Faced with strict building regulations, new housing policies and economic uncertainty, property managers constantly seek to streamline operations. How could IT service provider PROMOS help?

With IBM Platinum Business Partner PROFI, PROMOS deployed SAP S/4HANA and easysquare mobile on IBM Power Systems and IBM Storage, providing super-efficient service to help clients raise profitability.

Continued urbanization means that cities around the world are growing fast, presenting property developers, real estate companies and facility managers with new opportunities – and new challenges. Furthermore, the property sector has been particularly hard hit by the economic uncertainty brought about by the coronavirus crisis. Policies introduced by local governments such as deferred rent payments and rent capping will likely put further strain on the finances of the property sector.

Volker Schulz, CIO at PROMOS, an IT solutions provider to the German property industry, remarks, “Many of our clients are based in Berlin, where there is huge demand for new-built flats at affordable prices. Urban planning policy requires that our clients must consider the impact on local infrastructure, and include schools and nurseries, when building new apartment complexes. With construction cycles extended by regulations and significant project complexity, commercial property managers face great pressure on their profitability.”

He continues, “One way to tackle the challenges is to boost agility and operational efficiency by taking full advantage of digital innovation, with intelligent workflows that empower faster decision making. To help our clients drive profitability, we looked for ways to deliver an expanded range of services, with greater flexibility, and delivery at lower costs.”
 

Moving to integrated, innovative and modern business applications helps PROMOS’ clients optimize their business processes to deliver sustained business value.

“Running SAP S/4HANA on IBM Power Systems and IBM Storage has been a major enabler,” confirms Volker Schulz. “Nobody likes to work with outdated spreadsheets. New business applications provide a much better user experience, and improved performance facilitates faster, data-driven decision making. By helping clients to eliminate duplication in processes and data management, we can help to improve data consistency, reduce user errors, and boost staff productivity.”

Volker Schulz adds, “Targeting SAP S/4HANA right from the start allowed us to gain practical experience of keeping the solution lean and current. We routinely offer SAP S/4HANA upgrades as part of our service, enabling clients to benefit from the latest features and improvements.”

He continues, “This approach ensures continuous process innovation, by making new intelligent features available more rapidly. And we can provide this service quickly and cost-effectively thanks to the flexibility and scalability of IBM Power Systems and IBM Storage.”

By consolidating its IBM Power Systems landscape, PROMOS has optimized its infrastructure investments. Volker Schulz elaborates, “With our partner PROFI we redesigned our private cloud architecture and replaced 28 servers with just four new POWER9 processor-based systems, cutting procurement and lifecycle management by 80 percent. Consolidation to IBM Power Systems has significantly streamlined system administration and maintenance tasks in our data center.”

Thanks to performance improvements and the outstanding virtualization features of IBM PowerVM, PROMOS boosted cost-efficiency across approximately 25 client environments. The security and performance of IBM Power Systems and IBM Storage lets PROMOS run core business applications for all its clients centrally in its private cloud. The company takes advantage of Capacity on Demand to maintain top performance even at peak times.

Deploying IBM POWER9 processor-based servers has accelerated SAP S/4HANA performance by 25 percent at peak times. “It’s great to see how our new IBM Power Systems solution helps improve staff productivity for 3,500 SAP business users in our private cloud,” confirms Volker Schulz.

Despite ever-growing data volumes, the company has seen database performance increase by 50 percent, accelerating complex business analytics queries to provide actionable insights to business users faster, supporting critical business decisions.

Using IBM Power Systems and IBM Storage technology has made it possible for PROMOS to shorten the time to value with a small system administration team when launching its mobile app platform. The IBM solution ensures that 70,000 app users benefit from fast digital customer services and seamless workflows, empowering PROMOS to push the boundaries of digital business transformation in the real estate industry.

Volker Schulz comments, “New levels of performance and an improved internal cost structure enabled by IBM Power Systems and IBM Storage give us the opportunity to unlock the value of SAP applications for more customers, and keep costs stable even as business demands increase. In addition, the flexibility of the IBM systems allows us to consider hybrid cloud deployments to optimize our services and further increase agility.”

He concludes, “Our clients don’t ask for technology solutions and infrastructure details, they just want reliable business services. Working with PROFI and IBM, we have successfully delivered the business case for our private cloud and for our clients.”

PROMOS (link resides outside of ibm.com), headquartered in Berlin, Germany, is an IBM Platinum Business Partner and leading IT consulting and solutions provider to the real estate industry. With 250 highly qualified and experienced consultants, PROMOS implements SAP S/4HANA and develops its own easysquare mobile (link resides outside of ibm.com) app platform. Leveraging strong partnerships with IBM, IBM Platinum Business Partner PROFI and SAP, the company focuses on modern standard software and innovative technology solutions that add value to its real estate customers’ businesses.