Joe Capote

April 16, 2019 • 5:51 pm 0

Not Business as Usual: The Four Components of a Business Continuity Management System

Maintaining business as usual in the face of disruption requires resources for your business continuity program. While you can’t predict nor schedule disasters, you can plan to mitigate their effects.

Business continuity (BC) is defined as the capability of the organization to continue delivery of products or services at acceptable predefined levels following a disruptive incident. (Source: ISO 22301:2012). However, BCMS (Business Continuity Management System) and BCP (Business Continuity Plans) are not the same. I’ll explain the difference at a high level here.

A successful BCMS is built on four main components:

Management Support. This is a key component and a critical success factor for a successful BCMS. The foundation starts with senior management commitment. Without executive management support, problems will occur whend developing policies, resources allocation will be cloudy and integration with current business processes will be loosely defined.

Business Impact Analysis (BIA). After obtaining management buy-in, the BIA is a natural first step in developing the gap analysis and roadmap to a successful BCMS. This analysis identifies the activities that support the provision of services, assesses the impact of not performing these services over time, identifies dependencies and sets prioritized timelines. The BIA helps define the level of risk being assumed and the level of resiliency required by your business.

Risk Assessment. The risk assessment follows the impact assessment. Identify risks of disruption to prioritized activities and supporting people, processes, technology and resources, systematically analyze risk (threats, vulnerabilities, likelihood), evaluate which disruption related risk requires treatment (controls) and identify treatments commensurate with the business continuity objectives and based on risk appetite.

Business Continuity Plans. Business Continuity Plans (BCP) are a subset of Business Continuity Management. The BCP is the output of the BCMS in document form and consists of strategy, resource requirements, procedures, documentation, testing, performance monitoring/evaluation and more. These plans can be deeply detailed and complex, including crisis management, disaster recovery and business resumption components.

Business continuity is a living process and requires constant performance measurement and alteration. The heart of business continuity management is an ongoing cycle of analysis, design, implementation and validation. A business continuity plan is detailed and is part of an overall Business Continuity Management System. A successful BCMS requires management support, begins with an impact assessment, and results in ongoing plans that define the strategy for an organisations’ business continuity.

Filed under: Technology

August 31, 2010 • 12:19 pm 0

Announcing my Partnership with Alain Pinel Realtors!

This week I decided to switch office affiliations. I’ve joined Alain Pinel Realtors in Burlingame. Alain Pinel is an established company with a track record of success throughout the bay area. I’m stoked to have joined them! Check out my new website!

My mother Marilyn, who started her real estate career in 1974, once wrote an article on changing office affiliations. Though many things have changed since she wrote that piece, many things have remained the same. As per her advice, I did plenty of research before I made the jump. I really though about what was important to me and what I wanted out of my career as a Realtor. I really wanted to work for an established company with a stong online presence and name recognition. I also knew I wanted to work for a company that could provide superior marketing tools and cutting edge technologies. Finally, I really wanted to work for a company that was professional and team oriented.

After interviewing with many companies, I really felt like Alain Pinel Realtors in Burlingame fit all that criteria. I am proud to announce my new partnership with Alain Pinel and look forward to meeting the needs of my clients for years to come!

Filed under: Buyer's Blog, Market Data, Realtor Trends, Seller's Blog, Technology, Uncategorized

July 21, 2009 • 9:58 pm 0

Venture Capitalist Funding Half of Last Year

This article appeared in the business and technology section of the San Jose Mercury News this morning. According to this article, venture capital investing rose modestly nationwide over the last quarter, but still at 3.7billion total is only half of what it was last year. This means that venture capital funding is on track to end the year at it’s lowest levels since the mid 1990’s, before the boom of technology resulting in the internet as we know it today.

Additonally, the bay area’s share of this pie has declined as well. Venture capitalists invested 1.8 billion in bay area companies this quarter, a downturn of 61% from the second quarter of 2008. According to John S. Taylor, VP of resarch at the National Venture Capital Association, the small numbers are a result of lack of available capital and the rise in reserves by VC’s to support their earlier investments. Furthermore, Mr. Taylor indicated that the stock market crash has drastically altered the portfolios of institutional investors, who are rebalancing by pulling back on additonal funding.

This information does not bode well for the economy of the Silicon Valley as well as the SF/Peninsula as a whole. Startups funded by venture capitalists provide a wealth of jobs in the technology sector, and the innovations they provide have a resonating effect in other areas. For example, Facebook was a venture capitalist funded startup, and it’s success fuels all sorts of venure capitalist funded technology companies that build applications and services for the Facebook service and  platform. In turn, in order to support all these services, companies require major infrastructure purchases (servers and software from companies like HP), technology and consulting services (IBM and Accenture) and back office software to support the workforce (Microsoft Office, accounting and budgeting software). . In addition, established companies, as a result of lost sales from this fall out, continue to cut costs in the form of layoffs and flattened spending.

