You've probably never met anyone who is as excited about compliance management as Jason Griffith.
"I know, it's the least sexy business in the world, but what can I say? I love it," confesses Griffith, co-founder of Manhattan-based SiteCompli.
As it turns out, a growing number of leading NYC residential and commercial owners and managers are getting excited about compliance too. Well, maybe not about compliance, but rather what SiteCompli is doing to help bring compliance costs and hassles under control.
Adam Parkoff of The Parkoff Organization declared SiteCompli an "instant success" for his company. Jeffrey Katz of Milbrook Properties has called SiteCompli a "game changer" for the industry. Peter Lehr at Kaled Management describes the impact of SiteCompli on their operations as "dramatic" and Newmark Knight Frank's Al Voci has said his only regret was "not having SiteCompli around in years past."
So what is this magic potion that Griffith's SiteCompli has brought to the industry? As Griffith explains, "We've developed a unique technology that automatically and continuously aggregates, analyzes and alerts on compliance data including violations, complaints, inspections and more from various New York City government agencies. The system 'crunches' the data in a fraction of the time that it takes property managers to do the same task manually, ensuring that key compliance dates don't slip through the cracks and that clients are notified about potential issues before they become expensive problems."
That may not sound so exciting to outsiders, but to the many owners, managers and service companies that recognize the growing complexity, increased enforcement and skyrocketing financial consequences of local real estate laws, SiteCompli is a welcome relief and has quickly become a critical operational tool.
"The appeal of SiteCompli is simple," explains Griffith, "we save our clients a tremendous amount of money, time and headache, whether it is alerting them to a complaint before it becomes a violation, eliminating missed equipment inspections on their elevators, boilers or façades, or preventing default judgments at ECB hearings."
Griffith received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University where he graduated summa cum laude and went on to work on business development at several real estate-focused technology firms. He earned his MBA from Columbia Business School in 2006 where he was the sole recipient of the prestigious Caplan Fellowship for Entrepreneurship in Real Estate. It was at Columbia where he met his friend, Internet-industry veteran, and eventual SiteCompli co-founder, Ross Goldenberg.
The two were passionate about real estate, technology and entrepreneurship and went searching for the next great business idea. After speaking with owners and managers, large and small, commercial and residential, as well as with the vendors who serviced their buildings, the one common complaint they had was centered on compliance. "The people we spoke with viewed compliance as an unsolved problem that was getting worse by the day," said Griffith. "People were buried in paperwork, clicking through multiple agency websites and compiling manual reports to try to understand where they stood on compliance issues. The problem was, things were slipping through the cracks while dramatically increased fines were affecting the bottom line. Meanwhile, staff was spending so much time on the administrative side that they weren't able to focus their attention on actually addressing these compliance issues." Griffith and Goldenberg developed and launched SiteCompli to take this burden off of their clients and let them re-focus on the business of real estate.
The industry has responded to the SiteCompli value proposition enthusiastically and today, SiteCompli tracks compliance for thousands of NYC buildings for some of the most prestigious and influential real estate firms, including Jack Resnick & Sons, CBRE, Langsam Property Services and Time Equities. Data is monitored across the DOB, ECB, DEP, HPD, and FDNY and includes complaints, violations, emergency repairs, tenant litigation as well as mandated equipment inspections.
Clients interface with SiteCompli in two ways. First, they can access their data in real time from any Internet connection. Second, clients receive reminders via e-mail when critical events approach, such as ECB hearings, HPD compliance due dates and upcoming equipment inspections. In addition, clients receive automatic notices and explanations of critical changes in a portfolio's data, such as updated inspection statuses, 311 complaints, vacate orders and stop work orders.
"I'm very grateful for our success," said Griffith, "We have amazing clients and it feels terrific to sell a product that has such an immediate and positive impact on their businesses."
And it seems new customers are arriving in droves. "We make the sales process as easy as possible, because we know that the moment a new client uses SiteCompli, they're going to love it."
"Easy" might be an understatement, as SiteCompli offers a no-cost, no obligation 30-day trial which includes a comprehensive portfolio setup by the SiteCompli team, ensuring that each property is being properly monitored and that the right data and alerts are going to the right people. For those who choose not to adopt SiteCompli after their trial period is over, SiteCompli gives all the data that was collected to those clients for free - a huge value on its own. For those who choose to continue with SiteCompli, there are no long-term contracts, which Griffith says "assures our clients that the SiteCompli team is ready to do everything we can to keep them satisfied every day." Tags: