Photo Libraries: View, Edit and Sort
site|folio makes it easy to view and manage any collection of photos for your real estate development portfolio. Whether it's for existing conditions, project progress, or final photos - see what's happening at any stage.
Visit our Youtube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/sitefolio
We are developing a series of videos to demonstrating the power and flexibility of site|folio master schedules. The first in the series gives a good overview of how powerful something so simple can be to your organization.
"In Real Estate Development dates matter. With our cloud based solution (modeled around your processes) simply enter a date and the days of circulating outdated documents or laborious reconciliation meetings are over."
I got called out in December of 2011 - we seemed to be missing quite a few press releases. It appeared nothing had happened at site|folio for the last half of the year. In order to rectify, I spent the end of 2011 taking my 3, 6 and 8 year old to Disney World, celebrating my mother-in-law's 70th birthday (let's keep that number a little secret) and writing a handful of press releases. It turned out to be a great way to reflect on 2011 - revisiting the growth and success of our customers.
Here are a few of the press releases I penned on space mountain.
Wow! In 2011 96% of our customers increased adoption.
Nice! In 2011 site|folio grows revenue 35% and active users 40%.
Looking over our 2011 press releases, it demonstrates that month after month we here heavily invested, working with our customers from a myriad of different departments that wanted to get truely integrated across their real estate development pipeline. They saw what their counterparts had and wanted the same for themselves. Can't blame them. Customers expanded their user bases, broadened the use of master scheduling to now include aspects of design and leasing calendars. Adopted end to end capital budgeting solutions and began tracking contracts.
Take a quick look at how some of our customers expanded in 2011: Press Releases
We are jumping feet first into 2012 with really exciting things coming together for our next release. I can't get into the specifics yet - but it's quite handful of powerful solutions.
2011 to 2012 via Space Mountain. Lead by pure joy, followed by pure terror, followed by a Dad hoping a kid doesn't pop out of their seats.
With Argon out the door and our customers centralizing their Diversity & Qualification Business Partner Information we are heads down working on our next major release Potassium.
In the meantime we have started a YouTube channel to host short videos to help our users get the most out of site|folio.
http://www.youtube.com/user/sitefolio
Here is the first in the series. Understanding how to subscribe to an email notification on a document folder. One of the many ways to be notified when activity occurs on a project.
More to come.
Enjoy!
Tablets take off in real estate development: link >>
"When Paul Ozinga arrives on the jobsite, it doesn't take long for a small crowd of construction workers, superintendents and managers to gather around him. Their excitement isn't because he is bringing lunch or paychecks. It is for his iPad."
Back in 2009 site|folio released support for all major web browsers. This decision required a redesign of the user interface and 6 months to execute. We bet that mobile devices would standardize on a single web standard known as HTML5. We looked to provide a quick rendering, highly responsive HTML5 compliant experience for our users across our entire solution. By achieving these goals our solution provides an experience that is not only accessible in major web browsers but across an array of major mobile devices.
Every new feature and effort is designed with compatibility in mind. The industry expects a fully-functional experience across a myriad of devices.
We will meet that need.
We will be working late Saturday night upgrading aspects of our hosting infrastructure. No NASCAR or Renovation Realities for us.
It’s important. We like to stay ahead of the curve ensuring our solution is highly responsive and available.(So do our customers) This isn’t a one-time event. Several times a year we upgrade various aspects of our delivery platform.
For example earlier this year we lit up our second colocation facility enabling geographic redundancy. If any catastrophic situation occurs at our primary facility we can point our customers to a mirror image located in Spokane, WA. The focus this weekend is upgrading our SQL clusters. What was once fast, will become faster.
Companies considering SaaS providers need to consider both the responsiveness and availability of the solution. Who has time for SLOW?
That’s it. Our maintenance window is from 7PM to 10PM EST with an expected downtime of 30 minutes.
Let us know who wins the race.
Reported by Chain Store Age: Kroger Acquires Memphis-area Schnucks stores
Our friends over in the Kroger Delta Division have just acquired eight Memphis-area Schnucks grocery stores and plan to convert and re-open under the Kroger banner over the next couple of weeks.
On a single platform our customers are able to centralize the management of their real estate portfolio initiatives across:
- new construction
- additions
- remodels
- tenant improvements
- resets
- franchises
- leasing
Small projects happen and when they do, site|folio has solutions. Take a look at an earlier perspective on scheduling small projects.
link >>"When projects require a quick turnaround and the construction portion of the schedule will be over in a matter of weeks, you probably don’t need the full power of sitefolio’s conditional logic scheduling engine. We’re talking minor construction – such as getting the interior shell in place – and things like maintenance. Maintaining detailed progress of this type of work provides no immediate value. It happens too fast."
Another quality newletter hit my inbox this morning courtesty of Barabra Farfan and About.com: Retail Industry.
Sign up for the newsletter here: Link >>
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INVESTING - Starbucks Is Trending Up By Looking Up
It's hard to believe that just a few short years ago, Starbucks was so far down that founder Howard Schultz had to come out of retirement to rescue the company from an untimely death. Unlike Circuit City, Blockbuster (BBI), or Borders, Starbucks didn't... read more >>
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STATISTICS - 2011 Back-to-School Shopping Results
Much has changed since the National Retail Federation (NRF) released its 2011 Back-to-School shopping and spending predictions which could cause a dramatic gap between consumers' back-to-school shopping intentions and actual back-to-school spending behaviors. This is the danger when you ask American consumers to... read more >>
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POLITICS - Starbucks CEO Leads Retail Politics Rebellion
Starbucks founder Howard Schultz is leading other U.S. business leaders in a political rebellion against the U.S. Congress and Senate. Schultz' effort is further proof that major U.S. retail chains and leaders are become less afraid to make their political affiliations known, even at the risk of offending customers with different political views. Politics and the U.S. Retail Industry:
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I grew up in Florida. Hurricanes are serious business and a part of of the seasonal lifestyle.
With Hurricane Irene visiting the east coast the best way to prepare for a natural disaster is to try and avoid it all together. Up and down the east coast people are heading inland while data centers prepare themselves for high winds, water and loss of electricity.
Since 2003 we have provided a 24/7 high-uptime software as a service for large enterprises. This aspect of our business makes the physical location of our data centers critical. When selecting our second data center to provide customers geographic redundancy we strongly considered the east coast, but taking a look at analysis we decided our secondary data center would best serve our customers out of Spokane, Washington.
Our customers rely on site|folio to be running throughout and after Irene. We're happy to play a part - helping our customers during the critical recovery efforts post Irene.
Good luck everyone. Irene is coming.
New York Times: Where to live to avoid a natural disaster
Life Hacker: Avoiding a natural disaster
At site|folio we’re fortunate to have several Fortune 500 companies as clients. Each brings a stable of unique issues to us. Our competitive advantage is how (insanely) quickly the partnership can adapt a solution to meet a specific need.
One client recently contacted us about centralizing their leasing pipeline. This retailer uses site|folio for scheduling and document collaboration. The partnership has been so successful their Lease Administration group wanted to get in on the action. No more cumbersome Excel documents or hard to update leasing applications please!
We went to work, and within 2 weeks we were able to tailor a leasing solution with a simple easy to use interface and all of the reporting a leasing executive could dream of. This retailer can now use the same platform as their development construction counterparts to address lease management dates and abstracts across 300+ locations in the US. This not only increases visibility and predictability, but also makes somebody’s job a lot easier. How do we know? That Somebody told us:
"The tears are rolling down my cheeks as I type. Can't tell you how excited I am!!"
Leasing Professional
These types of tears are the best kind.