Vornado builds on Class A content

To be the best requires the best infrastructure

Commercial real estate in New York City is about as high stakes as the industry gets. To be a market leader in this region means being the very best, and that requires a lot more than just talent. Vornado Realty Trust has built a technology infrastructure that expertly scaffolds the work of its industrious teams, with Box as a key partner and resource. 

As a public, nationally recognized real estate investment trust, Vornado is not just a Class A commercial real estate leader, but a leader in sustainability policy and the largest owner of LEED-certified properties in the US. Its elite footprint includes the current redevelopment of the award-winning Moynihan Train Hall and the majority of the Penn District. 

Chief Information Officer Robert Entin has spent nearly two decades at Vornado, and in that time, has seen the tech stack transform. The ways in which Vornado creates, secures, and shares unstructured content — including invoices and contracts critical to business — has matured, and the company is now poised to take full advantage of AI, among other tools. 

A true future-focused content platform

Once, all content sat in what Entin calls “a typical legacy environment — not an ideal situation, security-wise. Information governance was difficult. Backups were complicated. Ransomware was a real danger. Sharing with external people was a cloddy venture.”

The goal was to move all content from the ground-based network to the cloud. Entin wanted end users to be able to access documents from anywhere, at any time, in a safe manner, and share them with external collaborators. His team saw cloud content management as a pivotal part of the solution. Due diligence led them to Box, which had a solid intelligent content management solution and, as Entin says, “We ended up choosing Box because of their vision for what cloud content management could provide.”

That vision has been the real benefit of partnering with Box over the long term. “Box doesn’t just see itself as a place to store content,” he explains. “They’ve got Box Shield, Box Governance, Box Notes, Box Relay, Box AI, and now, Box Hubs. The platform has a lot of functionality to enable everyone to collaborate and achieve their work goals.”

Transforming workflows with centralized content

Today, the Intelligent Content Cloud serves as a central repository for all the firm’s content, with automated workflows built in to standardize the way teams conduct business. Entin says, “One of the great benefits of Box is having a single content management system with the ability to share externally with as many collaborators as you need with a variety of privileges.”

As just one example, rent invoices, which were once on paper, are now in the Intelligent Content Cloud. Using the Box Platform API, Vornado created a software agent that automatically creates a folder for each property every month, so property managers can easily access tenant statements. Those statements are also emailed out to each tenant within a tightly orchestrated workflow so no one has to think about it.

Entin says, “One of the things Box has done exceptionally well is make sure that their integrations with the large players — the Microsofts and Googles of the world — is the highest quality possible. Box doesn’t get in the way, and actually enhances the experience with its products.”

The right level of encryption at every level

In commercial real estate, there are always a lot of external stakeholders, so the ability to share content with those outside the company is table stakes. Even when collaborating internally, security is a paramount concern. Entin says, “We, like all organizations, have a lot of sensitive content. In today’s day and age, with respect to backups and ransomware concerns, Box is basically a ransomware-proof environment because of their unlimited storage capacity.”

This capacity enables the team to keep multiple past versions of every document so that, if an attack were to occur, they always have access to a recent version. Encryption is particularly important to Vornado’s IT team, and Entin confirms, “Box provides an extra layer of encryption that has really
helped us step up our game on the whole data loss prevention sector.”

Content in Box is automatically encrypted at rest, and using a companion product, Vera, Vornado was able to further encrypt highly sensitive information. This allows IT to feel safe about having users share content with anyone, internal or external, even via email (with a shared link). If someone receives a link and tries to send it along to someone else in an email, that second person won’t be able to access the file. And if a person’s status ever changes within the company or on a project, it’s easy to take away their access.

Entin remarks: “Box makes it almost frictionless, which has been a real boon to us implementing more encryption in the organization.

The ultimate goal: Unstructured data in a trained model

With tons of structured and unstructured data at their disposal, AI is the next logical step for Vornado, as it will drive benefits like deep text search and enhanced lease paperwork workflows. 

Commercial leases are massive, complex documents full of information, and the terms and conditions of these leases matter deeply to the Vornado acquisitions team, property managers, and property accountants. Right now, Entin explains, “When people have complex questions about leases, they
have to forward those questions to our lease administration department to source the answers. When you think about the amount of content we have sitting in Box, the ability to ask questions of any of that content in a cogent way will be a game changer.”

With the right workflows and prompt engineering, Vornado can train AI models around the concept of tenants and their documents to surface quick answers to lease questions that get asked every day, like:

• Who in the Penn District has expansion options in 2026?
• Who has insurance requirements of X amount?
• Who has renewal options on various floors of a particular property?

Vornado’s partnership with Box will be key here. As Entin explains, “Arguably, Box is in a unique
position to leverage AI as this nascent sector grows. Adding AI to all of the other functional elements
of the Box platform is potentially transformative.”

The top three things Vornado loves about Box, according to Entin:

1. Flexible teamwork: “Being able to access your data anywhere on any device, at any time in a
   safe and secure manner.”
2. External collaboration: “The ability to share with outside parties, obviously is a huge
   advantage to any content management system.”
3. Security: “Box’s view on security happens to be extremely impressive."

 

AI, to me, is the most significant thing in our future. And it’s probably the biggest thing about Box that could really change the way people work.

— Robert Entin, CIO, Vornado Realty Trust