ShopCore: A 360-degree customer view with Salesforce

Shopping for efficiency

ShopCore is a fast-growing, vertically integrated real estate company that manages more than 24 million square feet of retail properties. As host to some of the best-known retailers in the world, the company aspires to be the preeminent owner and operator of community, power, and grocery-anchored shopping centers in the U.S.

But to get there, ShopCore needed to replace its manual, labor-intensive leasing process with a more efficient system that would offer transparency and a 360-degree view of the customer. The existing solution of multiple spreadsheets was confusing to navigate and difficult to access on mobile devices. Data was often out of date, and pipeline visibility was sluggish. Leasing agents in the field needed fast, reliable access to data on available spaces, previous tenants, rental prices, square footage, and more.

With this vision in mind, ShopCore selected Salesforce as its new CRM solution and Slalom to help bring it to life. “We examined four different implementation partners,” recalls Kevin Kessinger, ShopCore’s executive vice president of asset management, “but ultimately Slalom was just the best in all aspects.”

Three months to Salesforce

We began with a three-week discovery process, digging deep to understand ShopCore’s exact needs, define requirements, and plan the agile implementation of a minimum viable product (MVP). Then we engineered an end-to-end leasing solution that allows users to access and enter important information, route it to the right people, and track the leasing process all the way through until tenants move into the property and begin paying rent. We integrated the system with ShopCore’s real estate investment management software to enable nightly updates that pull in the latest inventory details.

With a “clicks not code” approach, we took full advantage of native Salesforce functionality, minimizing ongoing maintenance requirements. When key business functions required something more than Salesforce could deliver out of the box, we designed a thoughtful, mobile-friendly custom interface.

The MVP solution included a pipeline tracker, financial calculator, one-click proposal generator, and unit request tool that allows users to define the square footage of a space and indicate if any construction or reconfiguration is needed. End-to-end process tracking and thoughtful automation make it easy to capture key information, minimize repetitive data entry, and secure approvals from the right people at the right time.

Since the initial launch, ShopCore and Slalom have collaborated on three additional releases. New functionality includes mobile optimization, check-in processes for trade show and other industry events, automated processes for retailer account portfolio reviews, construction processes, integration with third party data, and embedded Tableau analytics.

A 360-degree view of accounts

Enthusiastic adoption is the ultimate proof of the system’s success. Within a month of go-live, users at all levels were using the new tool constantly to understand the state of their business—leaving behind clunky, manual processes in Excel and Outlook. From their desktops or through the Salesforce mobile app, they can access up-to-date information anytime they need it and make updates on the go.

Salesforce gives users a 360-degree, end-to-end view of customers across regions, properties, and even trade names. Information is stored at the national account level, so any leasing director can quickly pull up notes in Salesforce to see the account history and jumpstart a conversation.

Overall, the solution has increased efficiency and visibility throughout the leasing process, and ShopCore looks forward to continuing to expand its solution to new use cases.