Microsoft Office 2010

Customer Solution Case St

Real Estate Firm Upg

Deliver Market Rese
Percent Faster
Customer: Cushman & Wakefield
Website: www.cushwake.com
Customer Size: 13,000
Country or Region: United
States
Industry: Financial services
Customer Profile
Founded in 1917, Cushman &
Wakefield is one of the worlds
largest commercial real-estate
firms, with 220 offices and 13,000
employees worldwide.
Software and Services
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Excel 2010
Microsoft Visio Premium 2010
Microsoft Server Product
Portfolio
Microsoft SharePoint Server
2010
Microsoft SharePoint Designer
2010

Business Needs

Cushman & Wakefield provides

commercial and residential
customers with property
management and brokerage
services, along with market research
and analysis. Every three months,
each of the companys seven
regional offices in the United States
contributes content to the Cushman
& Wakefield MarketBeat Report. This
For more information about
report examines buying and selling
Microsoft Office, go to:
activity
across 30 markets and
www.office.com
features incisive commentary on

It used to take several hours to format the report for each

region with market specifics and statistics; now, with the
link between Excel 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, it
takes a few minutes.
Faith Ramsour, Director, Regional and Industrial Research, Cushman & Wakefield

Real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield wanted to speed

development of its quarterly market research report.
Executives also wanted to gain better visibility into the
production of this report to evaluate areas for future
improvement. The companys U.S. subsidiary upgraded
to Microsoft Office 2010 and implemented Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft Visio 2010. Now,
the subsidiary can produce its market research report
66 percent faster.

industry trends and investment

opportunities.
Because this quarterly report
showcases the companys analysis
expertise, it is a major source of
competitive advantage. Executives
were keen to find a way to shorten
the amount of time needed to
create this document. Its
extremely important to our
business that our report is
meticulously researched and
documented, but its equally
important that were first to

market, says Faith Ramsour,

Director of Regional and Industrial
Research in the United States for
Cushman & Wakefield.
Historically, it took each Cushman
& Wakefield regional office in the
United States up to 30 hours of
staff time to collect and synthesize
market data, and then write, edit,
and format the content for
publication. Each team allotted a
substantial portion of this time to
rekeying information that had been
extracted from multiple, disparate

data sources into Microsoft Office

Excel 2003 spreadsheet software.
In addition, senior leaders
struggled to gather and track
progress-to-complete rates and
other performance measurements
across all of the regional offices.

Solution
The company deployed Microsoft
Office 2010 alongside Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010 and
Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 in
its U.S. subsidiary. We were
excited about the ease of use of
the Office Fluent Ribbon interface,
and once we took a closer look at
all of the new application features,
we decided that it was the right
time to make the move to
Microsoft Office 2010, says
Ramsour. Also, we were confident
that the tight link between Office
2010, SharePoint Server 2010,
and Visio 2010, would give us
better end-to-end control of our
report production process.
Cushman & Wakefield takes
advantage of the seamless
interoperability between Microsoft
Excel 2010 and Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010 to
streamline the process of
inputting data into the MarketBeat
Report. Staff can now import
statistical information from a
proprietary data source based on
Microsoft SQL Server data
management software directly
into SharePoint Server 2010.
The company used Microsoft
SharePoint Designer 2010 to build
a report template associated with
each geographic region. Now,
staff can access market statistics
for their region in a preformatted

Excel 2010 workbook. They can

easily insert the tables, charts,
and other objects from this
workbook into the draft as they
continue to develop content.
Moreover, they can use the
enhanced PowerPivot for Excel
2010 add-in, along with other
analysis tools in the software, to
drill down into the data for
additional details for the final
report.

reduced the amount of time

needed to produce its quarterly
MarketBeat Report. And, thanks
to better visibility into its
production process through
centralized document
management, automated
workflows, and executive
dashboard tools, the company
now can ensure tighter quality
control for continued process
improvement.

The company used Visio

Premium 2010 to model and test
several workflows, which now
help guide the production of the
MarketBeat Report. Through
these workflows, which are
implemented using SharePoint
Server 2010, staff members can
initiate a review cycle to solicit
feedback from managers at
various phases of the production
process. Managers receive an
automatically generated email
message to notify them that a
document is waiting for their
approval, and they can quickly
access the document through
the companys project portal. In
addition, Cushman & Wakefield
developed executive dashboards
based on Visio Premium 2010
and Visio Services. Through the
use of Visio Services, executives
can access these dashboards in a
single click from the companys
intranet to quickly determine
which regions have submitted
drafts for final review.

Accelerates Production of
Key Deliverable by 66
Percent
Through synchronization
between SharePoint Server 2010
and Excel 2010, Cushman &
Wakefield has eliminated several
steps in the production of its
MarketBeat Report. In total, the
company has saved a minimum
of 10 hours per quarterly
production cycle, achieving an
efficiency gain in this process of
66 percent, according to
Ramsour. It used to take several
hours to format the report for
each region with market specifics
and statistics; now, with the link
between Excel 2010 and
SharePoint Server 2010, it takes
a few minutes. This helps us
ensure that we are first to market
with a high quality report each
quarter.

Benefits
By upgrading to Microsoft Office
2010, together with SharePoint
Server 2010 and Visio Premium
2010, the U.S. subsidiary of
Cushman & Wakefield has

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN
THIS SUMMARY.
Document published June 2010

Tightens Process Control

Managers use workflow auditing
tools in SharePoint Server 2010
to evaluate employee and team
performance across various
regions and identify areas for
improvement. And, company
leaders are taking advantage of
easy access to dashboard tools
to gain improved visibility into

the status of each deliverable.

Now, we can track projects in
real time, which gives us much
better control, so we can deliver

the highest quality deliverables

in the shortest amount of time,
says Ramsour. Beating
competitors to market with new

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN
THIS SUMMARY.
Document published June 2010

reports each quarter helps better

position Cushman & Wakefield as
a leader in market insight.