Prologis manages industrial real estate and leases distribution facilities to manufacturers, retailers, transportation companies, third-party logistics providers, and other organizations with large-scale distribution requirements.
To replace a fragile homegrown lease-assembly system and reduce the amount of repetitive legal work required for new leases, Prologis implemented an Experlogix hosted document-generation solution using Microsoft Word-based templates and a cloud environment built on Microsoft Azure.
- Save attorneys hundreds of hours of repetitive lease-review effort per year.
- Accelerate lease document assembly for time-sensitive opportunities.
- Give market officers greater ownership of standard lease generation.
- Use pre-approved templates and required fields to support document consistency.
- Scale the hosted solution globally through Microsoft Azure.
- Use a low-maintenance hosted solution with minimal up-front costs and no IT involvement.
- Personalize each lease using structured options and required information.
- Maintain corporate standards across generated lease documents.
Challenge
Prologis managed approximately 3,300 industrial facilities and more than 5,200 customers across the Americas, Europe, and Asia in the source case study.
In North America alone, market officers generated thousands of real estate leases each year. Approximately 80% required attention from the company's in-house attorneys.
Prologis had previously built its own lease-assembly solution, but the system was fragile and difficult to maintain and was eventually abandoned. Attorneys returned to copying text manually from a library of lease templates.
Market officers sometimes waited several days for leases needed quickly to support potential transactions.
Attorneys repeatedly reviewed and assembled similar documents, consuming hundreds of hours each year.
Missing required content during manual lease creation could introduce serious legal and financial exposure.
The company's previous homegrown lease solution had proven difficult to maintain over time.
A potential transaction creates an immediate need for a customer-ready lease.
Legal staff manually copies and reviews content from the maintained template library.
Attorneys verify clauses, schedules, and other mandatory lease information.
The completed lease may not return for several days despite the time-sensitive sales opportunity.
Prologis wanted market officers to be able to select a few options, provide basic information, and immediately assemble all but the most complex leases while maintaining the company's legal and corporate requirements.
Solution
Experlogix developed a hosted document-generation solution for Prologis using two primary components: a Microsoft Word add-in for creating lease templates and a centralized web-based portal for managing them.
The portal reads the approved template and generates a web-based form. Market officers use that form to provide the options and information needed to assemble a lease personalized for the customer.
Experlogix designed templates around Prologis lease requirements and corporate standards.
The system converts template requirements into a structured form used by market officers.
Mandatory fields help ensure the information needed for the lease is captured during generation.
Selected options and entered data determine the content included in the final customer lease.
The market officer starts with an approved lease template.
The officer selects the options relevant to the customer and transaction.
The web form captures the mandatory information required for document assembly.
Experlogix assembles a personalized lease using the approved template and captured information.
Prologis wanted a hosted solution with strong availability, minimal up-front infrastructure costs, and the ability to scale beyond North America.
Experlogix used Microsoft Azure as the cloud platform supporting the solution. The source notes that Azure's global data-center availability also provided a path to deploying the service closer to users in Europe or Asia if Prologis expanded the program.
Today's Experlogix Document Automation Template Builder continues to use a Microsoft Word add-in for creating dynamic, rule-driven document templates.
Result
Two weeks after the lease requirements were finalized, the new solution was ready for Prologis market officers to use.
The hosted environment shifted much of the standard lease-assembly workload away from attorneys and toward the market officers responsible for the transaction, while preserving approved lease content and required information.
Prologis reported saving its attorneys hundreds of hours of repetitive effort each year.
Market officers gained a faster way to create time-sensitive customer lease documents.
Standard lease generation moved closer to the market officers who needed the documents.
Pre-approved templates and mandatory information helped support consistent lease assembly.
Microsoft Azure provided a scalable hosted foundation capable of supporting geographic expansion.
Prologis gained a hosted document-generation environment with minimal up-front costs and no IT involvement required for the deployment.
“Market officers can now generate legally approved leases on their own, in a fraction of the time.”
Prologis demonstrates how structured templates, guided data collection, and document automation can move repetitive document work closer to business users while allowing legal teams to focus their attention where it adds more value.
See how Prologis automated commercial lease generation and shifted repetitive document assembly from attorneys to market officers while supporting a scalable cloud deployment.
