Sprint's Faye Davis (foreground from left) was joined by Charemon Tovar of Sprint and Francisco Acoba of awards co-sponsor Deloitte. Also joining in (background from left) were Sprint's Brian Jordan, Greg Schementi of awards co-sponsor Equis Corp. and Dan Boutross of Sprint.

It's not the rock band, but ELO's classic hit “Telephone Line” is an appropriate reference to Sprint's Enterprise Location Optimization initiative. This focus in corporate telecommunications and other Sprint-generated technology and management resources combines with flexible workplace strategies and anchors the company's new ELO flexible work scheme.

The initiative is led by Faye Davis, VP, Enterprise Property Services (EPS) at Sprint. Other key team members are Director, Portfolio & Project Planning Dan Boutross, Portfolio Strategy Manager Charemon Tovar, and Director, Transportation & Project Services Brian Jordan.

• ELO assures an enterprise wide perspective on real estate initiatives, by linking all asset classes in the formulation of a real estate strategy
• ELO employs a powerful approach to link Business Unit (BU) strategy to optimized real estate solutions, by utilizing geospatial technology
• Finally, ELO deploys a fast, accurate and scalable solution within a web portal

“EPS utilizes customer relationship management to maintain relations with the business units to assure tight linkage to their specific drivers as well as assuring visibility to any specific initiatives involving real estate,” Boutross related. “This way, EPS is able to assure that a real estate strategy or specific decisions are not made in isolation of other initiatives, and that the entire enterprise portfolio is considered.”

In addition, the ELO program leverages across Sprint's corporate support organizations by utilizing data and strategic input from HR and IT to achieve the most advantageous solutions for the enterprise. “HR provides employee location data that is used in location risk assessments and IT is a partner in developing the real estate strategy,” Boutross pointed out.

The new approaches also show that workplace and real estate indeed enhance the business of the business.

An application known as SAM (Strategic Analytic Mapping) provides the ability to analyze all enterprise markets utilizing business information: number of customers, revenue per customer for both current and prospective, together with real estate portfolio and market data as criteria to determine which submarkets meet defined thresholds. “This top down' approach assures an objective answer and achieves optimized location solutions,” according to Tovar. “Not only is this program able to determine optimal locations, thus enabling revenue generation and real estate cost reduction, but it also provides guidance for the number and size of office locations in a market.”

ELO incorporates a number of Sprint technology innovations including the Sprint Powered Workplace (SPW), added Jordan. “SPW is an alternative officing program that supports the mobility of the sales force. It promotes hoteling or shared seating combined with cutting edge technology solutions which are funded in part by real estate cost savings. SPW's alternative officing approach saves significant costs over a traditional office approach.”

• enabling growth and speed to market
• ability to locate proximate to customer spend and transit
• supporting revenue generation
• cost reduction through elimination of redundancies
• integrated portfolio strategy across business units

ELO enables the assessment and justification of all kinds of facilities including retail outlets, offices, engineering and other needs. It also incorporates technologies like a web portal and GIS. Location and workplace design concepts such as proximity analysis and spatially enabled analytics are also used.

“This approach is a break-through for location strategy, Davis commented. “The value of it is becoming visible as Sprint begins to develop a portfolio rationalization methodology for the pending merger with Nextel. The merger has accelerated the visibility and applicability of the ELO program.”