Tough economic times bring increasing pressure to find every last penny of savings.  CRE professionals understand that many cost-cutting strategies can reduce worker productivity and limit future flexibility.  How can you determine whether your cost-cutting initiatives will be counter productive? And then how can you explain why to senior executives?
 
Here's one way to look at the trade-off between cost reduction and worker productivity.  What if you could make changes that would reduce real estate costs per worker by 10% (sounds good so far), but these change would reduce worker productivity by 2%.  Should you make the changes?  Probably not.  Surprised?  I was.

Read more to learn why.
 

For portfolio managers, finding cost-cutting opportunities often means sorting through long lists of data.  Portfolio managers that track the progress of new product development use portfolio visualization, especially "bubble charts," to summarize portfolio data. 

Recently, CRE portfolio managers have started using similar charts, like this one, to plot location characteristics and identify opportunities.  Each circle, or "bubble," is a location.  The most likely opportunities for cost reductions are in the red-shaded areas, especially in the upper right corner. 

Read more to learn how you can summarize the thousands of numbers for your portfolio in easy-to-read charts.

Is your company facing a merger, acquisition, restructuring or consolidation?  Are your senior executives challenging you to capture as much value as possible from these situations? 
 
At Critical Core, we've found that in these situations, planners often overlook millions of dollars in valuable cost savings and productivity improvements.  It's not that these planners aren't skilled; in fact, most are very skilled.  But these are complex situations, with many different ways to relocate business groups within facilities and with many different requirements and costs to consider.  Add in limited time for analysis or business requirements that change at the last minute and it's easy for planners to overlook the best solutions.

How can we find savings and opportunities that others overlook?  We apply proven techniques from manufacturing, distribution and logistics.  To ensure that they find the most cost-effective solutions in complex situations, their planners use sophisticated search algorithms that evaluate all of the different location and transportation solutions to find the ones that best meet their business needs. 

Read more to learn about how these techniques can help you find hidden savings in your corporate real estate portfolio and help you respond to senior executives' what-if questions.