Your Retail Portfolio Needs Repositioning - Do You Have Tools to Get You There?

Every Retail Company Is Under Intense Operating Pressure.

While some companies are benefiting, most are experiencing changes from strategic re-positioning to a complete contraction. Franchisors are transitioning from franchise development to franchisee protection. For real estate departments, the hard work has just begun. The pressure for solutions and immediate results will continue to ramp up until CRE has met the expectations, reasonable or not, of the C-Suite.

For those of us who have been through this type contraction multiple times, it is obviously critical that CRE Directors have the right team, internal and external. Company affiliations are not important - there can only be partners on your team. Understanding your portfolio data, store numbers, strengths, weaknesses, market and submarket fluctuations and landlords is assumed. Immediately providing well thought out short- and long-term solutions, analytically supported with respective costs, financial benefits and projected completion timelines, is also assumed. The real question is - Do you have all of the data you need to proceed today, and do you have the right collaborative team to insure your survival. Your survival is critically important. Your team has to be successful.

Understanding Store Data

The store data that your firm has used in the past to define success absolutely needs to be re-evaluated and redefined through portfolio analytics. The rules have changed. The expectations have changed. Your time to perform has changed. What steps were taken in the recession, both by your firm and also other firms that were the most successful. Find them, use them.

Simply looking at the bottom 10-50% of your stores based on historical performance is not enough. If stores are to succeed when the economy opens up, it has to be based on multiple factors. Our business is too complex for single set analytics. What are those multiple factors, how to they correlate, what data is not material, where are the outliers, what other questions need to be asked. Alternative portfolio options need to be presented to the C-Suite for review and comments.

A rapidly changing financial outlook also requires a new look at your service providers

The past 8-10 years of relatively easy tenant representation work is no longer meaningful. Working side by side with you to provide well thought out solutions, mark to market analytics, potential buy out, sublease, burn costs and timing to execute are essential. Tough times weed out the less talented or transaction-oriented service providers. Great service providers will flourish, others will fall away due to the difficulty of creating fees through the contraction period. If you have service provides who can't create the portfolio solutions or execute quickly, it is best to change as soon as possible.

With change comes the opportunity for CRE Directors to demonstrate your value in creating meaningful contributions to your company in a time of distress. Ensure you have the right team, get everyone on a single platform for portfolio, transaction, project, capital management and reporting. This is your time to shine.

Real Clear Software's commercial and cloud based real estate management software provides the ability to centralize data from every aspect of a retail portfolio - RCS integrates portfolio, transaction, project, capital, document and performance management, data security, extensive data analysis & comparisons, real time data access, stakeholder collaboration, CRM, demographics, and generation of various reports. It increases productivity or all users, internal and external. For more information on Real Clear Software, visit https://realclear.software, email support@realclear.software, or phone (949) 445-6220. Craig Morris Co-Founder, Real Clear Software