Implementation Location: The Netherlands (NL) with international applicability

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OSCRE Portfolio Management Reporting Standard: Revolutionizing Analytics for Real Estate Investment in the Netherlands

Industry: Real Estate and Property Management

Implementation Location: The Netherlands (NL) with international applicability Company Profiles

CBRE Global Investors - One of the world’s largest real estate investment management firms with $90.7 billion in assets under management. As an independently operated affiliate of CBRE Group, Inc., it provides full-service commercial real estate services with approximately 37,000 employees (excluding affiliates) across more than 300 offices worldwide.

PwC - Serving 26 industries, PwC offers services in the fields of assurance, tax, human resources, transactions, performance improvement and crisis management. PwC brings their expertise and talents to assist educational institutions, the federal government, non-profits, and international relief agencies address their unique business issues.

Foundation REDEX - The not-for-profit organization set up to manage the REDEX Platform in the Netherlands founded in 2011 and an Executive Member of OSCRE. REDEX: Real Estate Data Exchange)

OSCRE International, Ltd. - a membership-based, not-for-profit consortium, committed to enabling people and organizations in the real estate industry to more effectively manage data through the development of global industry standards for real property information exchange.

Business Situation/Challenges:

The property, lease and financial data collected by CBRE Global Investors is derived from their property managers. Before the implementation of the REDEX platform, CBRE Global Investors’ asset management process consisted of compiling information from the monthly reports submitted to them by their property managers (16 in total for this project).

Upon submission, a manual process was initiated where an individual from CBRE Global Investors spent approximately 3-4 working days each month to check the quality of the data on each report before importing it to the CBRE Global Investors’ Investment Management System. In addition, discussions took place outside the exchange (phone calls and email) to ensure all the data submitted was up to date. When submitted, the reports were in different data formats and mediums (fax, hard copy and electronic). With the property managers holding and collecting the data, the exchange and dissemination of property and lease-related data in a useful way was challenging.

CBRE Global Investors was faced with the growing need for accurate and real time property-related information as well as an increased demand from their clients for ad-hoc reports to assist with decision making. Increasing data integrity issues between the property managers and CBRE Global Investors, and the higher cost of upgrading and maintaining legacy systems added to the complexity of the property-related data collection process.

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Approach:

In 2007, an executive decision was made by the CBRE Global Investors Board (former ING Real Estate) to enhance their market position in the Netherlands by making a significant investment in the IT infrastructure, including building a platform for exchange of real estate information that would be open for other investors to join and use. It was envisioned the solution would sit outside CBRE Global Investors in the Netherlands and be managed by an independent software supplier. The Executive Board conducted extensive research and analysis, and CBRE Global Investors made the decision to build a Real Estate Data Exchange (known as REDEX) platform which would enable property managers to submit their data upon request from their respective asset managers. Once submitted, all the data is validated and quality checked. A matrix (series of checks) was also built to pass the information along, once validated automatically into the CBRE Global Investors’ Investment Management System. This new approach means CBRE Global Investors no longer re-enters the lease data monthly. The information can be “pushed” to the platform anytime over the secure platform. CBRE Global Investors used OSCRE’s Portfolio Management Reporting Standards (PMR V1.0) schema in an XML format to standardize the property information data submitted by their property

managers. This approach to data management enabled the data to conform to the data standard definitions, structure and code values set out in the Standard. Once completed, REDEX then performs a series of data validity checks that ensures the quality of the data before importing onto CBRE Global Investors’ Investment Management System.

Solution

CBRE Global Investors designed and built an IT solution that enables the seamless transfer of data from the property managers to CBRE Global Investors. The platform supports web-based

submissions and is based on a framework underpinned by the deployment of the OSCRE PMR 1.0 Standard. CBRE Global Investors approached PwC to assist them in compiling the information from these databases without incurring the cost of building a big data warehouse.

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• A message (an XML request) is sent to the property manager via the REDEX platform using web services technology

• Upon receipt of the message/request from the REDEX platform, the property manager logs into REDEX to view the inquiry sent

• The property manager creates the report (an XML response) with the relevant information based on the parameters of the XML request

• The property manager uploads (via web services) the response onto the REDEX platform • Validation of all data submitted is obtained by applying the quality checks and using OSCRE’s

Portfolio Management Reporting Standard

• Once validated, the data is automatically transferred from the REDEX Platform onto CBRE Global Investors’ Investment Management System.

Results

To comply with the original objectives set out by the CBRE Global Investors Board for an open platform for every Investor and Asset Manager, the REDEX Platform is managed and maintained by Foundation REDEX, based in the Netherlands.

Cor Treure, Chairman of the REDEX Foundations says: “The REDEX platform expands the ability of Asset Managers, beyond CBRE Global Investors, to use the infrastructure to exchange information seamlessly. Recent Asset Management organizations joining the Foundation have taken advantage of existing work completed by CBRE Global Investors, Syntrus Achmea Real Estate & Finance and a.s.r. vastgoed vermogensbeheer. Once they see the benefits of using the platform, asset managers have the ability to share best practices to improve overall processes and strengthen their collaborative efforts leading the industry towards a more transparent way of sharing data”.

The process is now 95% automated via a web services solution. The REDEX Platform is also

expanding to support other OSCRE Standards including the Property Valuation Information Standard, due for development and implementation by late 2013.

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REDEX foundation is currently investigating the processes between governance, collection agencies, utility companies and others. After finalizing the description of the different processes, REDEX will start the phase of defining data based on OSCRE standards.

It’s important to note that while this implementation project occurred in The Netherlands, its applicability is not restricted by geography and can be implemented anywhere.

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Benefits

The benefits for asset managers include:

• The ability to combine and consolidate property data from a number of different property managers, improving efficiency, accuracy of data and reducing staff costs

• Access to data in real time

• A streamlined process of submitting information through the platform and usage of web services

• Broad acceptance and use of OSCRE Standards by end users, software vendors and service providers enables ease of transfer from one system vendor to another

• Extends deployment of the platform to include other OSCRE Standards including Valuation, Performance Reporting or other industry-based standards using XBRL ability to request and receive ad-hoc reports faster while improving decision-making

The benefits for property managers include:

• Faster turnaround time - decreases the time to make information available to clients • Reduces time and costs associated with property data submission

• Eliminates redundant infrastructure by having one interface to maintain and update • Shared knowledge eliminates the need for dedicated teams to support specific accounts,

increasing effectiveness of using shared services Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Cor Treure, CBRE Global Investors and chairman of REDEX Foundation and Maurits Cammerat, PwC Netherlands for their dedication to the implementation of open data standards and transparency, and the considerable time they invested to provide inputs and insights in developing this case study.

For more information about OSCRE Standards and membership in OSCRE, please visit our website at