Bosa Properties Securely Scales Automated Entity Data Across Legal, Tax, & Finance Teams

Bosa Properties has made a significant impact in the real estate industry for over 35 years. They've built over 10,000 homes and have thousands more in development, including rental units and condos.

Their influence extends beyond Canada, with notable presence in the US through their affiliate, IPB Properties. Bosa Properties’ expansive portfolio also includes the management of millions of square feet in commercial spaces, solidifying their position in the real estate scene.

Managing the intricate web of corporate entities behind these impressive projects is no small feat. For Bosa Properties’ legal team, this was especially challenging because their entity data was stored mainly inside binders, making access and management cumbersome. The legal team was always inundated with emails from other departments seeking hard-to-retrieve information.

“We on-boarded Athennian just before we were locked out of the office during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was such a relief to have access to our entity records when we weren’t in the office because everything was digitized and easily accessible inside Athennian. Having a single source of truth for all of our corporate information is infinitely valuable for us in our functions,” says Christy Jordaan, Paralegal at Bosa Properties.

The Initial Challenge: Physical Records and Friction in Collaboration

Historically, Bosa Properties managed its entity records through physical minute books, stored in binders and accessible only to the general counsel and the paralegal. This limited access framework caused operational bottlenecks, ultimately delaying the retrieval and distribution of information.

"We had some concern for the risk of physical binders being the only way to access our records, and it was also inconvenient because there were days when someone had to go into the office on the weekend or outside of office hours to source some information or update the records," says Christy.

Managing physical records also imposed constraints on collaboration. For instance, their corporate paralegal, who worked remotely, was tethered to paper records in the office. This setup disrupted her flexibility and posed deadline challenges.

"Athennian has made entity management easier for all of us. For example, our corporate paralegal can work remotely and spend more time preparing and maintaining documents without physically being in the office. It has made the collaboration much more seamless for our legal, finance, and tax departments," highlights Christy.

"With Athennian, we know our records are always up-to-date and instantly accessible. It's significantly more secure than storing entity data in physical binders," she adds.

Mirroring Athennian to Bosa Properties’ In-House Corporate Structuring Needs

Bosa Properties manages the majority of its corporate structuring in-house, with guidance from their tax advisers. This approach requires a robust and flexible system to handle complex structures, especially considering their focus on real estate development and the variable nature of bringing partners into new projects.

Here’s how Athennian solved this for them:

Setting up role based data access: Athennian allows Bosa Properties to maintain a secure, centralized system for entity management. By controlling data access and providing it mainly on a read-only basis to selected teams like accounting and auditors, Bosa Properties ensures that the integrity of its records is preserved.

This system mirrors the needs Bosa Properties has for confidentiality and accuracy within its corporate structures and information management, and eliminates the risk of unauthorized digital changes or records being removed inadvertently

User training and empowerment: A key part of maintaining this controlled access involves thorough training for new team members. Christy leads these training sessions, describing the system's particularities and how the legal team envisions managing the data inside Athennian.

The goal is to empower everyone to access the solution independently. Thanks to its user-friendly design, team members can navigate the system easily to find whatever data they need, similar to doing a simple Google search. This detailed onboarding process supports both security and efficiency, supporting users to access what they need without compromising the system’s integrity.

Democratizing Entity and Compliance Data for Legal, Tax, and Finance Teams

Before Athennian, Bosa Properties’ tax team was troubled with the paper chase that was particularly challenging during tax season. Finding a specific record could take up hours or a string of emails to other team members. With Athennian, the process is cleaner and more simplified.

“Athennian has helped to streamline our audit process. Our tax team can get the records they need within minutes and we expect it will only get easier as we continue to use and build out the data housed in Athennian,” shares Christy.

Automation has standardized entity data access, making it easier for teams to absorb information and work smarter, together. Bosa Properties’ team members can quickly find key points or dive into granular data without getting stuck searching or being uncertain about who to approach for the right information.

“One of the biggest ways that Athennian has impacted me and the general counsel is cutting down the sheer volume of emails we were getting every day from the tax and accounting teams,” describes Christy.

“We were receiving emails asking questions, such as ‘who is the shareholder of this company,’ but we rarely get those emails anymore. Our tax and accounting teams are able to find entity and compliance information independently by using Athennian–and the legal team serves as more of a backstop or sanity check from time to time,” describes Christy.

Opening Athennian Up at Scale

When you can’t swing by a colleague’s desk or have to collaborate with a coworker in another timezone, a real-time system is priceless.

Christy says, one of the next goals is to introduce more individuals within the legal, finance, and tax teams to the Athennian platform. This will bring more independence to their workflows and ensure stakeholders are always supported.

“When we were trying to choose an entity management provider, the competitors didn’t even come close to the simplicity and nice UI of the system. It’s just really easy to use. I don't have to spend a lot of time educating people on how to use the system and even for myself, the fact that I don't need to be an expert to be functional in the system is huge,” shares Christy.

“The care and support that I get from the Athennian team is excellent. I’ve shared some product feedback in the past and I noticed that my suggestions were taken in and implemented within a very short timeframe. I think the service at Athennian is just excellent,” adds Christy.