in – Suncorp’s National Restack Consolidation project involves a continual review of their three major geographical areas in order to constantly optimise their portfolio.
“With Serraview, it’s quick and simple to restack and monitor the portfolio. We often link strategy with leasing for early exit, or sublet unused space. We are now able to look at what decision is best for the business, rather than waiting for a lease to expire.”
More accurate chargeback – Suncorp found it beneficial to incorporate both corporate and retail bank sites into the Serraview system. This facilitated accurate chargeback based on business unit allocations. Business units are now motivated to hand back their underutilised space, creating an opportunity for more savings.
A cost reduction of $90M due to the move to a flexible environment – By eliminating wasted space and increasing capacity, Suncorp was able to save $30M a year over a three year period, equivalent to a 30% reduction of total costs. Suncorp now uses Serraview to operate with a ratio of 8 desks to 10 flexible staff in flexible working environments. With 1,200 people currently operating in flexible environments, major savings have been realized by moving from 80% to 120% occupancy.
Suncorp has a productive engagement model with Serraview. Over the past 12 months, developments in new tools and innovations have been key to maximising Suncorp’s utilisation & performance.
Serraview’s tools have enabled this large government department to implement significant efficiencies in line with the Australian Government’s Property Data Collection (PRODAC) requirements, move to a smaller footprint and deliver meaningful efficiency dividends without an impact on headcount. In the process this has increased the property team’s capability, responsiveness and profile.
The department recognised the need for a centralised portal for their workplace information.
Specifically, they wanted to provide improved management and visibility of their accommodation data and processes, transparency over service requests, reduce the risk of information loss, and support the relocation process.
Serraview’s proactive and personalised service led to an impressive implementation. In consultation with the agency, they pinpointed key requirements and rapidly produced appropriate solutions.
Streamlined processes have improved the turnaround times for property requests.
Records management has been transformed, and the system now provides Australia-wide visibility of outstanding and delayed action items. This has greatly reduced complaints and revealed hidden issues. Furthermore, Serraview’s move planning tools have enabled the department to effectively plan relocations and consolidations. These combined factors have saved the department a significant amount of time and money.
The Australian Government’s PRODAC data collection and reporting requirements were established in 2009 to help agencies identify better practices, progressively improve the management and use of office space and inform whole-of-government property policy.
Apart from providing leasing information, the standard requires agencies to manually conduct an audit of workpoint utilisation based on its common definitions on an annual basis.
“The process efficiencies and improved utilisation we have achieved reflect our more sophisticated approach to workplace management. We can now facilitate constructive conversations and take a more strategic approach to property management and change planning.” – Director of Property
With over 20,000 employees, 550 property requests a year (involving over 4,800 people) and a whole-of-government mandate to deliver a minimum 4% efficiency dividend in FY 2013, this government department needed better ways to manage high business-as-usual workpoint changes, reduce manual administrative tasks and significantly reduce workplace costs.
To begin, there was an urgent need to replace ad-hoc manual processes with more automated methods integrated with IT systems. Priorities were to automate processes, enhance the audit trail, improve records management, and introduce change reporting to track accommodation space metrics and analytics – all to streamline existing processes, freeing the property team to focus on delivering strategic benefits.
Space allocation changes were previously undertaken using A3 paper floor plans and highlighter pens. The agency needed a way to efficiently collaborate with stakeholders all over the country and proactively plan move scenarios, consolidate their portfolio and in doing so move to
a smaller footprint, delivering on the required cost savings (efficiency dividends).
Serraview’s Professional Services Team were keen to understand the business. They were transparent and proactively engaged during implementation. Serraview’s software solution placed the necessary portfolio information at the agency’s fingertips, via a clear, user friendly interface.
“Serraview’s service is hands on, fast and innovative. Serraview develop and customise their tools to include innovations that assist us to meet our needs. For example, Serraview were very helpful during implementation in assisting the agency to overcome challenges around government security compliance.” – Director of Property
The department enjoys significant operational benefits as a result of implementing Serraview’s solution.
The CFO was impressed with the capability of the system and set a deadline for the property team to implement the service request module.
Electronic Audit Tracking – The agency now has a formalised property management process which is integrated with their IT systems. This creates a proper audit trail and provides the traceability required for Financial Management.
“Internal and external auditors look at Financial Management – including the review of processes and data that must be retained to present at their request. Serraview’s tool provides us with much of this required data.” – Business Analyst Strategy and Reporting Team
Simplified PRODAC Reporting – Users have been delighted that data collection and reporting has been simplified and streamlined with Serraview’s tools.
“We were previously manually producing a PRODAC report, required for compliance – this involved collating around 60 spreadsheets. We will do this with the click of a button in the future. This is a huge time saving.” – Business Analyst Strategy and Reporting Team
Workplace Space Planning is Efficient and Transparent – Move planning is now far more efficient. The Serraview tool allows drag and drop, virtual restacking and removes guesswork and reactivity from substantial moves.
Improved Property Department Reputation – With greater efficiencies and better space utilisation, the property team manage more professionally. This has facilitated improved conversations around strategic property management and move planning.
Consolidation and Efficiency Dividends – The Serraview solution has helped the agency to achieve increased occupancy density, move to a smaller footprint and deliver significant efficiency dividends.
The agency is currently looking at additional Serraview modules to further improve their efficiency. In particular, the BOS move module is of interest to reduce the ongoing need for spread sheets and arduous data collection during relocations.
This case study was originally co presented at Worktech Toronto 2015. It details the critical ways Serraview’s occupancy planning tool helped BMO overcome common challenges like no buy-in about occupancy planning, a lack of transparency about vacancy and manual collection of data.
Together they were able to improve clarity about occupancy and today BMO is better able to make decisions about reducing CRE costs.
View the SlideShare to see how one year in, BMO is avoiding adding unnecessary footprint and cost with Serraview’s occupancy planning tool.
