Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/704472
critical," Moss said. "It is the main system we use to run our busi- ness." The new portal enables DDR to track tenant billings in real time. Retailers can log on and see how much rent they owe, along with such charges as common-area maintenance fees, real estate taxes, insurance premiums and the like. "Tenants get to pay exactly what they want, in exactly the time they want, and DDR gets an automated way of bringing it into our system and posting it," Moss said. As of July, DDR's local tenants were using the portal to pay a total of about $3 million per month on average. The rollout has seen rapid adoption driven by local tenants, with upwards of 30 percent participation across the overall portfolio, Vesy says. "The game- changer for our retailers really has been the transparency and the level of detail they get from SnapPay," she said. "They also like that it is easy, efficient and makes their life easier. We con- tinually get that specific feedback from them." Making life easier was the idea behind the 2012 launch of VTS, which promotes its leasing and asset-management tool as the first product of its kind for retail real estate. The platform enables owners and brokers to track and manage deal activ- ity, identify trends and quantify portfolio performance from a single dashboard. Over the past four years, VTS has raised a record amount of capital for a real estate tech startup — report- edly, about $200 million — from investors such as Blackstone, Insight Venture Partners, OpenView Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures. The New York City–based company employs 155 people across eight offices globally. Among its clients are Boston Properties and TIAA-CREF. "Eight out of the top 10 largest asset managers now use our platform," Romito said. Key to this growth is the platform's abil- ity to put critical data at the fingertips of owners and brokers even as it streamlines formerly manual tasks, he says. "A broker re- cently told me that before VTS, he would spend anywhere from three to five hours a week just creating Excel reports for his differ- ent investors," Romito said. "In the broker's world, time is your most valuable asset. You could be spending those hours doing things like prospecting for new clients or negotiating deals." The cloud-based platform gives owners and brokers access 50 S C T / A U G U S T 2 0 1 6 Shopping Center Management n Leasing n Redevelopment Bruce Strumpf, Inc. 2120 Drew Street, Clearwater, FL 33765 727-449-2020 • Fax 727-449-2212 email: johnstoner@brucestrumpf.com www.brucestrumpf.com Jill Strumpf, CSM President John F. Stoner, CCIM Director of Leasing MEMBER T u r n Y o u r P r o p e r t y O v e r T o T h e E x p e r t s S e r v i n g F l o r i d a f o r o v e r 3 5 y e a r s w i t h o v e r 3 . 8 5 m i l l i o n s q u a r e f e e t Time is your most valuable asset. You could be spending those hours doing things like prospecting for new clients or negotiating deals