The Leader - March/April 2009 - (Page 39) more. It’s much more collaborative, bringing everything and everyone to the table. Varcoe: It comes back to art and science. In the early 90s there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. A very appropriate strategy at the time was to get something done fast and to outsource to a service provider experienced at doing it. They could strip the costs out quickly. The outlook has changed. All of that lowhanging fruit is now gone. That sort of offering is now much more a commodity, lower margin, plenty of people can do it. From a corporate point of view, it’s much more complicated to work out how to get the most out of the market. Do you go with the one-size-fits-all global behemoth; is there a better trick somewhere locally; do you go regional; and, for that matter, where does the ‘smart niche’ consulting group fit in? Everyone is saying this recession is a perfect storm, with two or more downturn drivers becoming aligned. The thing that can happen from that is a real structural change. Is there a seismic shift for service providers waiting post-recession? The big service provider names may still be there, but the way in which they operate might be completely different. You are seeing it in the banking industry already so why not the real estate industry? M k Ba block and tackle, or how do you leverage some of the core things that we all know how to do? The other side is where we get to drive positive change. It’s more artistic. But now with the science of metrics backing it up, how do we influence the workplace, how do we influence the environment, how do we drive change, how do we leverage connectivity, how do we leverage mobility, how do we leverage networking, and understanding that there is now a variety of solutions that we can put into play? This is our opportunity to present those solutions that really can fundamentally change the game. LEADER/CPN: Since 1991, there have been dramatic changes to the service provider industry, especially because of outsourcing. Now there are huge service provider companies approaching global scale. Is all this making any difference in terms of how the corporate occupiers are responding to the downturn? Gorman: We’ve been in what we call a supplier dependent model for 10-12 years now. The changes I have seen show that the service provider industry itself is more sophisticated. It’s not the same sort of task-related activity any ar G or ma ry r n Va rc oe business and how to have better long term relationships with our clients. EDITOR’S NOTE The CoreNet Global-CPN Corporate Real Estate Roundtable conducted at the 2008 CoreNet Global Summit in Orlando was reported for LEADER by Senior Contributing Editor Richard Kadzis. Ficke: We have evolved over the last 15 years of looking at real estate as a series of unrelated events to looking at real estate in one holistic function. For us, it creates great opportunity. If you look at all of the major corporate services groups, they have all announced dramatic growth over the last 12 months. That’s indicative that more clients are looking for more solutions and looking to us to be part of the solution with them on a long term basis which creates stabilized income for our industry. I think as we come through this we are going to better understand how to run our Br e uc Fic ke 2 0 0 9 THE LE ADE R 39 MARCH / APRIL
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