Business Landlord Adds Online Asset

E-Tenants.com started out as a way to help Brandywine Realty Trust keep its tenants happy. article-businesslandlord

With the click of a mouse, the online help-and-information service offers a variety of features for the office landlord’s tenants – and their employees. They can report burned-out lightbulbs, hook up with nearby businesses, buy tickets, and get advice on fun things to do over the weekend.

Now, after a year of studying how people use e-Tenants.com, Brandywine implemented a major upgrade yesterday and said it was ready to sell the service to other landlords.

But not to direct competitors, says Mark P. Loschiavo, chief technology officer of e-Tenants.com, a unit of Brandywine.

“Quality space has become a given, the service a landlord provides has become a differentiator,” Loschiavo said.

Brandywine, a Newtown Square real estate investment trust, is the Philadelphia area’s largest office landlord. Though Liberty Property Trust, of Malvern, is bigger overall, Brandywine owns more office space in this region – 22 million square feet occupied by 1,500 tenant companies, most of them in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Virtually all major players in the office-rental business are using computer technology to improve response time on repair requests and to track performance in other tenant-retention issues. And many are developing products similar to e-Tenant.com.

But with 65 percent of its tenants, up from 50 percent a month ago, using e-Tenant, Brandywine believes it is ahead of the pack.

E-Tenant.com is the brainchild of Jerry Sweeney, Brandywine’s chief executive officer, who has made tenant retention a key part of his company’s strategy. He has invested $2 million in its development and hired a five-person staff to support its operation.

When a tenant’s employee signs up for the free service, his or her phone number, title and location are recorded, but this information is not for sale.

It is used only to speed the process of reporting maintenance requests. All the tenant needs to do is click on the “service request” icon and describe the problem. That message – including previously reported data – is flashed to a repair person’s radio pager, Barbara L. Yamarick, a Brandywine senior vice president, said.

“We monitor how long it takes for the repair to be completed,” Loschiavo added.

The Internet service gives small companies resources previously available only to big firms, Sweeney said.

For example, all of the businesses listed on the e-Tenants site have been checked out - a job a large company’s purchasing department would do. “We have a high comfort level that they are an excellent service provider,” Yamarick said.

“If they don’t do a good job, we pull them,” Loschiavo said.

New tenants can sign up as soon as a lease is signed.

The site lists businesses that help with the move-in – including a relocation firm that coordinates everything from moving furniture and arranging telephone service to ordering business cards.

The site also helps users find nearby places to have lunch and shop for a wide range of products and services – including some that meet personal needs such as dry cleaners, car-repair garages, florists and gift shops. These listings are customized for each neighborhood where Brandywine has a building.

With many companies shrinking their support staffs, Brandywine decided to add, at its expense, an online concierge that will do research and other chores a secretary once did.

Tenants can e-mail a request and get a response later. Or they can exchange immediate text messages with a concierge staff member, who is fairly quick with answers and help with shopping.

To demonstrate, Loschiavo asked for an Italian restaurant in Jamaica, where he would soon be going on vacation, and the concierge found one.

When asked for a bed and breakfast in tiny Barnard, Vt., the concierge first suggested one 45 minutes away. Pressed for one in the village, she persisted and found one. She also suggested nearby restaurants that the Barnard innkeeper, Gary Robison, later said were “very nice.”

Tenants also can ask for travel directions. The concierge responds with the kind of turn-by-turn instructions one gets from map-software programs, including the driving time under normal conditions.

“We’ve tried all sorts of questions – both related to business and children’s homework,” Yamarick said, “and we’ve never been able to stump them.”

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