Robert Eves has been using a technology for 20 years that is still relevant today and has likely saved him millions of dollars in that same time period.
As founder and president of Venture Corp., a commercial real estate development firm, he began using content management software about 20 years ago as a way to keep all of his contacts, to-do lists and projects organized in one place. As the company grew, it became even more important to the business.
“This is Ground Zero — it’s the base of our operations,” he says. “Everything that we do is controlled by or metered by or recorded by Commence (the software Eves uses). It is, without a question, the most important program that we use in our company, by far. It’s far and away the most important software that we use all day, every day.”
To start, Eves uses it for to-do lists, notes on topics of interest to him, quotes he’d like to remember and other things along those lines. If he needs to schedule a lunch meeting with a co-worker, he can go into the software and put it on the calendar. A second later, it copies over to his Outlook, and a second after that, it copies over to his iPhone. At that same time, it sends a message to the person he’s having lunch with and puts the time on his or her Outlook calendar, as well. Everything is updated for everyone in real time.
It also reduces clutter because he keeps all files and records in the software instead of having manila folders everywhere — in fact, he has the equivalent of about 80,000 manila folders stored in the program.
Additionally, he uses it to target customers and manage the relationships with them. His target client isn’t necessarily someone who’s looking to buy his commercial spaces. Instead, it’s the commercial real estate brokers whom he’s trying to reach, and the software allows him to do just that. He now has more than 210,000 broker contacts in there to customize his searches.
“We can go into Commence and say, ‘Give us all the commercial real estate agents within these ZIP codes surrounding my new project,’” he says. “I enter those search parameters in Commence, and it takes me about 15 seconds, and there on the screen is every broker that fits those qualifications.”
He sends out about 100,000 e-mails a week, and because brokers want to know what’s available for their clients, they’re not going to delete these e-mails, so it’s highly effective marketing.
The program is also helpful for his website. He creates spreadsheets of all the available real estate centers that Venture has available, and these include asking price, square footage, property taxes, acres, how many phases there are and will be, and other numbers along these lines. Using SQL Server technology, the software is connected to the company’s website, so if he makes an update in the spreadsheet in Commence, it’s then updated to the website in real time, so customers always have current information. These updates can be done in real time like Eves does, or they can be programmed to update at a certain time on certain days.
“That kind of connectivity is great,” he says. “We don’t need a programmer, we don’t need anyone to go to change the price — it changes dynamically.”
And not needing a programmer saves big bucks on his IT budget, which can add up very quickly.
“We measure it more in increase in efficiency and productivity,” he says. “I would say that the savings are perhaps millions over the years and certainly many hundreds of thousands in payroll to make changes to it — there are changes to it every day. Just to have it, productivity goes so much higher.”
How to reach: Venture Corp., (415) 464-2000 or www.venturecorporation.com
Set it up
If you want to save money and efficiency by using content management software like Robert Eves, founder and president of Venture Corp., then it’s simple. First, find the software that fits your needs. If you don’t want to deal with IT people, then find one that has templates that can help you get started.
“Use the templates that come with it and then begin to customize them,” he says.
For example, you may have a contacts template, but you may add to it a column to put people’s spouses names, so when you see that person at a function, you can also greet his or her spouse — you remember the name because you had it in the program, which translates through to your smart phone, too. Or maybe you’re a car enthusiast and want to keep track of the type of car all your contacts drive — you can do that through customization.
“If you want your notes to get linked to your to-do list or your to-do list to be linked to your appointments, that’s what a relational database does.”
