L=TMC – how corporate occupiers make the right location decision

With leading international property event MIPIM dominated by investors, it was the rare thing to see more than a few specialists from the demand side of the property economy in one place. Occupiers and their advisors did come together at the fDi panel breakfast - Where Next? Hot-spots for Corporate Expansion and the Drivers for Investment. I sat alongside leaders from Dell, EADS, JCI, JLL, and the City of Edinburgh. Each offered their perspectives on how occupiers, or in the case of Edinburgh, host cities, make location decisions.

My premise was simple and expressed with a formula. L=TMC. Selecting the right corporate expansion location (L) is a product of three primary variables: T(alent), M(arket) and C(ost). Here, Talent means the attraction and retention of a sustainable workforce that can support business. Market refers to access to customers, partners or suppliers that are critical to your business model. And we all know what Cost refers to.

No two companies will have the same mix. How an organization prioritizes these variables will depend on their industry sector, product or service mix, function of the occupants, and many other factors. The corporation that makes decisions based on the variables that work for them, makes good location decisions.

Yahoo!...It’s about making choices to support your culture and strategy

By Tim Allen, Director, Workplace Strategy and Alex Andel, Head of Client Solutions, EMEA

As most preOccupied readers know, a confidential Yahoo! internal memo was recently sent to all global employees banning working from home. With a worldwide workforce of more than 11,000, the inevitable happened – the memo was leaked, and a media storm began.

Some leaders are uncomfortable with a distributed workforce. In Yahoo!’s view “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.” They also say, “To become the best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to work [physically] side-by-side.” They made a business decision to drive connectedness and cultural affiliation in the organization by demanding people work in the office.

Is their assertion true? There isn't a single answer for all companies. We would suggest it’s probably not an either / or question. There is more to remote working than home working. There are lots of choices beyond this binary response.

Finding an Ally in the C-Suite: Four Tips

I had the opportunity recently to meet with a senior executive in a globally prominent insurance company. The topic of the meeting, which we will profile more deeply in a future blog, was to discuss "what the c-suite sees." In other words, what are top executives thinking about when they think about corporate real estate?

More on the main topic later, but he shared some tips on how to engage executives that I just can't wait to share. Here they are:

Operational Excellence in CRE - Part 3

This is the last blog of a three-part series on Operational Excellence (OE) in corporate real estate. We at preOccupied continue to see CRE’s focus on this topic as a priority, especially those turning the corner on years of contraction, and looking for ways to get better and more strategic.

In the first part, we looked at a variety of definitions for the concept of operational excellence, and concluded that generally, OE is about how an organization efficiently targets and delivers on a goal. In part two, we explored the work of Dr. Shigeo Shingo in the context of a service focused corporate real estate organization. The key conclusion here is that behavior is the key to achieving the vision.

Organizational culture has everything to do with operational excellence.