How Xcel Energy Uses Curate to Manage its Real Estate Portfolio

About

Xcel Energy, co-promotes potential locations in their territory to high energy users or industrial allies, along with cities, economic development organizations, and developers. This means the corporation becomes an important partner to businesses with significant power requirements that are looking to expand or relocate their operations.

“Having a portfolio of real estate provides prospects with places to land,” says Dawn Moffit, an analyst in the Corporate Economic Development team at Xcel Energy “They know when they land they’re going to have water, they’re going to have power or, if they have to extend those infrastructure services, they’ll be ready to go.”

Staying in the Know: A Direct Information Feed

While brokers or developers bring many of these opportunities to the attention of Xcel Energy, it’s Moffit’s team’s responsibility to stay up to date and share information with other internal teams on the status of the process.

Their sources for updates and information include developers, economic development organizations, and brokers but this leaves them reliant on a third party. Having a more direct feed of information is one of the primary reasons Moffit and her Corporate Economic Development colleague are daily Curate users.

“I like the information because it comes directly to me,” says Moffit. “I don’t have to reach out on a regular basis going ‘what happened today?’”

Never Miss a Beat

Moffit credits Curate with helping keep track of projects and providing additional information to keep them online. This is especially true as the Corporate Economic Development team is generally not in the same physical location as the real estate in their portfolio. This means the information isn’t always accessible without a tool like Curate that can gather and automatically deliver insights from more than 12,000 locations across the United States.

In one example, Moffit came across a local government agenda item where a company signed an option on one of the sites in Xcel Energy’s portfolio. The Corporate Economic Development Team at Xcel Energy was not aware that this company had taken the next step in potentially locating its operations on the site.

Although they knew the prospect was interested in the property in Texas, directly learning about when the organization takes the next step, like signing an option, is one of the many reasons Moffit and her team have incorporated Curate into their day-to-day processes.

A Highly Efficient Daily Workflow

“I use the daily alerts as a tool to find out what an economic development organization might be doing,” explains Moffit. “For example, if they are approving an application, an upgrade — anything going on with a business — that might indicate they are trying to land in that area.”

Because Moffit manages a portfolio of real estate specific to New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado, she can further leverage Curate to filter alerts and information for just her service territory. So, Moffit only gets alerted to the city and economic development councils that meet throughout the areas she focuses on.

“If a city would accept an application from a company to build a large building, that would be a flag for me to alert my team and say hey ‘Were we aware of this program?’ to make sure everyone stays informed about opportunities,” adds Moffit.

She also uses these flags to keep other stakeholders informed by taking the relevant snippets found in Curate and emailing the broader team.

“Other teams may know certain aspects, but it happens that not everyone gets filled in on every piece of information,” says Moffit “I share what I find saying ‘I found this in Curate today, FYI you may already know.’”

Building a Solid Strategy with Curate

When managing programs across a portfolio of real estate like Moffit, information about their status is critical to making sure the program stays online. Having relationships with primary parties like developers, economic development organizations, and even other teams within your own company can keep you keyed into much of what you need to know. But there are still questions as to when you’ll receive that information or if you will find out about it all. This is why it’s important to have more proactive information sources providing you with timely insights.

“There’s just a lot of things that slip through the cracks,” says Moffit. “We may find out about projects eventually and other things that may be coming into the economic development picture, but it’s nice to have our own source. It’s a very direct way for me to get current information at that community level.”

About Xcel Energy
Xcel Energy is a major U.S. electricity and natural gas company, with operations in 8 Western and Midwestern states. Xcel Energy provides a comprehensive portfolio of energy-related products and services to 3.7 million electricity customers and 2.1 million natural gas customers through its regulated operating companies. Company headquarters are located in Minneapolis, MN.

About Curate
Curate, part of FiscalNote, is a local government monitoring software that provides the most comprehensive, trusted, and timely resource of actionable insights from 12,000+ municipal organizations and 4,000+ school districts across the country.

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