A digitalization journey

Remote management of electronic dossiers for tenants, properties and owners – wherever you may be on any given day - characterizes the new digital way of working in real estate management. Thanks to ELCA's IT solution, VERIT Immobilien AG is gaining in efficiency every day.
 

VERIT Immobilien AG has been managing, renting, renovating and selling real estate for 60 years. In addition to quality, the efficient management of real estate is a key priority for this national actor, counting nine locations in Switzerland. In recent years, digitization has had a strong impact on the real estate industry, where it has initiated a paradigm shift by accelerating the transition from analog to digital systems.

The vision was tempting: The ability to get immediate and secure access to work files, with no strings attached to the physical location of the office, thus increasing productivity on the go or while assisting customers. Almost three years ago, this was the starting point of VERIT's large-scale digitization offensive.
 

The objective was to simplify and optimize work processes, to then automate them through a single platform accessible by everyone, at any time and from anywhere. Unnecessary rework (e.g. after an apartment inspection) was to be a thing of the past. The specifications for this new digital management platform called for employees to be able to manage daily operations and online communications in an entirely digital manner, while carrying their tasks with the required mobility. The new possibilities offered by this approach aimed at bringing added value to VERIT's employees, but also and primarily to their customers, i.e. the owners and tenants.

In a competitive environment, the continuous optimization of processes is crucial. With paper-based manual processes, the design of efficient workflows is rather difficult; this is nevertheless a bitter reality for many real estate service providers.
 

VERIT has made great efforts over the last two years to digitize existing paper files. The new way of working with digital documents means that processes can now be better structured and organized, which has a very positive side effect on quality. Simplification and automation efforts are also focused on the flow of information originating from outside of the company on a daily basis. However, this integration of processes does not stop at your own company: Processes upstream and downstream of the value-added chain are integrated to achieve a complete end-to-end digitization. It is thus not uncommon for services from third-party companies to be completely integrated. The ecosystem of cross-company processes is increasingly becoming a reality.
 

To carry out this project, VERIT has relied on ELCA's know-how. The focus was on the digital process, to seamlessly connect digital archiving, ERP, incoming emails and eDossier. A new modern IT infrastructure has been set up to enable the integration of the above-mentioned core systems. This now forms the basis for offering customers the new services that are in demand on the market.
 

Martin Frei, VERIT's Chief Digital Officer, sees great added value for his company: "VERIT has made a quantum leap in digitization over the last two years. The new IT architecture has been put from theory into practice and is constantly evolving. At the same time, the company is building its own process-based management platform that can meet the growing demands of today and tomorrow. This property-management platform is a key element of our management; it is considered a valuable investment that will ensure the success of the company in the future.

They are the result of a concept developed by ELCA, that of the "ECM backbone" which - in the case of VERIT - has integrated the pre-existing EASY archiving solution as well as the "Bonita Workflow Engine The ELCA Mosaic framework was leveraged as the user interface, allowing for the creation of electronic folders and a digital Inbox module. ELCA's experience in the digitalization of business processes was valuable in this respect. The expertise of ELCA's development team in integrating complex infrastructure solutions also proved very useful. VERIT now works with digital files and benefits from the advantages provided by modern communication channels.