Most investors prize transparency in their relationships. Yet, given the way the investment community has structured its relationships, the level of transparency is bound to be limited.

It’s now possible, through systems developed by software vendors, to streamline the business processes involved in acquiring, financing, managing and disposing of real property holdings — from tracking the minutest details of individual lease and property transactions all the way up to rolling asset-by-asset information into the portfolio or fund level. They can calculate complex performance numbers compared with benchmark information, before and after fees, including the calculation of complicated custom waterfall configurations. These vertically integrated systems give professionals at the leasing, property-management, asset-management and portfolio-management levels access to real-time data, along with the analytical tools they need to truly understand what’s going on at each level of