Case study – ‘The Ascendix and JLL story’

JLL is a major global real estate and investment-management firm, with roughly 92,000 professionals operating in 230 offices internationally. Ascendix has worked with JLL since about 2010, helping them streamline their CRM (customer-relationship-management) infrastructure using Microsoft Dynamics and custom tools.

Rather than building a full CRM from scratch, JLL chose to leverage Ascendix’s product (AscendixRE on Dynamics) and then customise it to their needs, allowing JLL to focus on their core business while Ascendix dealt with the technical platform.

Challenges  Key issues faced by JLL were;

Low adoption of their CRM by users. Meaning many users weren’t engaging with the system effectively.

Difficulty integrating real‐estate data. For example, properties, leases, sales, opportunities needed to be put in their CRM in a consistent way.

Global scale complexity. Many locations, varying regional requirements, evolving business lines. Their on-premise CRM deployment wasn’t scalable or agile enough for future growth.

 

Solutions  Ascendix implemented a number of enhancements for JLL to resolve all issues:

Improved forecasting and marketing capabilities. Enabling segmentation of marketing campaigns based on prior interest, and enabling better data-intelligence to support trend-analysis and prediction.

Advanced map-search functionality. Advanced criteria (for example along a train line) and show relevant visuals.

Automated brochure and report generation. Using the “xRE Composer” add-on, JLL brokers can email branded brochures and reports generated from up-to-date CRM data and images, without having to resort to spreadsheets and manual processes.

Duplicate-detection tool. Given over 5,000 daily users were adding new records, the tool alerts users to potential duplicates (accounts, contacts, properties, availabilities) compared to the database, helping keep data clean.

Data import/export functions. Bulk import of multiple records and simple export to Excel/CSV for further analysis, reducing manual entry.

Migration from on-premise to cloud. They migrated JLL’s Dynamics CRM from on-premise to the cloud, adding approx. 3,500 online seats to their existing 2,000. Enabling global access, agility, and flexibility for growth.

 

Results & ROI

CRM adoption increased six-fold compared to before working with Ascendix. The customised solution made the CRM more relevant for the specific needs of commercial real-estate operations (as opposed to a generic CRM).

The time to market for key features was significantly shorter, months rather than years, because JLL used Ascendix’s platform plus customisation rather than building everything from scratch.

JLL’s project management feedback was that Ascendix was noted as being well-organised and responsive, capable of handling a complex client with many regions and shifting priorities.

 

Takeaways from JLL’s experience

It made the point that the CRM is a market-intelligence tool, not just a data repository, the data definitely does drive insight for brokers.

By using dashboards and meetings driven by the CRM data, oversight and reporting easier becomes an easier function for both managers and brokers.

Don’t over-engineer the CRM from the start, start simple, prove the value (“What’s In It For Me”) to users, then build further as the scope of what is required becomes apparent.

Automate as much as possible, replace spreadsheets and manual email sequences with actionable workflows.

By using an existing good product as a foundation rather than trying to build everything yourself, literally years of time and effort is saved which allows the core business to keep ahead of the curve.

Hearts and Minds; it is very important to get the best out of the topline CRM with all of its bespoke enhancements there is a “CRM evangelist” in the team to raise awareness and promote the system among users.

Chad Lisney, Vice President Global IT, JLL,  ‘The quality of work Ascendix provides is second to none. They’ve provided CRM solutions that no one else has been able to. Their efforts have helped both our sales force and the dynamics of our practice. The technologies they’ve employed have significantly simplified our CRM usage. Many of our locations require customizations that Ascendix has been able to provide solutions for not available in our native CRM. Their work has driven our adoption, which has increased by about six times what it was before we started working with them ”

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Andrew Stanton CEO Proptech-PR

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