A LightBox Valuation customer success story
- Partner Valuation Advisors, which launched last year, has grown rapidly with the help of LightBox Valuation
- Valuation helps the firm handle research quickly, efficiently, and transparently
- The firm appreciates features such as custom fields and the ability to push research directly into a report
LightBox recently spoke to Brandon Nunnink, who last year founded Partner Valuation Advisors, a valuation firm specializing in analysis, process improvement, information systems, and consulting for commercial properties. He told us how LightBox Valuation has helped the firm grow quickly, streamline its workflow, and take on a growing number of projects.
Has Valuation changed the way you operate? What do you use it for and what does it solve?
The commercial property research platform has allowed us to handle public records research and back-end valuation faster and more efficiently. Our team members have been amazed at the speed and quality of the research. Valuation has been a force multiplier for us, making our resources more efficient and more transparent. We can see the research being done and supplement or correct it when necessary. I like this traceability, and the easy-to-use portal has been a godsend as we ramp up the number of appraisals we provide.
How has Valuation improved your workflow?
Some staff can’t believe that after only 1 year, our system is better than the one we spent years building at our previous firm. LightBox has been a great partner, and we’ve been able to easily use your commercial appraisal and valuation system as a solid foundation upon which to build.
Most of our staff start using Valuation during their first week at work. Many people in this industry struggle with technology, but with Valuation, nobody feels lost. LightBox supports everyone from our most technologically savvy people to those who need help with basic questions. We appreciate that if a function isn’t available, you often get it on your roadmap. We’re constantly evolving and improving our system, and our partnership with LightBox has been a key part of this process. Not every vendor is open to feedback—many companies build walled gardens and don’t care for customer input. Some of our smaller tech partners will solve 90 percent of a problem, but leave the last 10 percent unfixed, which often means we can’t use their products as intended. This isn’t true for LightBox.
What are some of Valuation’s most helpful features?
We love how easily the research data flows into the report. Being able to push comps from the research portal into the report writer database eliminates the need for manual data entry. Our teams have been using those functions extensively to improve efficiency. Another key feature for us is the ability to generate user-defined fields in the database. We can populate them, use calculated fields, and scale the database into more property sectors and specialty types than we could in the typical industry database. Custom fields, functions, and drop downs, along with the mass upload functionality, are very useful. We can research data outside the LightBox ecosystem, then push it in. That’s been a huge win for us.
Do you feel as if Valuation has eliminated the need for other subscriptions?
Since using Valuation, our personnel costs on the commercial property research side have been greatly diminished. At our previous firm, we had offshore resources doing front-end research that might take four to five hours, but we can do it now in less than an hour. We’re producing better quality reports and experiencing faster turnaround times. The research portal continues to get better. As we mass upload more data, I think we’ll save even more time and improve efficiency. We’re able to handle a great number of tasks because of LightBox.
Would you recommend Valuation to a colleague? What are the main value drivers?
I would definitely recommend it. You can take orders out of the largest ordering platforms, push them in, get your public records research done, and have all of that information flow into your database and into your report writer seamlessly and efficiently. Eliminating manual research and data entry is a huge time-saver. It’s allowed me to build a firm without a lot of back-office research support. I can scale more quickly and more cost effectively because the system is automated. All of this would benefit anybody in the valuation business.
Learn more about our revolutionary end-to-end commercial appraisal workflow solution that helps appraisers win more engagements, research property and market data, write high-quality appraisal reports and grow their business. Manage your entire commercial valuation pipeline, access data from more than 250,000 appraisals awarded per year and develop smarter RFP bidding strategies.
