Source: Reposted from: ‘In The Trenches’ with R&R’s Ryan Wiederstein
I first heard Ryan Wiederstein’s interesting story while watching the White Sox play in Chicago at this year’s Realcomm event. I was fascinated at how he was able to leverage he and his team’s knowledge of technology and vendors of their market to attract and retain tenants for R&R, but also cut corporate IT costs. We finished our conversation by phone this week.
So, Ryan, in Chicago, you were telling me about the WIN/WIN model you’ve developed with Realty Technology Services, Inc. We developed our current model in 2005 and have been pretty pleased with the outcome. We meet R&R’s corporate IT needs as well as supply services to R&R tenants. Our knowledge of technology and relationships with local vendors allows us to give tenants a one stop shop for many of their move in or TI technology needs.
You mentioned cabling and controlled access as two services. What else do you provide? Just like data cabling Greensboro we provide data and voice cabling, however, we also offer other services including managed access control, telephone system procurement, Audio/Video, and procurement of communication infrastructure such as Voice, Fiber, T1, DSL, and Wireless. We also do a lot of data center contracting.
And the brokers connect you with the tenants?
Yes. We are often at the first showing. We recently helped win a call center lease because we were able to give quick pricing and turnaround on services they needed to be operational such as access control and a VoIP phone system where as they were on their own for these services at the competing space. The leasing agents and the property managers see us as a way to attract and retain tenants.
What is your magic sauce? Why do tenants come to you for these services rather than their own IT people or existing vendors?
I think because we have gotten this down to a science. We have long-standing dependable vendor relationships here in Des Moines and have done this enough that we have commoditized a lot of it. We can turn pricing around in a few hours and predict cost and delivery with great accuracy. And there is one throat to choke. Furthermore, the tenant’s own people generally have enough on their plate with daily operations and don’t have the experience we do with some of these services, so we provide a real service at a very stressful time for their organization.
What kind of work do you have in your pipeline currently?
We are the GC for a data center handling all of their needs including permitting and generator power, we are doing extensive AV work for a law firm, and have several tenants with cabling, card access, and VoIP needs.
So the win for the tenant is smooth relocation leveraging your knowledge and network of vendors, the brokers and property managers win because you help attract and retain tenants, and R&R wins because your income stream offsets some of their corporate IT overhead?
That’s how we look at it.
Great model Ryan! Thanks for your time.
