Trinity Real Estate avoided significant expense and improved both personnel productivity and tenant response by implementing the ZephyrLink Notice Management System (NMS) and Tenant Portal in their Hudson Square district portfolio of 20 commercial properties.

BUSINESS PROBLEM: Day-to-Day Communication

Trinity Real Estate’s internal management-tenant communications system was ineffective in spite of their significant investments in building operations software and work order systems. Operations and legal requirements made it imperative that they communicate both routine and critical notice information to their tenants, including:

• Security Reminders and Alerts, Intruder Alerts
• Life Safety Information and Life Safety Drill Alerts
• Important Building Announcements
• Maintenance Reminders
• Day-to-Day Maintenance Alerts due to Construction

Announcements sent through their existing network were missed or ignored. Tenants:

• Claimed to have not received maintenance reminders, life safety drill alerts, service notices.
• Routinely ignored messages that required a response.
• Filed nuisance lawsuits claiming injury or business interruption when surprised by legally-required drills or maintenance interruptions.
• Demanded building and life safety information (handbooks, rules and regulations, tenant-related forms, emergency procedures) that had been previously distributed.

SOLUTION

Employing the ZephyrLink system, Trinity’s Property and Facility Managers could communicate effectively with their entire portfolio by creating, scheduling, and sending targeted notices. Notices could be addressed to all tenants or targeted to specific groups. A notice might be addressed only to an affected building and their other properties were not distracted with extraneous information.

The system resolved the issue of missed or ignored notices. Tenants opened their emails due to their high-visual impact and clarity. Graphical icons and an uncluttered layout allowed readers to rapidly comprehend and prioritize the messages. In addition, notices emailed to tenants were also displayed on the Portal (the web-based centralized resource for easy and efficient information access by Tenants).

ZephyrLink removed the telecommunications hosting and email service from local on-site servers to a cloud-based service for dependability, security, and redundancy. The addressing capabilities of the NMS was able to target not only specific properties, but also specific levels of management, such as the Incident Group (Trinity’s first responders) and also the Property Managers and Tenant Facilities Managers. The ZephyrLink text-messaging service added reinforcement and an additional communication channel to the emails to specific, targeted tiers of property management.

ZephyrLink also implemented a chain-of-command approval system for the NMS. High-level emergency notices could only be approved and published by a top manager with proper permissions; this was to prevent erroneous transmission of crisis messages such as recently occurred with the erroneous Missile scare in Hawaii.

The Tenant Portal provided a central repository for the most important and frequently-used building and life safety information documents, directories, contact lists, property amenities, notices and alerts. This provided tenants with quick and easy self-service access.

BENEFITS

The benefits Trinity realized were significant. The ZephyrLink system:

• Kept tenants and employees fully-informed about both routine and critical information
• Provided effective messaging and dramatically increased response rates
• Provided a convenient central Information Repository for critical Life Safety information and procedures, notices, policies, rules and regulations
• Allowed management to coordinate and execute during an incident or emergency
• Mitigated potential damage through an effective early warning
• Provided direct and reliable communications to key stakeholders before, during, and after an emergency
• Defined a clear response and course of action
• Demonstrated Life Safety preparedness and focus on tenant welfare
• Reduced Risk and Liability exposure
• Raised compliance and cooperation levels
• Reduced demands on Property Managers
• Saved time and expenses; reduced administrative costs