Q&A: Flex Portfolio Management

We recently sat down with Cal Lee; Ed Bouterse; Piers Mallitte, Emma Curl and George Froud to discuss the latest service offering in the flexible office space, Flex Portfolio Management, and how it can help clients in the current market.

1. Tell us about the Flex Portfolio Management team? 

Flex Portfolio Management (FPM) was created by Cal Lee, Ed Bouterse and Piers Mallitte who work within the existing Workthere team and also includes Emma Curl from Savills Occupier Services team.   

Cal is the founder and global head of Workthere. He advises on all aspects of flexible workspace, helping owners, operators and occupiers on this specialist sector.  

Ed has over 20 years of experience in real estate and is head of Workthere in Europe, having previously run his own flex office space brokerage. His focus is to lead and grow the European business, as well as overseeing FPM across EMEA.   

Piers is associate director at Workthere who joined the business in 2020. Piers currently leads the UK flex advisory team, where he has developed a number of client relationships which are now FPM clients with space across multiple markets.   

Emma is an associate in Savills Global Occupier Solutions team; she joined Savills in 2019, specialising in transaction management for our clients across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Emma will now use this experience and specialise in flex account management for clients with global flex portfolios.

2. What is the challenge facing clients with growing flex portfolios? 

Emma: We are seeing more and more clients faced with an inefficient flex portfolio made up of lots of operators in many different locations. This means lots of different sales teams inundating clients with little or no consistency of service. Furthermore, we often see these multi operator portfolios managed in excel, which means there is a greater risk that they will miss critical dates and without a single advisor they have no leverage of the market to achieve the best pricing.

3. How does Flex Portfolio Management solve this challenge?   

Ed: FPM provides a single account manager to oversee the portfolio and all transactions for our client. Paired with Savills Knowledge Cubed technology to help visualise and manage the portfolio data, FPM will guarantee a streamlined search process and ongoing management to optimise the performance of our clients’ flex portfolio – ensuring they get a consistent delivery of service, ongoing market price benchmarking for the best rates and most importantly making sure they never miss a licence event deadline. 

4. How does it fit with the existing Workthere offer?  

 Cal: We set up Workthere to help clients find flexible workspace to suit their business needs. As we scaled globally from the UK into Europe, the US and Asia, we quickly began helping clients across multiple geographies, and as such the FPM service line became the obvious move whereby we can not only help clients find space across different geographies, but actually manage the entire portfolio and help form strategy.    

With our local flex advisors on the ground across many of the key markets, it made sense to create a more central account team to be the point of contact for our clients, then using our local flex advisors to transact in markets. As such the FPM service is an addition to Workthere.

5. How does the technology work?   

George: In leveraging Knowledge Cubed, Savills existing occupier analytics platform, we already had a tailor-made solution for clients to manage their leased property. We created a suite of new apps that are fully flex focused, designed to be simple to use and quick to set up, reducing the need for any form of lease administration or abstraction that would impede a quick delivery.   

The apps show all essential information, rents, critical dates, location and size allowing the client to effectively manage the portfolio. On top of this we provide rental benchmarking using Workthere’s broker expertise to give the client an accurate picture of where they stand vs the market. Our FPM team also have access to the platform, enabling them to proactively approach the client with strategy and intel ahead of any key date or notice period. 

6. What are the main ways in which you can provide advice?   

Ed: The number of different flex operators is growing, the service they provide is changing and you have landlords entering the market directly with ready to take fitted or managed office space. In this landscape, the FPM team will be able to get the best suitable options and explain, and advise on, the different offers globally. 

Our way of working enables the client to have one single point of contact instead of dealing with say 15 operators which will save them a lot of time and hassle. We will stay in control once new space has been secured and we will stay in close contact after the new space has been signed. 

We don’t only look at price, we also look at employee behaviour – who needs access to the office and when, how many meeting room credits, floor layout, first right of refusals, etc. We are the trusted advisor for all things flex. 

7. Why is this relevant to the market now?   

Piers: As flexible working becomes a real focal point for many businesses as a core way of working either in existing or new territories, many occupiers are not fully educated on the nuances of the flex market. Often clients have suffered from poor advice and bad experiences and therefore we believe there is a gap in the market to provide a full-scale consultancy to occupiers looking to either grow, manage or maintain their flex portfolio, provided by professional experts in an efficient and user-friendly format.

8. Why is this service important?   

Piers: FPM is a critical function for our Savills/Workthere multi-locational clients who need more insight into growing markets where they have flexible office space. This service line will provide support and knowledge across the flex markets in each of the countries we work in and bring in local experts where we do not currently have a presence.