As real estate indicators are trending upward and home sales in Santa Clara county hit a 3-year high (San Jose Mercury, July 17), today’s news continues to drive uncertainty into an already uncertain employment and consumer market. According to Mr. Taylor, “Unless there is a significant increase in IPO’s or acquisitions, or unless captial becomes plentiful, I don’t see this changing much of the paces for the next few quarters”. 

As real estate professionals, we need to continue to be persistent with our contacts and improve our knowledge and skillsets. As we live and work in or around the Silicon Valley, we should be sensitive to venture capitalist money and how it relates to our overall economic ecosystem. As these numbers improve, our overall opportunities for business should improve along with it.

Filed under: Realtor Trends, Technology, , , , , ,

July 17, 2009 • 11:46 pm 0

Time for the Green Designation?

Like a lot of us hippie liberals (thats what dad would have called those who follow whole green movement), I am concerned about the environment and that state of what I’ll be leaving behind for my kids. Over the past couple of years, there has been a real movement in all things green and the environmentally sound goodness from green products and services. I was first exposed to the green movement in the IT world, as green computing began it’s ramp up (less power, more efficient comuting resources and fully recyclable computing products). Heck, even here at the office we buy all of our computing equipment from GreenCitizen (www.greencitizen.com). So, it came as no surpise to see this movement in the Real estate world. Eco-friendly green products are now on sale in most major purveyors of home improvement products,  encompassing everything from countertops, drywall to windows and flooring tile. Green products such as household cleaners and other eco-friendly goodies crop up all the time. Heck, even the NAR now recognizes the official Green designation, the sustainable housing effort sponsored by the Green REsource Council. (http://www.greenresourcecouncil.org/).  So I wondered aloud, how does the Green designation translate into a competitive advantage for the Realtor. After realizing I was talking to myself and that the folks around me were shaking their heads in disapproval, I decided to find out.

For a mere couple of dollars and a three day class, you too can achieve the Green designation, a “comprehensive training and access to cutting-edge resources and tools as well as promoting green excellence, leadership, and consumer awareness within and across multiple real estate disciplines.” (http://www.realtor.org/education/realtor_university/designation, par 13). Sounds great! After all, Kermit the frog was green, and loved being green though it wasn’t easy being green. In any event, sign me up. But wait, I have some questions. Before I drop down the money, time and effort for the green designation, how much business or competitive advantage can I expect from the designation? What marketing tools will I have access to once I achieve the master rank of all that is green? Will this comprehensive knowledge allow me to quickly compute the ROI for my clients investment in green products such as energy efficient windows and THX certified soundproof doors? Will I be admonished with respect after educating my sellers on the benefits  super-insulated drywall and the 380-800% increase in insulating value it provides? After all, these numbers do not translate directly to monetary savings, so I would assume that at some point someone is going to ask me what being green really means to them.

In the IT world, being green was a somewhat quantifiable means to an end. Green computing resources utilized lower power and required less heating and cooling than their non-eco friendly, non-green counterparts. IT managers could review the operational cost of the data center resources, calculate the operational cost savings to be achieved by implementing green computing resources, and ultimately understand how long it would take to achieve the return on investment. But in the world of Real Estate, this seems more complicated to achieve. What mathematical formula should I use to promote green awareness across multiple Real Estate Displicines? To find out, I went to the source, the green council website at http://www.greenresourcecouncil.org/. Under the course information, I found the following learning objectives:

  • Explain to your clients what makes a home, building or property green
  • List and market green properties
  • Implement green practices into your life
  • Determine the energy efficiency of a property
  • Help your clients take advantage of green grants and incentives
  • Assist your clients in their efforts to go green
  • Build coalitions with community planners and groups to further resource-efficient communities
  • Explain to your clients what makes a home, building or property green
  • List and market green properties
  • Implement green practices into your life
  • Determine the energy efficiency of a property
  • Help your clients take advantage of green grants and incentives
  • Assist your clients in their efforts to go green
  • Build coalitions with community planners and groups to further resource-efficient communities

    • Now this makes more sense. The ability to determine the energy efficiency of a property and ways that green products can reduce costs is a key component to convincing buyers, sellers and investors in the merits of green-ness. According to the Healthy House Institute, most folks polled appeared to be “more focused on doing what they can to save money rather than what they can do to reduce energy consumption. “I’m doing a lot to help myself and save money,” one focus group participant said. “I don’t go out of my way to be green.” (http://www.healthyhouseinstitute.com/a_983-Cost_Savings_Energy_Efficient_Appliances_Highlight_Consumer_Focus_on_Green, par 7). This makes sense, after all, most all homeowners and investors want to know whats in it for them. Ultimately, it is how much they will save that will sell them on green products, while the environmental friendliness is simply the green icing on the cake.

