Case Study: UBC Properties

UBC Properties prepares real estate assets for development by providing initial services such as roadways, sewer, water and landscaping. Being a project-driven firm, UBC Properties must monitor the status of each project using real-time and reliable data.

Within a year of initial installation of Microsoft Business Solution’s Navision, UBC Properties felt ready to design business specific enhancements to Navision. They wanted to make it easier to monitor all draws made against vendor contracts to ensure they did not overpay anyone.

Specifically, UBC Properties earmarked the following project reports for development:

• Project cost report – providing costs to date on projects
• Holdback reports – tracking contracts where UBC Properties withholds a portion of the fee until the contract is completed
• Commitment reports – tracking purchases made by UBC Properties to ensure it doesn’t overpay vendors

The Solution
RSC’s Navision-certified developer Ken Hebden consulted with Don Matheson, CFO at UBC Properties, and accountant Stephanie Glen to scope their project reporting requirements.

The solution was to build UBC Properties a custom contract module in Navision. This impacted many areas of reporting for UBC Properties. Improvements made by Ken Hebden provided the flexibility needed to drill down on budgeted and actual expenditures, and to produce various reports regarding different areas of invoicing.
Success Factors

This development project was successful because Ken followed a sound methodology, and UBC Properties participated fully in each step:

• Defined requirements and expectations
• Stayed within budget of scope document
• Empowered the client to test the new coding in a mock environment
• Conducted follow ups after each development
• Compiled a User Guide for the entire development

UBC Properties’ commitment to testing each new development onsite prior to going live was impressive – and a key factor in the company’s success. Stephanie tested and revised new development code over a period of months. This allowed Ken to work remotely to fix “bugs” discovered in testing. Only once this stage was complete did Stephanie load the new development onto the live environment.

“When you’re going through a development phase, the initial set-up can be a slow process, but once that’s done, it saves an immense amount of time. The rewards are worth it,” Stephanie said.

Benefits
The new contract module has benefited all staff at UBC Properties thanks to greater efficiencies and improved access to information.

Prior to this, development managers could only print the costs to date on a project, but not a commitment report. They had to remember what they had already committed to and track this manually. Now, evaluating projected final costs is easier.
Don uses the improved report writer to monitor budgeted versus actual costs, creating a variance at the end. “The report writer impressed me,” Don said. “That saved us significant time where you can define your own project cost report. We use it all the time.”

The commitment reports used to be time consuming to produce, but now with the greater efficiency, staff can spend time on higher value activities rather than calculating if they’ve overpaid vendors.

The Company
UBC Properties Trust is a market oriented, private company wholly owned by the University of British Columbia. Its mission is to acquire, develop and manage real estate assets for the benefit of the University. Net income from developments contributes to UBC’s Endowment Fund.