We help you define and implement your real estate strategy so that your properties meet your operational requirements and expectations, and so that your financial resources can be used efficiently.
We provide answers to various questions through space and portfolio analysis, property valuations or benchmarking. We conduct market studies and location analyzes, review management efficiency, identify potential savings or analyse operational processes.
We help you deploy the necessary resources and monitor the key data for your real estate.
Our services include location searches and analysis, securing locations or identifying alternative business or production locations through real estate transactions or sale & leaseback structures.
Possible concerns
- How can an optimal combination of location, building quality, fit-out, flexibility, environmental goals and cost be determined?
- What know-how, expertise and resources does the company have to manage real estate projects effectively?
- What information is available for data-driven decision-making? How good is this data? How do we obtain the necessary information and how can we standardize it within our portfolio?
- Do we have cross-company governance in real estate management? What processes do we use to anticipate and manage the demand for space, facilities and workplaces?
- Are we technologically equipped to run our properties efficiently?
- How do we monitor, benchmark and optimize operating expenses? Do we have access to market information and industry benchmarks to ensure flexible and responsive decision-making?
- What is the value of the company's real estate portfolio? Can liquidity be released through the sale of real estate that could be regarded as surplus to operational requirements? What impact would this have on our balance sheet?
- Is it better to lease or own property? Are our current real estate costs such as rents in line with the market?
- Should we invest further in our real estate portfolio, or is it better to set up in another location or new premises? How can unused land reserves best be utilized?
- Where should the company set up operations and how do we find a location? How can we obtain an overview of the factors influencing our choice of location such as availability of resources, cost structures, infrastructure, tax and legal considerations, subsidies, planning laws and availability of land and real estate?
- What should we do with our real estate to best prepare our company for sale or plan for succession? How can we ensure that the optimal price is achieved in a transaction?
- How can investments and available funds be structured to meet sustainability requirements and improve our company’s ESG rating?
Our solutions
Commercial real estate is key to the success of your business. It is one of the largest assets in terms of cost, and it must meet your operational requirements in full. At the same time, your real estate must be efficient from a financial perspective and integrate with your sustainability strategy.
The lack of transparency in the markets and the limited availability of information and data is a challenge for decision-makers in making the right decisions at the optimal time.
We support you in coordinating the collection of data and improving data quality and monitoring.
A coordinated corporate real estate management organization with clear tasks, responsibilities and processes guarantees that real estate projects are implemented efficiently and to a high standard. We support you in the implementation of strategy-based operational changes.
We work with you to develop a plan to optimize your real estate portfolio. The result is a cost-efficient, suitably sized and future-proof real estate portfolio aligned with your business objectives.
We help you develop a target operating model to align your real estate portfolio to your business objectives by focusing on governance, processes, technology, data and resource capabilities.
As a multidisciplinary team, we help you define a future-proof workplace strategy that promotes the retention and attraction of talent and supports changing working environments.
The corporate real estate transformation is supported by project and change management methods. This ensures early stakeholder involvement, anticipates how to deal with resistance and promotes progress with your project.
We take a multidisciplinary approach to support you issue-by-issue or on a holistic basis. Depending on your requirements, our project team includes Swiss and international specialists in the fields of real estate, tax and legal advice, accounting, industry expertise (e.g. automotive, consumer goods, nutrition, life sciences, healthcare, hospitality and transportation), as well as project and change management and M&A.
This enables us to ensure that you have access to every advisory discipline through a single point of contact.
Project examples
A selection of advisory mandates from our list of references:
- Evaluating the effects of a possible move by a bank to a new location to save costs.
- Analyzing local real estate markets, tax implications and local labor markets (availability of target profiles, wage levels, etc.).
- Changes in requirements for the business activities of a railway company led to a shift in requirements and surplus real estate.
- Developing a modern real estate strategy with an associated business plan (preparing a concept paper, assessing the future organizational structure, determining a real estate strategy, and defining the associated business plan).
