AFTAs 2016: Best Cloud Initiative—LaSalle Investment Management

Cindy Parker, CIO and IT director at LaSalle, says the firm’s incumbent customer relationship management (CRM) system was not intuitive enough for the firm’s employees and so it was rarely used.

As a result, she says, much of the work carried out by its various teams was conducted in silos. “LaSalle is a global company, so having a centralized hub is cost-effective and facilitates a stronger operational structure,” Parker says.

LaSalle Investment Management—an independent subsidiary of Jones Lang LaSalle—uses Dynamo for its capital raising, investor relations, and acquisition and disposition management teams across its 24 offices in 17 countries.

The firm worked with Dynamo Software for customized modules specifically for its fund managers, accountants, analysts, and management teams. These features include transition tracking so that activities around acquisition opportunities can be tracked, and a marketing-approval-process workflow.

Since it began using the Dynamo platform, Parker says LaSalle has seen significant benefits, especially around efficiencies and the productivity of its portfolio managers.

The company now directly accesses information from the cloud instead of needing to ask around the firm about specific opportunities, which has significantly improved productivity.

“One of the big objectives was to eliminate Excel for activities tracking,” she says. “The capital raising team now has all of its communications and records in a single system.”

She adds that the company now directly accesses information from the cloud instead of needing to ask around the firm about specific opportunities, which has significantly improved productivity.

Other than its investment management system, LaSalle also uses Dynamo’s Investor Portal and mobile app so that it can better communicate with its clients. The Dynamo portal was configured to align with LaSalle’s reporting priorities and was designed to be accessed by clients to increase transparency.

Dynamo and LaSalle have been working together for a number of years with the latter increasing its adoption of Dynamo technology.

Dynamo Software CEO Krassen Draganov says his firm considers LaSalle a partner, not just in terms of making the vendor more efficient, but also in terms of developing solutions customized for LaSalle.

“LaSalle has been an innovative partner in advancing the utility of Dynamo for real estate investment managers from the beginning of our relationship,” he says.