The only tool asset managers need

Can you present Colliers Global Investors?

Colliers Global Investors, it is an investment and asset management structure, which creates its own funds that it opens up to the clientele of professional investors, and which also works on behalf of third parties with historical mandates with major French institutions on a very “core” asset: office, retail, and residential. We opened our business a few months ago, tried to expand it to areas that were a bit more “value-add”. We are currently in exclusivity on several small intramural issues with an international clientele, which we are trying to develop thanks to the Colliers Group and our connections. So, to leave this very institutional Franco-French dimension to go and see an international clientele, and a little more “value-add”.

Can you explain what you do?

At the end of 2019, I joined Colliers Global Investors, at the right time, just before the Covid crisis, just to try to develop Asset Management on behalf of third parties and to invest in these structures, which were more modest in size, since there are 4 and a half billion assets under management today.

What was your need?

So my need... first as an Asset Manager and now at the head of Colliers Global Investors, was to finally have a tool for the Asset Manager. Because the Asset Manager has always managed between an Excel, a Powerpoint, a homemade cash flow that was made with macros, or with outdated cash flow tools and that did not necessarily meet his request. Nobody had offered a solution that was sufficiently integrated.

Why did you choose SONEKA?

The advantage with SONEKA is that it first met an initial need, which was to have a unique tool for reporting, cash flows, and daily building life : whether it's multi-year work plans, lease negotiations, or rental statements.

And, above all, the Asset Manager, his building management function, spent more than 50% of his time behind his desk doing reports in all directions. Depending on the client, different reporting is sometimes required, and that has always been the case with the Asset Manager.

The interest that I found in the SONEKA solution on this subject is that I have my Asset Managers who now all work in the same way, and that we adapt the automatic generation of reporting according to the wishes of investors.

Having a unique Asset Management tool allows the centralization of data, at all levels of society, whether at the level of Fund Managers, Project Managers who work for the works, at the level of Asset Managers, or even managers. Having access to the data in one place also allows you to check the data much more, because it is the same data that is scanned.

In my career, I have experienced moments where we have: a rental statement with the Property Manager, a rental statement with the Asset Managers, a rental statement with the Fund Manager, a rental statement with the person who is in charge of the assessments and which he sends to the experts. When there are 4 pieces of data, there can be 4 false values. While there is only one, it is checked constantly, it is scanned constantly, so it leaves less room for error.

The automatic generation of reports, as I said, it is extremely important because it allows the Asset Manager to be positioned where he creates real value (and that's his job!) : on the ground with the tenants, with the Property Managers, on the building, to visit the surrounding competition, and that is what is fundamental.

Even more so today with the return to a market that is no longer as simple as it was a few months or weeks ago, since before Covid, some of my friends who are not in real estate tended to say: “you just have to buy the building, between the promise and the act it has increased in value anyway: what is the point of your job? ”. Today, I think we have seen a return of the risk premium, and being on the ground alongside the tenants, and alongside the people who make the life of the building, is even more fundamental than it was before.

I experienced both roles: that of Asset Manager, I moved to Fund Management, and I changed my mind again to return to Asset Management. And it's true that the fact that a Fund Manager has automatic consolidations active by asset, regardless of the scope, because you can mix commercial and residential offices, where you professionally had this intuition that you had to go ask this or that question, with SONEKA, you have a matrix for consolidating all the assets you are in charge of, with Automatic alerts or tables, scorecards that allow us to see what the major lease deadlines are, for example, and to ask the Asset Manager appropriate and relevant questions during a meeting with him, or else, and this is another feature I find interesting, in the tool directly. Instead of sending an email to ask a question, we ask the question directly in the tool, in what I call the news feed. We are in jobs that still experience a lot of turnover, whether it is at the level of Fund Managers or Asset Managers, so being able to find track of these questions and answers, I think it is excessively important.

So yeah, it's this fusion of a tool for Asset Managers, facilitated reporting management, centralized data, and this transparency game that makes it possible to give access, either to Fund Managers, or even to external clients, to our tool. We have a tool that meets all our needs.

And I would add one thing that was very important for us: SONEKA does not belong to a major player that has invested billions in its development. It is a young start-up that was founded by people who know my job, who have practiced my job, and with whom we can discuss and find development paths all together. So I will add the 5th point that interested us is this malleable aspect, to be able to develop the solution, and to have the respondent from the SONEKA teams.

I can give you an example: today we manage the management of our acquisition pipeline in the SONEKA tool, because the team developed a dedicated module with us, and rather than still having the famous Excel file that we send each other every Friday to have the discussion on Monday, well everyone has access to this pipeline, well everyone has access to this pipeline, and we can follow up and decide if we then switch the asset to an acquisition or not. So we also use this tool, and it is developing with us into new functions.

How is the relationship with the SOENKA team going on a daily basis?

The relationship is going very well, they are available. They reasoned in the same way that we reason: we have a Fund Manager who is responsible for a client, which is the unique point of entry for this client to us, and this Fund Manager acts as an internal client to the teams, whether it is legal, Project Management, or Asset Management.

SONEKA did the same thing: we have a key account manager who manages all of our solutions, who we had on the phone almost every day, and it's going extremely well.

‍