    So is the world ready for the benefits of the Green Designation for Realtors? Overall, I think that the full benefit of Green products will get realized when their price points align with their non-green brethren. This appears to be two to three years off, from the opinions of my resources. But the cost savings in green products promises to get better and better as technologies and production strategies evolve. And all of us can find benefit in cost savings. After all, even my crusty old dad thought the ‘hippie liberals’ were out of their minds, until they started saving him money.

    Filed under: Realtor Trends, Technology

    July 15, 2009 • 7:29 pm 0

    Five Technology Tools for Real Estate Agents

    Real Estate and technology. There is a marriage made in, well, h-e-double hockey sticks. My mother, Marilyn, was a successful realtor for thirty years (her first office had an 8 track player, and a video tape recorder that was the first VCR I had ever seen). While she embraced email and the internet towards the end of her career, it would be hard to imagine my mom “tweeting'” or using any type of scheduling/calendaring software because it did not integrate with her old school hard cover daily planner. However with most industries, real estate professionals have found that embracing technology is far better than running from it. Additonally, most are realizing that technology means more than just ‘social networking’ or standard back office functions. There is a wide range of free products available, and James Kimmons from About.com does a good job of listing them up. I’ve borrowed from him as I use these myself, but I offer the additonal stimulating commentary free of charge.

    1. Gmail for Lots of Things Gmail does lots of things well. It’s great for small business, offers exception email search capabilities, it’s a SaaS platform (a cute way of saying it’s online all the time, and requires no installed software), categorizes emails well, keeps the email thread in a string for easy following of conversations and offers tons of storage. Plus, it doesn’t go all wonky, slow and stupid like the outlook client does. Ever had to restore your outlook file or crop it because it went over 2gb? It stinks, leave that to the IT guys, even they hate it. Gmail is robust and does not have such issues. It sends a strong message of technical credibility, unlike those who are still using AOL (Agent Out of Luck). The only downside is trying to find an email address that isn’t something like funkelburger05458@gmail.com, although there are ways around that.

    2. YouTube for Video Marketing – Youtube is an awesome tool for realtors. Place videos of your listings or property previews online for your sellers. Create marketing and training videos and link them to your website. It’s fast, easy and free. New camera technologies (like the FLIP video camcorder) make it really easy to film and upload your movies. Hurry up and use this now, before Google figures out that the cost of running the business on top of the 1.65 billion they spent is going from ‘incredible business opportunity’ to ‘loss leader’.

    3. Google Calendar for Time & Task Management – Google calendar is free, online (there is the SaaS thing again) and does not crash and burn like outlook. You can schedule events and invite others using their email, and allow them to get notifications prior to the meeting. It integrates with custom agent and broker solutions like e-agents. It doesn’t handle office resources (say like your meeting room schedules, but who doesn’t enjoy a good no-holds barred cage match over a meeting room scheduling conflict)? PROTIP – use the same username for all google services, that way you can switch from one service to the next (say like google analytics, calendar and Youtube) and enjoy all of the integration benefits.

    4. WordPress – The ONLY Blogging Solution – Forget MSN spaces or even blogger. These are OK for most folks, but WordPress is a free blogging platform that offers an online version (All SaaS-y and stuff) or a server version with more features, functionality and control. Create a blog, choose and modify a template color scheme, categorize posts, add helpful plugins and get full use of RSS functionality and imbed to your site (broker and agent solutions included).

    5.Google Analytics – If your are not using Google analytics to analyze the traffic on your website, your should do so now. While you may need some help from your IT or technical support folks if you are unfamiliar with HTML, the benefits you will reap will be worth the effort. There are a number of canned and custom reports available, and almost immediately you will see the data. Page views, bounce rates, referring sites, geographic locales are there, to name a few. Want to know what percentage of your visitors are referred from twitter and how much time they spend on your site? Google analytics is for you. Please don’t be intimidated by these tools. They are easier to implement and use than you think. Trust me when I say there is no need for the legions of operations engineers whose sole existence hinges on the practice of gathering and analyzing this information. Although if you’d like to spend hours understanding the incredibly fast paced, exciting and high profile world of incident management, don’t let me stop you.

    That wraps up the five tools I think are awesome for Real Estate. Marlilyn would be proud, but still would not relenquish the hard bound old school daily planner. Oh well. Thanks again to James Kimmons.

    Filed under: Technology

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