Executives at Marcus & Millichap, a real-estate company with $400 million in annual revenue, knew exactly what they wanted when they sent CIO Rick Peltz shopping for a collaborative application: competitive advantage. Peltz turned to iManage Inc., whose software is used to build Web-based, collaborative content-management environments, and asked the vendor to design one tailored to leasing commercial real estate.

Marcus & Millichap uses iManage to create Web sites that keep property owners on top of their listings via posted documents, reports, and other up-to-date information related to a particular piece of property. It also provides an instant-message or chat link to Marcus & Millichap agents, as well as the ability to do real-time text messaging with multiple parties. The site also is made available to potential customers, who receive security clearance based on how serious they're perceived to be.

Peltz hasn't run the numbers to assess whether iManage has boosted revenue, but the workflow-management feature helped reduce the months-long escrow period by as much as two-thirds. Peltz is confident it's increasing revenue. But he's just as confident that any advantage the company gains through collaboration won't last as a differentiator, since everyone will follow this model. For the time being, however, he says the relationship between Marcus & Millichap and its clients is being redefined.

Seth Polen, a senior associate and director of Marcus & Millichap's national multihousing unit, has been using iManage for only a few weeks, but already he says it's transforming the way he works. Before embracing the tool, he had to have multiple meetings with sellers to go over documents related to listings, marketing materials, and offers. Now clients can access, review, and act on the information he posts for them whenever they want. "It's like carrying around a deal folder, but via the Internet," he says. "It keeps the deal fluid."

At Wilmington Trust Co., online workspaces have become part of the company's culture. Collaboration is used for everything from managing vendor evaluations to tracking travel itineraries. And now, the trust bank with $26 billion in assets is turning to collaboration to manage the request-for-proposals process with its vendors. Most recently, it used software from eRoom Technology Inc. to evaluate 20 competitors vying to be the company's sole temporary-staffing vendor, posting a set of questions presented in a single format. "You can put all the vendors on a level playing field," says Norma Closs, VP and division manager of corporate client development.

The company has gotten creative in how it applies the work rooms. After the chaos of trying to track traveling employees in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Wilmington set up an eRoom the following week to track its road warriors. Colleagues and family members can access staffers' itineraries. Then, during Wilmington's acquisition earlier this year of SPV Management Ltd., an eRoom provided a variety of far-flung parties with encrypted 24-hour access to a task list, Excel spreadsheets, employment contracts, and legal documents related to the transaction. Those managing the process were able to track changes to documents by setting up automatic notifications. "Control freaks loved it," Closs says.

The ability to automate business processes and facilitate communications using eRooms has even turned into a revenue source: In 2001, Wilmington generated $500,000 in additional client fees by using digital work sites to offer customers, ratings agencies, accountants, and investors secure, password-protected access to their transaction histories. Closs says the use of digital work sites within the company will only grow. Why? "It's beaten into us that we need to collaborate or die."

Write to Tony Kontzer at tkontzer@cmp.com. Visit our Business Management Tech Center: informationweek.com/TC/bizmgmt/collaboration

Photograph by David Levenson