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Cypress Equities"crystalreports.com has been instrumental in the development and success of salesforce.com at Cypress Equities, and it is pivotal to the continued success of our business."

Angie Reese, Database Administrator, Cypress Equities, an affiliate of Staubach Retail

Challenge

Success in the world of large-scale real estate development demands meticulous attention to detail - the myriad deadlines, contact information, financial figures, investment statistics, project milestones, and performance data associated with creating a huge shopping mall, neighborhood center, or a resort property in the Bahamas for instance.

This is the world of Dallas, Texas–based Cypress Equities, the retail, resort, and mixed-use development affiliate of Staubach Retail. A 125-employee company, Cypress is currently developing more than $3 billion in projects throughout the United States and the Caribbean, with 6,333,000 square feet currently owned or under development; 1,991,000 square feet currently closing; and 2,581,000 square feet in the pipeline.

To ensure immediate access to timely, current, and consistent data across the enterprise, Cypress implemented salesforce.com. "We needed one centralized place that everyone - the development partners, development managers, construction group, executives - could access to see the status of each project, from discovery and ground-breaking to leasing and final sale," says Database Administrator Angie Reese. "For the reporting piece, we brought in Business Objects Crystal Reports to replace the existing Excel spreadsheets, and we implemented crystalreports.com to share the reports online." Salesforce.com had certain reporting capabilities, she notes, but they were insufficient to meet upper management needs.

Approach

Although Reese had heard of Crystal Reports, she hadn't used it and thought it would be difficult to learn. Her concerns were quickly dispelled. Reese says, "It wasn't hard to learn, and everybody loves the reports that come out of it."

Using crystalreports.com to leverage the company's investment in Crystal Reports made business sense. "We needed just one or two people to build the reports," Reese says. "We wanted to give the rest of the users the ability to view the data, but we didn't want them to modify the reports in any way. The crystalreports.com solution is perfect for us. No matter where our users are located, they can log onto salesforce.com and easily access any report by clicking the crystalreports.com tab. They can also print or export the report as needed."

Getting the solution up and running was easy. "It was a very quick and smooth process," says Reese. "I didn't even have to wait for the crystalreports.com software; I was able to simply download it, along with the plugin that connects Crystal Reports and Salesforce, and get started right away. The solution is also very cost-effective, with a small up-front investment and a flexible subscription plan for viewer licenses." At present, some 30 employees access the reports directly via crystalreports.com.

Precise reporting is vital to Cypress Equities, notes Reese. "We track extremely time-critical information," she explains. "Missing a date or deadline could cost us thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every one of our projects has benefited from crystalreports.com; it enables me to pull all these critical dates and display them, so nobody misses anything. Our staff can review the reports every day. They can see the status of each project at a glance."

Results

crystalreports.com has taken Cypress Equities to the next level. "It has transformed our reporting capabilities compared to what we had before," says Reese. "Using Crystal Reports, I was able to duplicate our employees' sophisticated Excel spreadsheets exactly. This made for a seamless transition, because they were used to seeing the data in that precise format. They didn't feel that anything had been taken away from them."

In truth, however, something had been taken away - the need to spend untold hours creating reports in the first place. "It saves our staff a lot of time," says Reese. "It also ensures that everybody sees the same data at any given time. In the past, some people had their own documents; others kept the knowledge in their heads and never put it down on paper. Now all the data resides in one central location and everybody can see the whole picture."

When was the land purchased? When did construction start? What specific permits are required, and by what dates? Who is the title company, the traffic consultant, or the attorney for the project? What are the move-in dates for the various tenants? How long is their lease, and when do they need to start paying rent? When was the property sold? What was the return on investment? The answers are just a click away on the crystalreports.com tab.

"Our executives and management staff rely on these reports to make sure everybody is on the same page," concludes Reese. "They are very impressed with crystalreports.com. And now that people have seen what the solution can do, its usage is getting bigger and bigger. The more data we have in salesforce.com, the more sophisticated reports we can create and share. crystalreports.com has been instrumental in the development and success of salesforce.com at Cypress Equities, and it is pivotal to the continued success of our business."

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