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From Tickets to Transformation: Rethinking Application Support in Commercial Real Estate

November 6, 2025 | Emily Fuller, Global Head of Application Services, Newmark RF
4 min read
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With its October 2025 acquisition by Newmark, RealFoundations now operates as Newmark RF, combining decades of operational expertise with a global platform designed for the future of real estate services. For clients, this evolution means access to broader resources, deeper technology capabilities, and the same trusted partnership focused on one mission: making real estate run better.

In commercial real estate, operational excellence hinges on how well your systems run – every day, without exception. As portfolios scale and digital ecosystems expand, application support – the teams and processes that keep real estate systems running – has evolved from a reactive “help desk” function to a strategic discipline that protects data integrity, ensures compliance and keeps business processes running predictably.


Yet, many organizations still treat application support as a cost center, an unavoidable necessity rather than a competitive advantage. In reality, it’s one of the most effective levers a real estate operator can pull to improve performance, reduce risk and empower teams to focus on higher-value work.


Bridging the Gap Between Process and Practice

Technology promises efficiency, but the day-to-day reality of operations often tells a different story. Staff turnover, phased rollouts, and shifting regulatory demands can all erode the “future-state” workflows designed at go-live. What looks seamless in implementation plans becomes complicated in execution.


This is where disciplined application support proves its value. Effective teams reinforce business processes, retrain users, and align daily activity with organizational policy. They close the loop between configuration and practice, ensuring systems are used as intended and data remains trustworthy.


By monitoring adoption, identifying recurring exceptions, and proactively refining workflows, application support keeps the entire organization operating in sync. It’s the quiet governance layer that turns technology into a sustainable advantage.


What to Offload and Why it Matters

Directors of Business Applications and IT leaders face a familiar dilemma: growing demand, shrinking bandwidth. The path to relief isn’t simply hiring more staff; it’s about shifting the right responsibilities to the right partners.


The most effective starting point is high-volume, low-leverage tasks that drain internal capacity. Think: user provisioning, role and security management, system upgrades, vendor escalation, workflow fixes, and recurring report runs. Offloading these responsibilities to a specialized support partner restores response times, improves system stability, and reduces the temptation for “shadow IT” solutions that undermine governance.


Once this foundation is stable, leaders can elevate focus to higher-order initiatives: refining exception playbooks, strengthening compliance controls, and expanding automation. The goal is not to surrender control, but to redeploy energy toward transformation instead of maintenance.


The Expertise Gap: Why Fractional Expertise Wins

The complexity of today’s real estate technology stack makes it nearly impossible for any single hire to cover all bases. Platforms such as Yardi Voyager, MRI Software, Argus Enterprise, RealPage, and AppFolio each demand unique expertise across property operations, accounting, job cost, investment management, and integrations.


Hiring a full-time “unicorn,” a professional or service with equal depth across these complex domains, is unrealistic. Building an entire in-house bench is expensive and still leaves gaps during PTO, turnover or peak cycles.


A fractional support model, which engages experienced specialists on a part-time or project basis, solves this by giving firms access to the right specialist at the right time, expanding coverage without expanding headcount.


This approach ensures business continuity through quarter-end closes, audit cycles, and system upgrades, while freeing internal teams to focus on strategic initiatives like data analytics and process innovation.


Metrics That Matter

A mature application support model is measurable. Service-level metrics such as response times, first-contact resolution, and reopen rates demonstrate responsiveness. Adoption metrics – like percent of process completed in-system, training completion, and exception frequency – reveal whether technology is being used effectively.


But beyond the dashboards, the true measure of success is stability.

  • Are rents being applied correctly?
  • Are closes on time?
  • Are compliance checks being met?

When the answers are consistently “yes,” application support has done its job.


Protecting Cash, Compliance, and Credibility

In real estate, every system outage or data discrepancy carries a tangible cost, whether it be delayed collections, misstated ledgers, compliance fines, or reputational damage. Effective application support mitigates these risks by embedding governance into every interaction.


It also plays a critical role in change management. From rolling out new modules, to integrating acquisitions or replacing legacy systems, a strong support partner keeps operations steady while transformation unfolds. This continuity prevents the “project cliff” that often follows implementation when internal teams are stretched thin and end-users lose confidence.


Turn Technology into an Advantage

As real estate firms navigate rising operational costs, staffing constraints, and accelerating digital change, the winners will be those who treat application support as a strategic enabler, not a back-office function.


When managed well, it keeps data clean, users confident and leadership informed. It protects cash and compliance, reinforces policy and ensures every system decision drives business value.


That’s the power of disciplined application support, and it’s how Newmark RF helps real estate organizations run better.


The Newmark RF Approach: Offload Operations, Not Control

At Newmark RF, application support is engineered for leaders who need to deliver more with less – stabilizing platforms, delighting users, and driving efficiency without losing visibility or control.


Our team combines decades of real estate expertise with hands-on mastery across the industry’s leading platforms. We handle the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that bog down internal teams while providing the analytics and transparency leaders need to stay firmly in the driver’s seat.


The result is a scalable model that flexes with your business, expanding coverage during busy periods, maintaining continuity during staff changes, and ensuring technology never slows the business down.

Emily Fuller, Global Head of Application Services, Newmark RF
Emily Fuller is the Global Head of Application Services at Newmark RF, with over 19 years in IT services and management consulting for the real estate industry. She leads a global team supporting 25+ clients and 10,000 end users across major real estate platforms like JD Edwards, MRI, and Yardi. Emily’s team specializes in optimizing backend functions for sectors including commercial, residential, and corporate occupiers, delivering solutions that enhance operational outcomes across real estate operations.

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Newmark RF, formerly RealFoundations, was acquired by Newmark in October 2025 to expand Newmark’s Investor Services platform with managed services and management consulting offerings. As a global professional services firm, Newmark RF helps companies that develop, own, operate, or invest in real estate make smarter, more profitable decisions. Learn more at www.realfoundations.net.