Real Estate Innovation with for Milrose Consultants

Detangling Complex Planning and Compliance Processes

The Milrose Founders learned the business from direct experience over decades of hard work and have succeeded by paying close attention to the ever-changing needs of their array of customers, who represent all the numerous stakeholders throughout the planning and construction process. In highly regulated and massively complex real estate development environments, as they exist in every major city in the USA.

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When they began planning strategically for the next 25 years of their business, these visionary Founders recognized that it was imperative to begin applying the power of the web and digitalization in order to become capable of leveraging their historical successes and established network of clients to reach their aspiration of becoming a national powerhouse in their industry. One of these Founders, Mr. Dom Chiecco, reached out to Tech-Azur for some new ideas on how to make it happen.

Discovery Informs a Powerful Vision for a Digital-first Future State

Tech-Azur’s Transformation Executive Advisor began this engagement by conducting an assessment of the current state of the Milrose organization, including analysis of the core business model, the numerous professional services offered by the firm and the plethora of complex long-running manual processes required to fulfill them, the legacy systems in place to support the operation, etc.

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The insights revealed by this Discovery stage also benefitted significantly from a carefully planned and executed customer outreach program with Tech-Azur’s in-person participation, identifying specific current state pain points, under-served customer expectations and other areas for future improvements, all derived from onsite discussions with these key end customers, in their offices. A valuable byproduct for Milrose was this genuine demonstration, to their valued customers, of just how seriously they were focused on Customer Success, empowering these customers to become direct participants in the Digital Transformation which Milrose had embarked upon.

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By holistically surveying the entire business, its services, operations and staffing, finances, customers, and the competitive landscape, Tech-Azur was able to formulate a comprehensive Digital Business Transformation Roadmap that served as the True North for the extensive, 18 month path ahead. Key points on this roadmap included:

Tailored application of Tech-Azur’s Digital Transformation Methodology, supported by direct Founder lead by example and a true ‘bottom up’ approach to employee participation, recognition and reward.
The introduction of the Digital Organization concept, emphasizing the streaming of information management, enhanced communications externally and effective collaboration internally, and an insatiable quest to automate routine tasks for scale, efficiencies and the industry’s highest service quality.
Establishment of effective ways to gather and collaborate in real-time with current data on every aspect of the business was also a high priority for the Founders and their Leadership Team. The Roadmap defined how to achieve a competitive edge by effectively collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data to inform decision-making across Milrose.
Development of an entirely new, bespoke, Digital Operations & Project Management Platform was core to the Transformation Roadmap. This platform would need to include all the key roles from across the firm and would fully integrate:
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• Executive Management & Leadership Dashboards for real-time data visibility.
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• A sophisticated ‘Proposal Wizard’ to support and automate the complex Sales process.
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• Realtime Operational Project Management to support and automate fulfillment.
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• Seamless Document Management, connecting highly regulated physical documents and e-signatures with their digital-twins with the Platform.
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• An entirely new Financial/Accounting System with seamless integration for Sales, AP/AR, Reporting and Compliance.

Effective Digital Transformation Implementation

Transitioning from unscalable legacy systems, endless spreadsheets, emails, and mountains of paper documents to a data-driven, digital process environment through which everyone could collaborate was a largescale endeavor for Milrose. Tech-Azur was there to lead every step of the way, partnering closely with all levels of the Milrose Team to make this an inclusive and productive transformation from start to finish.

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Tech-Azur built and orchestrated a significant technology development team through which the Milrose proprietary platform was architected, designed, developed, tested, deployed and supported. The resulting platform included many application and digital services integrations in a truly seamless manner to allow Team Milrose to remain focused on being the best in their industry, rather than falling victim to the potential distractions of DIY-style technology efforts that most often end in costly failures. By establishing methods such as Daily Global Scrums, Tech-Azur was able to join internal and external participants together in interactive video sessions long before COVID forced these digital practices more generally.

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The Digital Transformation Roadmap developed and led by Tech-Azur was organized into many specific phases to enable progressive delivery of enabling technologies all along the way, rather than a single ‘Big Bang event at the end’. As new methods and tools were made available, they could be rolled out as MVPs with time in the field to support Continuous Improvement in parts. Bringing it all together and cutting over to the complete Milrose Platform in the final phases was thereby a less disruptive change event for the firm. One of Tech-Azur’s methodology elements is Change Management. At Milrose, there were multiple levels of constructive Change Management which were established as the scope of Tech-Azur’s transformation deliverables were rolling out and ramping up. This is a necessary element for all successful transformations, and every organization’s unique internal culture must be accommodated, as was the case for Tech-Azur’s facilitation at Milrose as well.

Results

Through extensive teamwork, hand in hand with all of Milrose’ employees, the Tech-Azur Team was able to lead the education and effective implementation of many useful organizational tools, taken for example for Lean 6-Sigma and the concept of Kaizens. Literally dozens of Kaizen Improvement Workshops were conducted, with near 100% staff participation during the main transformation period. Ultimately, Team Milrose became fully capable of sustainable Continuous Improvement through their enthusiastic adoption of these methods to make everything better across the firm, from Sales to Operations and Finance. All departments participated deeply in this very effective Digital Transformation. Through this process, many new types of enhanced professional development opportunities were created, with employee engagement and authentic assimilation of a culture of Continuous Improvement.

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The Fintech industry also took note of the Milrose Digital Transformation. The Salesforce community was made aware of Milrose’ Digital Transformation success on a national level at the famous CloudForce Conference in October 2014, when FinancialForce.com announced the Winners of their Second “FinancialForce Customer Excellence Awards”. Milrose received their Business Breakthrough of the Year Award, stating in their press release that “ Milrose Consultants manages end-to-end business processes on a single, unified platform. The seamless integration between sales, fulfillment and invoicing has eradicated a host of errors and delay while increasing employee collaboration."

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Since then, Milrose has remained on course with its Culture of Continuous Improvement and a data-driven awareness of the many benefits of Digital Transformation not just as ‘a project’, but as a pathway for sustainable competitive success in the long run.

Conclusion

The whole concept of ‘Digitalization’ was a new thought for much of the Real Estate Development industry, with everything from Architecture and Engineering, through Planning, Scheduling, Supply-Chain, Finance and Regulatory segments all in the early stages. Milrose’ commitment to leading the Planning & Compliance sector was a bold move and required persistent commitment from the Founders. With Tech-Azur’s skilled guidance, and successful technology innovations along the way, their vision became reality. Milrose has become the national industry leader with more plans for growth on the horizon.

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+ $8 Billion

The value of Construction Projects which Milrose assisted between 2014-2019. More than 16,000 jobs were filed.

150

The number of municipalities which Milrose was able to expand to running on their newly launched Digital Project Management System in 2014. That’s over 400 zip codes throughout the United States.

+2,500

Different professional services offered by Milrose to the diverse clients, all managed from the cloud through their proprietary digital project management system.

+ 1 Million

Lines of bespoke code developed by TA for Milrose’s new, proprietary digital project management system. Acclaimed by FinancialForce as the 2014 Business Breakthrough of the Year.

Driving Real Estate Development Market Leadership through Digital Transformation

Introduction