The Company
Hartz Mountain Industries, a leading real estate investment firm headquartered in Secaucus, N.J., has been an active developer and dealmaker in the tri-state area since 1966. Focused on industrial and multifamily assets, the company’s portfolio spans major East Coast markets, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida, as well as metro Atlanta and Charlotte. With a sharp focus on consistent growth, Hartz captures opportunities thanks to its well-established architectural, construction, design, engineering, legal, marketing, leasing, property management and financial teams.
The Challenge
Tracking Deals in Disconnected Data Sources
A Yardi client since 1997, Hartz’s portfolio has undergone multiple transformations. Before working with automated asset management solutions, Hartz tracked deals on paper spreadsheets that staff would annotate and bring to the company’s weekly meetings. Following those meetings, the admin team would make updates manually.
Several years ago, before implementing CommercialEdge Deal Manager, Hartz adopted a third-party deal management solution to help streamline the deal tracking process. Over time, they encountered difficulties with their former system due to data issues. Their weekly meetings lacked up-to-date information, and their processes required multiple points of data entry and resources to ensure their data was accurate — they needed a single source of truth.
The Solution
A Centralized Data Source
Deal Manager, part of the CommercialEdge solution suite, is an advanced CRM and deal-making software that simplifies transaction management with complete visibility of deal metrics throughout the lease lifecycle. The connected solution centralizes communication, prospect information, proposal terms and NER and other economic calculations at the deal level. In addition, a fully featured mobile application enables users to manage deals and approvals from anywhere.
The Yardi property management integration goes even further to give clients a single source of truth with real-time tenant and lease-level data, including expirations, rent schedules, expenses, options and clauses.
The Story
Real-Time Data, Streamlined Deal Tracking & Pipeline Visibility
Real-time synchronization
“One of my main goals for Hartz was to use one database that provides a single source of data, so we could eliminate interfaces along with waiting for updates and manual processing,” Lawrence Garb, Hartz’s executive vice president, noted. Garb went on to explain one aspect that he appreciates in particular: when updating a lease in Deal Manager, it is also instantly updated in Yardi Voyager and vice versa.
Data visibility
Another significant benefit of using Deal Manager, according to Garb, is getting daily, weekly and monthly digests with deal activity, upcoming lease expirations and other pertinent information to executives and dealmakers. “I can see if deals were executed, and I don’t need to pick up the phone and make calls. Going from a spreadsheet updated weekly to something updated in real-time is a huge advantage.”
With its leasing team being less comfortable with technology than other teams, Hartz welcomed an intuitive system like Deal Manager. The ease of use is a big win and has ensured company-wide adoption.
A powerful and flexible mobile app
The mobile app of Hartz’s previous solution lacked functionality, and the vendor stopped developing it. Garb said that having a mobile app is vital for the company, and every team values being able to look at leases and other documents on the go. The Deal Manager mobile app also functions like an asset management app for the company.
“We’re not only entering deals on the road and on the fly, but we can also look up existing tenants using the app. In Yardi Voyager, we have all lease documents, including PDFs of leases and amendments. For every tenant, we can view information with the Deal Manager app. So, for all kinds of asset management tasks including tracking, we’re using the app,” he said.
Garb provided an example of how the Deal Manager app streamlines his deal-making: he can meet with a tenant at their parking lot to discuss lease terms or confirm an expiration date, with the ability to review documents and sign a lease on the spot. With quick access to complete documentation and attachments for properties and invoices in one place, Hartz gains all the benefits of seamless integration, collaboration and speed of deal execution.
