LaSalle Investment Management

LaSalle Investment Management, founded in 1980, works within one asset class, real estate. LaSalle’s main focus is to manage capital for institutions and private investors all over the world. LaSalle invests in private and public real estate equity and debt through a complete range of investment vehicles. Based in Chicago, LaSalle spans more than 700 employees in 24 offices around the world.

The LaSalle Private Wealth Group (LaSalle PWG) initially implemented LinkPoint Connect in 2015 to address logging email communication with financial advisors into Salesforce. Desktop Edition removed inefficiencies by eliminating manual data entry of emails into Salesforce.

In 2018, the group’s email integration needs for Salesforce evolved. Team members who worked outside the office needed to log emails sent from their mobile devices to Salesforce. As a PC-based solution, Linkpoint Connect did not provide on-the-go logging of emails. “Our external wholesalers tend to send a lot of emails from their phones and iPads,” said Holly Hyla, Senior VP, Operations Manager, LaSalle. “They needed to log emails into Salesforce without actually being in Outlook, and we needed a single solution that would consistently capture data across all of our sales team.”

LaSalle’s Private Wealth Group consulted with LinkPoint360 Account Management and Customer Success teams to evaluate alternate solutions. LaSalle PWG learned that LinkPoint Connect: Cloud Edition supported syncing across platforms including PC, Mac, and mobile. By centralizing access and settings on a server, rather than a local install, Cloud Edition simplified user management, set up, and data sync control. “Cloud Edition offered us a completely new way to approach email logging into Salesforce,” said Hyla. “Having the capability to sync emails automatically to Salesforce, without worrying about whether users were able to or remembering to dually input emails, promised to make a big difference for us.” LaSalle PWG chose to upgrade their subscription from Desktop Edition to Cloud Edition with LinkPoint360 and expanded their user count with the increased mobile functionality.

LinkPoint360 guided LaSalle PWG through a seamless implementation, ensuring that all settings were reviewed and tested prior to deployment. “Salesforce implementations, even for Salesforce supported products, can be complicated and affect a number of components. This implementation was extremely easy,” said Hyla. “We were up and running within a few weeks of my initial outreach and had resources available to us throughout the transition.” LinkPoint360 configured Cloud Edition to archive all inbound and outbound communication automatically to matching Salesforce Contact records. Settings were also locked down within Cloud Edition to ensure consistent data across all users, and users were imported to the system with just a few clicks.

LaSalle Private Wealth Group management immediately saw results once LinkPoint Connect: Cloud Edition was implemented. Emails were automatically logged for all users within Salesforce, and Salesforce data and reports were consistently populated. The external wholesalers logged emails from their mobile devices and no longer created reminders for themselves to manually input items into Salesforce once they returned to their PCs. The internal sales team had a similar experience, saving time with auto-logging over manually selecting records to save emails to. “I have staff who are excited and talking about Cloud Edition with each other,” said Hyla. “Acclimating users to new solutions can be challenging, but we have had the opposite experience with Cloud Edition. They all love that it’s simple and that they don’t need to worry about logging their emails anymore.”

LaSalle PWG managers also found value in being able to track employee usage and confirm that emails were synced back to Salesforce. All of the team members reported that Cloud Edition saved them time and effort. “We can report on how much data syncs to Salesforce,” said Hyla. “As an Admin, I like having access to the Dashboard and Usage Reports. I can see exactly who is using it, how much data is syncing to Salesforce, and even which users have unresolved emails, which means they need to create new Salesforce Contacts.“

LaSalle PWG noted that the time saved from manual data entry into Salesforce impacted their overall return on investment, and they plan to explore ways to leverage additional Cloud Edition features. “We needed to solve mobile email integration initially, but we also realize we’re only using one part of the syncing options available to us,” said Hyla. “We’re considering how enabling Calendar Sync would impact us next, defining how and what we need to input into Salesforce. Knowing that Cloud Edition will support any number of configurations takes some of the stress out of that planning.”