Lane Company SharePoint Due Diligence System

Challenge

As a rapidly-growing real estate development and acquisition firm, Lane Company required vast amounts of due diligence research before making decisions on new opportunities. Over time, the firm had developed an inefficient, fractured and individualized approach to data warehousing and systems. Information-intensive internal and external communications – which included property records, engineering and financial reports, market analysis data, design studies and much more – took a variety of non-aligned forms, including email blasts with multiple attachments, physical distribution of hard copy reports and word of mouth. Centralization of data and standardization of due diligence efforts had become critical to the firm’s continued growth of the company.

Solution

Lane Company was intrigued by the promise of Microsoft’s SharePoint technologies and chose Abel Solutions as the partner who could deliver on that promise. After an in-depth discovery and requirements analysis, Abel Solutions began design and implementation of the Due Diligence Portal, which would employ a re-usable, centralized SharePoint template and site provisioning process for capturing all the information related to each development and acquisition project. Within the scope of the portal, Abel Solutions orchestrated the implementation of three key components:

• A Resource Center that would serve as a repository of best practices, templates and forms to help maintain consistency of deliverables among increasingly decentralized resources.
• A Project Detail Form, which would capture key pieces of information for opportunities and feed all remaining components of the solution.
• An Opportunity and Pipeline Tracking system to be shared across the dynamic SharePoint environment – and elevated for executive-level visibility – instead of being stored in off-line spreadsheets.
• A Due Diligence Checklist that would assign tasks based on the roles defined and due dates based on key project milestone dates.

Results

The implementation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and related technologies have fully integrated and standardized the company’s Due Diligence processes, workflow and communications, benefitting the firm strategically, legally and financially. External partners, employees and management now have a unified communications system, with easy access to the reliable and accurate information required for rapid-fire decision making. With the new Due Diligence Portal, Abel Solutions has helped Lane fully leveraged its investment in SharePoint while substantially improving the integrity, quality and timeliness of its work product.