American Tower Corporation
Industry
Real Estate Investment Trusts
Challenge
The foundation of ATC’s business is the management of its communication site leases and property portfolio. With widely dispersed locations and a very high volume of leases, managing the process of concluding new leases, renewing existing leases and addressing annual rental escalations and contract variations was complex and extremely time consuming. The company also need a real-time and reliable database of all its landlord and lessees, to allow for effective market analysis and comparative cost analysis. Given the cost of establishing or moving communication masts, it was also a zero-error environment.
Solution
- MatterMap’s lease management solution for ATC begins with a detailed counterparty verification process, including the automated collation of all of the documents necessary to establish the existence of the other party (streamed by entity type), as well as the necessary government approvals and site plans.
- After routing the transaction through an internal review and approval process (tailored to the terms of the transaction), MatterMap automatically drafts a comprehensive lease agreement, whilst simultaneously tracking any clause variations inserted during the approval process.
- Thereafter, a fully automated and paperless signature process follows, including inbuilt escalations and tiered approvals (supported by systems alerts and deadlines).
- A separate electronic folder is maintained for each lease, with a complete history of all interactions and documents. Previously collected data is automatically injected into any new documents, ensuring that all new contracts, addenda and correspondence are drafted with minimal effort.
- The complete lifecycle of every lease is tracked and managed with bespoke system alerts for every contract deadline, expiry, renewal or rental escalation.
- Bulk re-contracting with large counterparty databases is also addressed through intuitive drafting questionnaires accessed via bulk email or an online portal.
- MatterMap’s central, online repository holds all of ATC’s contracts and transaction documents, thereby overcoming the difficulties that ATC previously experienced in managing leases across such a broad range of geographical areas.
Result
For starters, a drastic reduction in ATC’s contracting time, removing bottle necks in the business. An obvious additional benefit has been the increased control - ensuring that every lease transaction is compliant, properly drafted and approved in strict accordance with the company’s levels of authority matrix. Systemising the management of the lease lifecycles also prevents leases from lapsing unintentionally and the effective management of annual escalations improves the company’s revenue flows. All in all, the end-to-end automation of ATC’s lease drafting and approval workflows has injected immense value, efficiency and control into its core business functions.