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Real Estate Portfolio Management / Strategic Financial Analysis

Typical Workflow

The following describes a typical approach to using the Strategic Financial Analysis (SFA) application.

1. Review these concept and reference topics:
   • Typical Users
   • Four Sources of Costs
   • Data Flow
   • Types of Analysis Metrics
   • Adding VPA to SFA
   • Harmonizing Metrics and Industry Standards
   • Reference: Base Analysis Metrics - Summary and Calculations
   • Reference: Capital and Expense Matrix Roll-up Descriptions
2.  Develop background data about your facility. See:
   • Draw Buildings on a Site Plan (CAD)
   • Smart Client Background Data tasks
   • Web Central tasks
3. Create the inventory listing of buildings, properties, capital projects, and capital equipment items that you want to analyze. You can create this inventory with the following methods:
   • As part of your everyday work with other ARCHIBUS applications, you will create a series of records that you can analyze with Strategic Financial Analysis.
   • Use the Strategic Financial Analysis / Background Data views to enter the inventory records. See Background Data: Web Central Overview.
   • Record data for your real estate assets.
4. Optionally, personalize the SFA Console. See Customizing the Financial Analysis Console (Smart Client). You can personalize:
   • the Capital and Expense Matrix and its fields
   • the financial analyses shown in the Analysis drop-down list on the Financial Analysis Console, including the fields used in the analyses.
5. Calculate costs.
   • Run the Aggregate Operating Expenses action to roll up operating expenses that occur as part of maintenance work orders, service desk actions, and expensed project actions.
   • Forecast costs so that your cost data is in the costs tables. You forecast costs using the following actions:
     • The Forecast Capital Costs action uses the information you have entered for your building, property or capital project to develop a series of Scheduled Cost records that forecast these charges and the timeframe in which they will occur. You can then use that model to include these capital charges in calculations for cash flow, as well as in metrics for investment, such as rate of return, total cost of occupancy and total cost of ownership.
     • Typically, you run the Forecast Income and Expenses action when you add a building or property and want to budget lifecycle expenses The action creates recurring income and expense cost records for the asset (building or property).
   • Update Analysis Metrics. Run this action to calculate the analysis metrics for all property, buildings, projects, and equipment that have recurring, scheduled, or actual costs for the time period.

     Note: The Update Analysis Metrics action depends on the data generated when you run the Forecast Capital Costs and Forecast Income and Expense actions, so be sure to run the forecast actions first.

   • In calculating costs, you can include project and equipment costs and import lifecycle costs using Connectors.
   • You can also use the Cost Wizard to enter costs for a property or building directly. For your convenience, this is located on the Process Navigator at Real Estate Portfolio Management / Strategic Financial Analysis
6. Use the Financial Analysis Console to review cost data and drill down to examine anomalies. See:
   • Exploring the SFA Console
   • Working with the SFA Console
   • Capital and Expense Matrix
   • Lifecycle Analysis Chart
   • Metric Trends Chart
   • Furthering your Analysis Using Other ARCHIBUS Applications
   • Selecting Analysis Metrics
7. If necessary, use the Cost Wizard to examine specific income or expense costs, or to edit or create new costs.
8. Review the Cash Flow Report for a summary your costs as net income by properties, buildings, leases, or accounts for the time period you select.