Industry Call To Action

OSCRE America – Industry Call To Action
May 14, 2009

Real Estate research, analytics, transactions and occupancy play a central role in nearly every business activity on the planet and it is widely agreed that most Real Estate processes would benefit from faster, more accurate, better quality, and less costly information exchanges. OSCRE’s mission is to provide and promote greater interoperability for the Real Estate industry. The consortium accomplishes this in a number of ways; but principle among them is the development, acceptance and publication of open standards for Real Estate information interoperability.

Current New Topics for Comment and Involvement
In addition to our current publications; which are freely available to the public at www.oscre.org, the Consortium is currently working on developing three new topics which have been suggested by Real Estate professionals. It is important to understand that our process for addressing interoperability issues for the Real Estate industry begins by asking those in the industry to self-identify pain points and participate in organizing a clear statement of the issue/s and potential solutions as well as identifying gaps where development is needed and evaluating the nature and viability of various development options. Throughout the process, market input from subject matter experts, end users and technology providers is essential. The consortium believes that the Real Estate community will recognize the opportunity to drive much needed and highly beneficial improvements by participating in group discussions, establishing requirements and evaluating the relative value of suggested projects if delivered to the market.

The currently active areas of new interest are:
1. Investment Research and Reporting – Addressing the need for greater interoperability between management systems for commercial investment properties, portfolio management and analytics applications, portfolio appraisal applications, indexing organizations, third-party investors and investment advisors.

Today, Investment Research and Reporting relies on a number of communications between operational systems which provide individual and summary transaction records, portfolio appraisers and analysts, portfolio managers and third-party investors, Real Estate investment indexing organizations, investment advisors and consultants. Although there are standards for investment data characterization and reporting, and for calculation of indices, existing methods for sourcing and exchanging information include a wide variety of proprietary formats (which limit flexibility and control), documents which are not machine readable or interpretable, data gathering methods that are labor-intensive, and processing methods which are time and labor intensive.

Members of the Consortium have suggested the need for an information domain map of the overall commercial property investment lifecycle, based on the map identify and prioritize opportunities to increase interoperability, and define the scope for the first of a series of workgroup activities to define open service standards.

2. Green Lease Exchanges – In 2008 OSCRE published an open standard for exchanging whole-lease abstracts; which is being implemented by end-user organizations and software developers. Now, we are asking organizations and individuals having Green Lease templates or involvement with Green Lease guidance or training activities to identify extensions required in the standard to support Green-type lease exchanges.

The complete Request and supporting materials may be downloaded at: http://web.pisces.co.uk/Public%20Library/Press%20articles/GreenLeas… .
Comments are requested prior to Friday, May 22, 2009.

3. Site Selection Exchanges – Addressing the need for greater interoperability throughout the lifecycle of the Site Selection ecology.

Many providers and consumers of information, using many manual, semi-automated and proprietary software solutions exchange information during the Site Selection process. Analysis and site selection are based on the merits of many relevant factors including business requirements, market conditions, resource availability, labor and market demographics, costs in many categories – real estate, wages, taxes, transportation, utilities, etc. , technology availability, and zoning regulations to name a few. Site selection information processing involves a wide variety of information types including financial and property descriptors, location descriptors, geospatial feature and mapping data, cadastre, search engine service exchanges, paper documents and formatted electronic forms, etc. Although a number of proprietary and open source formats and standards undoubtedly exist for various ‘stovepipes’ in this complex set of processes, OSCRE is interested first to determine if an overall process definition suitable for use in an open standards development environment exists and, if it does which, if any of the elements of the roadmap might benefit from application of OSCRE’s existing open specifications and/or core components. Where the ‘roadmap’ doesn’t exist or where additional issues may be identified, OSCRE is potentially interested in proposing and managing one or more projects to enhance interoperability in the Site Selection lifecycle.

Conceived as a series of projects, OSCRE seeks to determine if a lifecycle process map suitable for Site Selection exchange standards development exists, establish a gap analysis for Site Selection interoperability, and then begin to work incrementally on developing open interoperability solutions.

A Call To Action
OSCRE is actively seeking companies interested in sponsoring interoperability projects on any of these topics. Sponsors participate confidentially in the Concept Development phase and will influence the range of topics considered and the choice of particular issues which will be used as case studies to focus an interoperability project.

OSCRE is also seeking new Member organizations to participate in the standards development and acceptance process. Depending on the level of membership varying levels of governance, participation and support services are afforded.
To learn more about these topics, to contribute individually or as a company to discussions or to join OSCRE Americas, please contact Alan Edgar, Workgroup Program Manager, OSCRE Americas, Inc. at alan.edgar@oscre.org or call 765-215-8251. Everyone is invited to review OSCRE’s existing Interest Groups and Working Groups at www.oscre.org.

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