Dr. Martha O’Mara and Glenn Burdick, both of Corporate Portfolio Analytics, with cosponsor Elliott Farber of Equis Corp. (center).

If Lockheed Martin's case demonstrates the benefits of effective data management, then Corporate Portfolio Analytics case for "CRE Market Intelligence Tools" certainly bears witness to the virtues of the "richness of data."

As Dr. Martha O'Mara, Managing Director for Corporate Portfolio Analytics, observes, there's little work devoted to "the power of market intelligence," or to "how to take a rigorous look at the portfolio from the flip side of supply."

Common aspect that both cases share: like LMC, Corporate Portfolio Analytics has a three-dimensional tool that it runs on Excel which links the portfolio to business strategy.

Another similarity is, Corporate Portfolio Analytics is all about the demand side of the industry. But instead of managing this in a single-company environment, Corporate Portfolio Analytics does so for multiple corporate and government agency clients. So it all comes down to getting the best deal possible for corporate and public sector clients, just as LMC does for its internal clients.

"We had not seen the richness of data for the demand side, but we've developed a tool for that," O'Mara told the Global Innovator's Award judges.

As her colleague, Glenn Burdick, offers, it must be working. "We've worked on more than 75-million square feet so far," explains the firm's other Managing Director. "We've affected over a quarter-billion-dollars a year in market differential, influence that at the margins is very significant."

Can demand-side analytics for multiple corporate clients be innovated, asks O'Mara. Indeed, it can, and it can be done in kitchen-like fashion "through the stew we mix."

That recipe is based on the triangulation of multiple data sets including "a variety of independent market sources," O'Mara relates. "Pay attention to the 'Y' Axis."

The parts link across the spectrum of portfolio planning, CRM and transaction management. By comparing client, or internal, data sets with external market sources like current asking prices, historical rent averages, market absorption and the like, companies can decide with certainty whether to "go short" or "go long" with their portfolio transactions. The tool gauges cost performance gaps against market risk in a five-year forecast syntax, with the upper half of the matrix accounting for rising lease rates and the lower half for flat to declining rates. (Corporate Portfolio Analytics focused its case on leased portfolios but also measures owned real estate for its clientele.)

An opportunity vs. risk assessment ultimately emerges. On the opportunity side, companies can benefit from paying current lease rates or current benchmarked rates. On the risk side, they must confront current rates vs. future market rates.

"Our analysis typically begins with two types of data," O'Mara continues, "price benchmarks approximating the current market rate for leased or owned property, and five-year econometrically derived lease price forecasts."

Corporate Portfolio Analytics' clients typically occupy what the firm calls "gnarly" portfolios. "Our clients are large, national or regional companies with multiple property types and multiple lines of business," explains O'Mara.

But the "gnarly" is being managed in a "natty" sort of way, to borrow from an Ivy-League fashion or style term. "Integrating business risk into our analysis of real estate risk is our motto. Unless there is a compelling reason to agree to a long-term lease, go short term," O'Mara stresses.

How do corporate clients view the Market Intelligence platform, which has performed complex tasks like demand cluster analysis, M&A lease renegotiation, lease performance measures, retail portfolio analysis, rental rate studies, asset action plans, and transaction diligence?

"We are now a more informed real estate buyer," one client testifies (Corporate Portfolio Analytics kept its client list anonyomous for proprietary reasons). "It's beneficial to our future planning," another states. Still another points out, "Our CFO is now part of our decisions. Our CFO loved the analysis."

And what's so revolutionary about it?

O'Mara says "corporations have never looked at market data" the way they see it now through the Market Intelligence tool. "They've never been as proactive about it, either."

The tool is also beginning to go global, with some clients in Europe now using it. Yet there is an obstacle to overcome. It's the "outsourcing of strategic planning," as O'Mara sees it. "There's a different set of competencies looking at it" through an outsourced approach to strategy.

CoreNet Global's 2006 CRM study, however, clearly shows that strategic planning is the most 'in-sourced' CRE function next to CRM itself, so the future looks promising in this sense for CRE market intelligence to gain an even higher rate of adoption.

As O'Mara concludes: "The most sophisticated CRE clients are adopting it first."