Corporate real estate departments are like air traffic control for multi-unit operators. And for most of them, 2020 has been like working at O’Hare on Christmas Eve.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a quick-serve restaurant franchisee, a hair salon franchisor, or a multi-national law firm. If you have multiple locations, then you have an employee or a team dedicated to location management and lease administration.
In the real estate department, you live in a fluid world where things are always in motion. Leases get signed and expire. Locations open, close, and relocate. And as business strategies evolve and demographics change, the corporate real estate department is there protecting the bottom line.
COVID-19 introduced a new layer of complexity. One of the first challenges real estate teams discovered is that, while most company documents have been in the cloud for years, lease documents were still in file cabinets and dust-covered cardboard boxes.
There was already a disconnect between people who manage locations and the information they need to do their jobs. Unfortunately, the job became more challenging as companies got leaner and real estate departments contracted — or completely disappeared.
As multi-location operators try to reduce overhead, many look for ways to streamline real estate management. And that leads them to Leasecake.
Allied Lube Group had been looking for a new lease administration solution for its 100-plus locations. Leasecake CEO Taj Adhav and Head of Sales Max Porter met with Allied after connecting with a mutual contact at the Restaurant Finance and Development Conference.
With the pandemic ushering in a historic real estate crisis, Allied implemented Leascake after vetting several other lease administration solutions. They were already pretty far down the road with one, but something about it didn’t feel right. The software package was over-featured for their needs.
“With more than 100 Jiffy Lube units in our portfolio, we have a lot of moving parts in the company and are always looking for ways to improve efficiency,” said Tony Kulick, the CFO of Allied Lube. “Leasecake makes sure we never miss a renewal notice, and that we capture all the documents and time-sensitive tasks related to each location. Leasecake is a great organizational tool that our staff finds easy to use and keeps all of our pertinent lease information a few clicks away.”
The feedback we get from Allied and other new clients, ranging from medtail to legal to fitness, is that mobile-first technology is one of the top attributes they look for when making a software decision. It enables multi-unit operators to focus on their core business and outsource real estate management to the app. With smaller departments and team members working remotely for the foreseeable future, mobile-optimized software has moved from “nice to have” to a requirement.
We hear stories about people who used to spend 40 hours managing leases and other location details every month, but now they’re doing the same work more efficiently in just a few hours by using Leasecake. That enhanced efficiency enables companies to maintain market share and even get stronger despite the pandemic.
If you’re managing multiple locations and looking for a way to simplify your operation and free up team members to focus on the core business, then try Leasecake for free and see how operators like you use it to save time and money.
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