Colliers International Speeds Key Business Process from 6 Months to a Week

by Katy Beloof on November 28, 2017
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Businesses are always looking for an edge. Often the way to outmaneuver the competition is to find innovative ways to solve problems for your clients and customers, saving them time or money — or both. Sometimes that means introducing them to a new tool that will help them gain efficiencies and result in a competitive advantage for themselves.

Colliers International | Wisconsin has found great success in using Smartsheet to serve their clients and make them more successful. Kristin Komassa, Associate Vice President of Corporate Solutions, joined us onstage for the keynote at inaugural Smartsheet ENGAGE customer conference to talk how her team uses Smartsheet to serve their clients.
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Colliers International | Wisconsin Powered by Smartsheet

Colliers International is a commercial real estate company with over 15,000 professionals in 68 companies around the world. Komassa works in the Wisconsin office, and shared a bit about what her team has to offer clients.

“We don’t just do brokerage and property management at my office,” says Komassa. “We solve problems for our clients.” She adds, “We do the entire gamut from start to finish for a client. We handle their architectural [needs], their construction, their development. We do project management. And all of that is powered by Smartsheet.” 
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Smartsheet Automated Actions Speed Key Business Process for Client 

Recently, Komassa had a global banking organization come to Colliers with a problem they needed solved. Tenant renewals were taking them anywhere from three to six months to get a simple two-page document completed, updated, and signed off on. Their tenant renewal process was costing them a lot of money, so they came to Colliers for a better solution.

“This organization has thousands of tenants in their buildings around the globe,” Komassa shares. “So you can imagine that renewing these tenants in a timely manner, really it's money for them.”

Komassa saw an opportunity to solve this problem with Smartsheet Automated Actions. She had the Colliers internal team take the tenant renewal documentation from a previous year and update it. Then, they let automated approval requests do the heavy lifting to streamline this time consuming process.  

“We've now set it up that the minute we upload that new document to Smartsheet, it sends an automated approval notification to the client,” says Komassa. “It's not an email in his inbox, where he probably gets hundreds a day. He can actually see [the Smartsheet notification] on his phone, login, and then approve or deny it. If there's a problem with the document he can write it right in there, and we can get it changed immediately.” 
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“We've actually gotten these out in a week now,” Komassa adds. “So three to six months to a week. Amazing.”
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How to Accelerate Business Impact for YourCustomers and Clients

So how can you speed up business impact for your customers and clients like Colliers did? Komassa says that it’s critical to ask your customers and clients about their biggest work management challenges and really listen to them. “Go back to your teams. Ask them, ‘What are your pain points?’” says Komassa. “Don’t just ask your clients and customers, ask your internal teams as well. ‘What is really stalling your productivity?’ Then the big thing is listen.” 

As you’re listening, really dig into the underlying issues. “You might have somebody who says, ‘I just don’t have enough time in the day.’ [...] Find out why,” says Komassa. For example, maybe they’re getting inundated with data. You can’t create more hours in the day, but you can solve for information overload with tools like forms to consolidate data collection and saved filters to look at only the information needed at the time. 

Then, once you’re ready to build a solution, make sure you enlist your customers, clients, or internal teams to help you. “When they help you build it, they’re more likely to adopt it,” Komassa advises. 
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How Colliers Uses Smartsheet to Win More Business

To learn more about how Colliers International | Wisconsin uses Smartsheet to share real-time information with clients, manage multimillion dollar projects, and win more business as the leading real estate provider in their region, watch the customer story video below. ​