About the Role:
The Process & Operational Excellence Manager- Real Estate is responsible for optimizing and re-engineering RAKEZ's end-to-end leasing and real estate portfolio management processes across a diversified asset base spanning land, warehouses, office space, labour accommodation, and retail.
CORE RESPONSIBILITIES:
Real Estate Process Optimization & Value Stream Design
- Own the end-to-end mapping and re-engineering of leasing and portfolio management value streams across all asset classes- land, industrial/warehouse, commercial/office, labour accommodation and retail.
- Map current-state (as-is) real estate and leasing processes, quantify inefficiencies, and design optimized to-be processes that eliminate non-value-add activities, manual handshakes and rework.
- Optimize the full lease lifecycle - enquiry, availability and space planning, offer, contracting, activation, billing, renewal, amendment, termination and handover.
- Drive improvements in asset utilization, occupancy, vacancy management and revenue realization across the portfolio.
- Standardize processes for allocations, sub-leasing, fit-outs, handovers and asset lifecycle events across the estate.
Real Estate Systems & Technology Enablement
- Act as the lead business process stakeholder in defining requirements for a fit-for-purpose real estate / asset management system, translating business ambition into functional and process requirements.
- Assess the current SAP RE-FX (RFEX) leasing capability against business needs, identify gaps, and shape the roadmap toward an integrated real estate management platform.
- Partner closely with IT, who are accountable for solution delivery, to ensure the Process team's to-be processes and value streams are correctly embedded in the target system.
- Define data models, master data governance and process controls required for accurate real estate and lease data.
- Ensure seamless integration of real estate workflows with SAP ERP (finance, billing) and Salesforce CRM (customer and leasing front-end).
Productivity & Turnaround Time (TAT) Improvement
- Establish TAT baselines and targets for key leasing and real estate processes (e.g., lease activation, renewal, amendment, handover) and drive improvement.
- Reduce manual touchpoints and handshakes across leasing and portfolio workflows through automation and process simplification.
- Build TAT and productivity trends month-on-month, call out anomalies, and recommend corrective actions.
- Conduct DILO (Day in the Life Of) studies for real estate and leasing teams to build elemental work-content estimates and identify optimization opportunities.
Data, Reporting & Decision Support
- Build baseline metrics and dashboards for portfolio performance, occupancy, yield, lease TAT, revenue leakage and asset utilization.
- Conduct profitability and cost analysis of real estate operations, and present findings and recommendations to senior management for real estate planning and investment decisions.
Process Re-Engineering & Continuous Improvement
- Apply Process Re-engineering and Lean Six Sigma methodologies to customer journey improvement.
- Build and sustain a continuous improvement culture within the real estate and leasing functions, and coach stakeholders on process improvement principles.
- Benchmark real estate operating models and best practices across leading developers and asset managers.
QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE & SKILLS:
Educational & Professional Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, Real Estate, Business, Data Science, Operations Research or a related field; equivalent areas with suitable experience considered.
- A master's degree (e.g., Real Estate, Business, Engineering) is a plus.
- 6 to 10 years of relevant experience, including substantial hands-on real estate process/operations experience.
Real Estate Domain Expertise (Essential)
- Proven real estate process optimization experience gained at leading real estate developers, asset/property managers, REITs, developers of economic/industrial zones, or top-tier consulting firms.
- Strong understanding of the leasing lifecycle, portfolio and asset management, and real estate operations across multiple asset classes (land, industrial, commercial, residential/labour accommodation, retail).
- Hands-on experience with real estate / property management systems (SAP RE-FX, Yardi, VTS, MRI, Planon, Archibus, IWMS or equivalent), including requirements definition and implementation.
Process, Technology & Analytics
- Strong expertise in process re-engineering, with experience in cost, profitability and ROI analysis.
- Experience defining to-be processes and system requirements and partnering with IT on system selection and implementation.
- Working knowledge of SAP ERP and Salesforce CRM, and adept at applying agile methodologies to transformation projects.
- End-to-end experience applying analytics to business problems; data science exposure is a plus.
Personal Characteristics
- Ability to communicate complex results to technical and non-technical audiences, with strong storytelling and presentation skills.
- Self-driven, collaborative, curious and creative; comfortable in diverse, cross-functional teams within a dynamic environment.
- Confident, energetic self-starter with strong moderation and stakeholder management skills.
