Workiva Helps JLL Income Property Trust Replace Legacy Software to Streamline Accounting, Finance and Corporate Secretary Processes
JLLIPT Advisor, LaSalle Investment Management, Calls Wdesk a "Slam Dunk" for Efficiency Gains
AMES, Iowa, May 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Workiva (NYSE: WK), creator of the Wdesk cloud-based productivity platform for enterprises, today announced that JLL Income Property Trust (JLLIPT) and its advisor, LaSalle Investment Management, use Wdesk to significantly improve efficiencies throughout their accounting, finance and legal teams.
"As a company, our initiative is to make Wdesk our number-one reporting tool," said Pete Bucher, Senior Vice President and Portfolio Controller at LaSalle Investment Management. "We replaced our old word-processing and spreadsheet software with Wdesk, and it's a night-and-day comparison. Every one of our 150 Wdesk users sees the platform as an efficiency gainer. They all think Wdesk is a slam dunk."
JLLIPT uses Wdesk to file reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and to manage internal controls over financial reporting as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Lasalle Investment Management uses Wdesk for a variety of quarterly corporate reports and company-wide fund reporting.
"We immediately saw the benefits of Wdesk," said Bucher. "It allows us to control our more than 80 regulatory filings, and it better aligns the accounting and legal departments. Over the past year, our workload has increased significantly, but thanks to Wdesk we have been able to internally manage this increase." He cites the Wdesk mobile app for reviewing and commenting on work as another efficiency bonus.
"With SOX and internal controls, we have to work with data that originates across the company," said Mallory Sevcik, Senior Portfolio Accountant at LaSalle Investment Management. "For the work we do every day, nothing could be more efficient than Wdesk linking and tasking." The accounting department collaborates on the same document simultaneously, tracks progress with dashboards, sends reminders to people and creates document blacklines for auditors – all through Wdesk.
Data aggregation within Wdesk was also a breakthrough for JLLIPT. "Previously our fair-value measurement tables in GAAP footnote disclosures had 15 collaborators who would submit different sets of data in different ways, making aggregation time-consuming," said Sevcik.
"With Wdesk data collection templates, we have data all linked in one version, which dramatically saves time."
Based on their success, JLLIPT and LaSalle Investment Management are considering Wdesk for more processes and reports, including enterprise risk management, quarterly Controller's book schedules and executive management certifications for their board and auditors.
"Wdesk allows me to be more of a strategist as opposed to an organizer," added Bucher. "Wdesk has given us more time to validate the data and put more thought into more valuable places."
About Workiva
Workiva (NYSE: WK) created Wdesk, a cloud-based productivity platform for enterprises to collect, link, report and analyze business data with control and accountability. Thousands of organizations, including over 65 percent of the Fortune 500®, use Wdesk. The platform's proprietary word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications are integrated and built upon a data management engine, offering synchronized data, controlled collaboration, granular permissions and a full audit trail. Wdesk helps mitigate enterprise risk, improve productivity and give users confidence to make decisions with real-time data. Workiva employs more than 1,200 people with offices in 16 cities. The company is headquartered in Ames, Iowa. For more information, visit workiva.com.