Colliers International property Consulatants colliers

1. Colliers International property Consulatantshttp://www.colliers.com

2. Suggested Study Questions • 1. What challenges do Colliers and Stewart Forbes, its president, face? • 2. Compare and contrast the Colliers organization with a traditional hierarchical firm. How appropriate is the Colliers organizational structure in light of the challenges the company faces?

3. Suggested Study Questions (cont.) • 3. What role does IT play in enabling the organization to meet its challenges? Do Colliers brokers and managers use IT appropriately and effectively? • 4. What recommendation would you make to Stewart Forbes?

4. Why the Colliers Case? • Provides students to learn the challenges of managing a “virtual organization” and the role of IT in supporting inter-organizational coordination and control.

5. Learning Objectives • You should be able to learn how an organizational framework within which real estate firms, which were often small, entrepreneurial, and family-held, could remain local and autonomous while gaining national and international scope. • Learn how Colliers rethink a range of strategic, organizational, and interorganizational issues and how IT systems were related to those concerns.

6. Changes in customer requirements and needs Seeking to capitalize on an emerging market opportunity Aggressively buying local real estate firms Expanding services to existing clients than on gaining new ones. FIVE COMPETITIVE FORCES MODEL for Colliers’ International Property Consultants Threats NEW MARKET ENTRANTS SUBSTITUTE PRODUCTS & SERVICES TRADITIONAL COMPETITORS THEFIRM CUSTOMERS Bargaining power SUPPLIERS N

7. Colliers Faced Three Major Challenges • The trend toward globalization of markets and industries • changes and threats: customer requirements and needs Corporation began to look to brokers not only for buying and selling properties but also for managing them (i.e., shift from transaction-oriented to a “relationship” approach) • Traditional competitors and new entrants.

8. Colliers’ Strategy and Purpose • The Colliers network provided members • flexible linkage of resources • customize services to clients’ needs • coordinate activities • Network affiliation also provided local firms credibility and a reputation as an international player capable of closing complex deals.

9. Sustaining Value • Colliers’ key source value • face-to-face networking opportunities provided by the annual meetings • Process performance • Stakeholder satisfaction • Benchmarks • Other • See TN-1

10. Executing and Adapting • Colliers’ organization design depended on trust, commitment, and cooperation; coordination and control of operations depended on high levels of information sharing and personal networking. • Colliers current authority structure and controls have been ineffective • its network has been plagued by conflicts of interest, dual allegiances, spotty participation, and lack of commitment

11. Evaluation of the Colliers’ Organization Design

12. Organization Structure and Authority • Corporate HQs played a leading role in identifying and negotiating with firms to join the Colliers federation. • Authority within the Colliers’ network was highly decentralized; corporate HQs was weak by design. • Admission criteria • level of performance • fulfillment of Colliers’ responsibilities • commitment to increasing the scope of client services

13. Control Problems Posed by the Colliers’ Network Structure • It is difficult to compromise between following a certain pursuit as an organization and maintaining a flat structure of independent firms. • Diverse interests, skills and commitment are used to managing firms.

14. Operating and Management Processes • Core operating processes • marketing scanning and intelligence • identification of customers • initiation of referrals • management of deals (transactions) • long-term relationship management • Management systems to managing Colliers’ global operations (TN-5) • Incentives • perceived benefits • peer pressure, and • the commission structure

15. How Colliers Changes its Organization Design? • Increase centralized direction and control • Support and facilitate the development of effective controls at the local level • Need a uniting purpose and core values, and incentives and sanctions to enforce commitment to them • Interorganiztional design • Role of information (and IT)

16. Information Technology Infrastructure and Role • Information was centralized which conflicts with the highly decentralized, network organization that the firm has attempted to create. • Communication networks are expensive, slow, and fail to provide necessary security and reliability • Little integration of data, voice, video, text and graphics despite the preference of brokers for fact-to-face (rich) communication media.

17. High cost of an average database query and the lack of reliability and integrity of data severely limit the value of the information. • A distributed, networked information infrastructure will be required to support the organization design • Colliers possessed resources - money, people, expertise - that could provide services and implement and manage a distributed IT architecture. • Need strong, effective leadership to exploit the potential of its IT-enabled business concept and system.

18. Collier International Property Consultants Goals/ Strategies execution/ adaptation define Failure to  International Structures/Systems/ Processes enable design Member firm develop CompuServe . . Services Member firm cause Provide value sharing Information Future highly concertain Colliers CSF: In read estate, everything depended on three factors (1) [old saying] location, -,- (2) [new adage] information, -,- Quality, Consistency participation/commitment

19. Recommendations • Other advice you would give to Stewart Forbes (information and communication management, training and support, etc., see TN-6) • Is the company in crisis? • Which model is the Colliers based upon? (TN-7) • anticipatory implementation model • leader-initiated implementation model • crisis-driven implementation model

20. Episode • Regional consolidation efforts have continued, spurred by the growth of Colliers Jardine in Asia and colliers Macaulay Nicolls in North America. By the mid-1990s, Colliers has restructured to create regional HQs offices that assumed increased authority for governing regional operations. • Interorganizational operating and management processes continued to be loosely defined and controlled. Participation, commitment, and coordination among participants had not significantly changed since the time of the case.

21. Episode (cont.) • While only minor changes in the IT architecture had been implemented since the time of the case, Louts Notes was scheduled for rollout throughout the global network in summer 1995. Lotus Notes was expected to replace CompuServ.