Articles
Boston Capital Moves Beyond Paper-Based Processing To Boost Productivity And Profitability
May 19, 2006
•Case Study: Boston Capital
Boston Capital Corporation is a diversified real estate financing and investment company headquartered in Boston, Mass. Since 1974, Boston Capital has been on the cutting edge of multifamily and commercial real estate financing and development. Boston Capital's holdings include more than 2,500 properties located in 48 states.
A pioneer in the field of affordable housing, Boston Capital launched its Boston Capital Tax Credit Funds in 1987. Boston Capital Tax Credit Funds provide a vehicle whereby federal housing tax credits can be used by investors in affordable housing, to offset federal income taxes. Today, Boston Capital owns more than 140,000 apartment units with a total development cost of over $10 billion, making it the fifth-largest owner/investor in multifamily real estate in the U.S.
The Challenge: Moving Beyond Paper-Based Processing
As one of the nation's leading investors of equity capital for multifamily housing, Boston Capital underwrites and
acquires 80–100 properties annually. The company's acquisition teams work one-on-one with developers to assist
them in all aspects of real estate development and financing.
The process of putting together real estate deals—involving acquisition, financing, and management—is highly transactional and generates large volumes of content. Documents can be hundreds of pages and range from leasing and financing origination paperwork to market analysis reports and construction drawings. Previously, all processes for creating, approving, and accessing this information were manual and paper based.
"Documents were stored on isolated hard drives, e-mail folders or in binders on people's desks," said Brian Madden, Director of Information Technology at Boston Capital. "Our direct costs for on-site and off-site document storage were growing rapidly as well as the administrative costs for filing and photocopying all of that paper. And, our indirect costs were also increasing proportionally – from the time it took to search for a document to the time wasted working on incorrect versions."
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