- Due to strong product demand, a manufacturer of consumer goods needed to expand its production and logistics capacity.
- We supported this international group in their search for and evaluation of locations throughout Switzerland. As well as obtaining clarifications from official bodies, it was necessary to analyze the available workforce and determine wage levels and the tax implications. The main factors were the availability of significant land reserves, the options and potential in terms of planning law, site servicing and the supply capacity needed to secure the supply chains.
- We assisted a retailer from the fashion industry with numerous stores in its strategic realignment and the creation of its business plan to secure financing.
- The review of the business plans included investigating and revising its real estate and location strategy.
- The stores were analyzed and prioritized in terms of their sales productivity and potential, which led to some outlets being closed and prompted negotiations with landlords to secure lease terminations, rent reviews or consolidation of space. We supported our client in all its negotiations involving its lending banks to secure its business operations.
Project examples 1
- The corporate real estate function of a large retailer with various business divisions needed to increase transparency in its portfolio and improve efficiency in the management of its properties.
- We analyzed all the space in the defined portfolio in terms of management and energy efficiency, and potential. At the same time, we analyzed the company's own property management operations and their integration into the company’s business structure, and its service level agreements.
- Together with the client, we developed a data set for measurement and benchmarking. We developed an organizational and operational structure and all the CREM processes for the management unit, in close collaboration with the stakeholders. We supported our client in the implementation of a change management program.
Project examples 2
- A leading retailer regularly reviews its portfolio in terms of sales productivity, securing locations and operating margins.
- As part of this review, it made sense to optimize the terms of its leases in identified locations and, at the same time, to secure the locations if no alternative space was available.
- Besides analyzing various negotiation scenarios, we drew up negotiation guidance, decision trees and criteria. These provided the client with a solid base for coordinated, predictable and objective negotiations on the rental space and lease terms.
- An international developer and manufacturer of life sciences products planned to sell a large industrial plant together with a large part of its operations and management as part of a carve-out.
- Our client evaluated the acquisition of the industrial plant together with plant-related property and facility management and engineering services. These services and deliveries had to be provided not only to the seller as the leaseback tenant but also to third parties from the life sciences cluster who were active on-site.
- In addition to the real estate, we analyzed the plant and equipment, the available resources and capabilities, the SLAs (Service Level Agreements), the leases, the service contracts with third parties and the seller’s current and future workplace requirements to determine the potential for the future owner and operator of the industrial plant.
Our hospitality services are diverse and multi-faceted and include support when developing hospitality businesses, as well as operating or financing hotels or leisure facilities.
Our services include:
- Analyzing business plans and identifying potential improvements
- Support with financing and restructuring
- Feasibility studies for developments, new buildings and changes of use
- Market and location analysis and project analysis
- Second opinions, appraisals, benchmarking
- Operational analysis, identification of potential and alternative use scenarios
- Creating destination concepts, strategic support and operational plans (ski resorts, golf resorts, congress centers, etc.)
- In the healthcare field, we support hospitals, clinics, retirement homes, nursing care facilities and investors in both optimizing their operations and in financing and portfolio restructuring.
- In multidisciplinary collaboration with our Healthcare Team, we have already advised on the sale of clinics and financing hospitals.
- We analyze operations, processes and operators for investors in retirement and nursing care facilities.
- We provide support with financing requirements or in determining and verifying rents. We are your partner for operational analysis and optimization, and the introduction of digital processes and financial information systems.
- The lifecycles of both products and production facilities require decisions at the manufacturing plant level.
- We have helped Swiss and international companies to enhance their flexibility by assisting them in the analysis and disposal of their plants, or by carrying out limited sale & leaseback transactions.
- Portfolio or operational analysis, including in the global workplace context, creates a basis for business plans and decisions on relocation or consolidation in conjunction with market and consumer analyses. Prioritizing operational properties leads to investment decisions, adjustments to manufacturing and operational processes, surrendering and disposing of locations and the release of liquidity.
