EXPERT VIEWS
The Importance of Customer Engagement to “Create Favourite Meeting Places”
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ustomer engagement is essential to give destinations a soul and to elevate them from the role of “single purpose” to one that en s u res t hey b ec o m e a “community hub” for family and fr i en ds t hro u gh el em en t s including culture, art, music, fashion and technology. CELS (Customer Engagement and Loyalty Solution) Group expresses a multidisciplinary approach to customer engagement through its five independent business units that work in a consistent way together to leverage every touch point with customers. Firstly, Marketing & Co Studio to support in brand perception and brand equity, customer profiling and human behaviour patterns offering the insight to customer engagement moving forward. Then generating customer
Alessandro Gaffuri Founder & CEO CELS Group
engagement and loyalty platforms with ViaFone Technologies who can develop and innovate customer experience and engagement technologies using A.I., machine-based learning Chatbots and a one of a kind salesforce – integrated loyalty engine. Customising events and activations by CELS Events who focus on creating memories and sharing experiences through
international event concepts, original activations and spend and experience solutions. Creating innovation show concepts when working with the entertainment architects at IMAGINECELS. This includes everything from classic fairy tales to bespoke shows based on your business mission and vision. Finally, AFKAR Lighting creates inspirational handcrafted lighting and decorations designs that strengthen the community
bond through lively installations that reflect your values and enhance your destination. Through these elements you can generate customer engagement by stimulating deep emotion in order to trigger the reaction to crave more – visiting the destination again and again, therefore creating a favourite meeting place.
Optimise Casual Mall Leasing with Smart, Mobile Technology
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pecialty leasing or casual mall leasing gives the opportunity to add seasonal variety to malls, additional excitement to open areas of the mall, increased choice for consumers and of course additional revenue streams for owners and operators looking to maximise mall revenue. The challenge today is how do mall operators manage specialty leases easily using technology? Traditionally, management tools catered only for long-term leases – how has modern technology reinvented the offering of lease flexibility for operators to easily engage with retailers to offer short-term leases. Yardi has driven innovation in its cloud-based, mobile-enabled solutions to offer operators the chance to reinvent the way they manage specialty leases. Com-
MECSC Directory 2019
plimenting Yardi’s core lease management tool Leasing Manager, Yardi Casual Mall Leasing is a solution developed specifically for specialty leasing. Yardi Casual Mall Leasing takes care of short-term leases right from initial lead capture through to contract negotiations and lease management. Typically, short-term leases do not bill for service charge, tax or insurance; Yardi CML allows mall operators to manage these particular items whilst reconciling total mall revenue. All leasing data is synced to the Yardi Voyager database, Yardi’s core real estate management and accounting solution. Through online dashboards, users of Casual Mall Leasing are able to manage the entire leasing cycle efficiently from anywhere, on any device. Unit availability searches can be carried out on
reservation diagrams and after reservation and evaluation of contract terms can be approved to generate a lease. Once the lease agreement is activated, Voyager commences charging the tenant. Mall operators can use Casual Mall Leasing dashboards in conjunction with Leasing Manager to assess leads, deals in the pipeline, pending approvals, tenant activities and interactive property maps. Obtaining the optimum tenant mix through streamlined rentable space management is essential to maximise mall revenue. When assessing which specialty leases to confirm, it’s important to consider how they might impact other retailers. Use interactive fl oor p l a n s a n d b u s i n es s i n t el l i g en c e tool s a l on g s i d e Casual Mall Leasing to ensure
Said Haider Regional Director Middle East - Yardi
short-term and often seasonal leases will complement existing retailers. Whether the lease is long or short, it’s imperative to the success of the shopping centre to be managed well and to manage well, technology plays a fundamental role. 35
