Extra Space Storage powers 600 property transitions
per year with Smartsheet
With Smartsheet Control Center and Koetke Consulting, one of the nation's largest self-storage operators moves from siloed tracking to real-time portfolio visibility built to scale with continued growth and industry consolidation.
Meghan Breshears
Sr. Transitions Manager
Extra Space Storage
"We now have real-time updates, better visibility, and more consistent processes, but still enough flexibility to handle unique transition scenarios. It's been a nice balance between structure and adaptability."
Extra Space Storage runs one of the largest and most active property portfolios in the self-storage industry. Behind every acquired, transferred, or newly onboarded location is a transitions team, managed by Meghan Breshears, moving properties through a rigorous handoff process without slowing the pace of growth.
The scale is significant. The team manages roughly 600 transitions a year across 9 different repeatable process types. Timelines range from as little as 2 weeks to several months, and the most complex transitions carry more than 200 individual tasks that require coordination across multiple departments.
Extra Space had been using Smartsheet for years to manage this work, and using it well at the task level. But as the portfolio grew and industry consolidation accelerated the pace of new acquisitions, the setup that had once worked started to strain. The team could track individual project tasks, but the bigger picture was harder to see. Departments touching the transition process had shifted parts of their work into other systems, creating gaps in visibility. Reporting required pulling data manually from multiple places. Evaluating holistic process performance took real effort. Adoption and reporting had become the two biggest pain points, and the platform itself was not being used to its full potential.
An upgrade, not a rebuild
The right move wasn't to start over. Extra Space had a solid Smartsheet foundation and a team that already knew the platform. What they needed was a purpose-built portfolio architecture layered on top: something advanced enough to unify visibility across departments, structured enough to standardize the repeatable transition types, and flexible enough to handle the edge cases that inevitably show up in a portfolio of this size.
Meghan led the vision from the Extra Space side, working closely with Koetke Consulting to design and build a scalable transitions solution in Smartsheet Control Center. The relationship wasn't new. Koetke Consulting had worked with Extra Space during their initial Smartsheet rollout years earlier, and the introduction to reconnect came naturally through the Smartsheet team when Extra Space started exploring newer platform capabilities.
"While a lot of people can build in Smartsheet, what we needed was more advanced. [Paul] brought a level of technical expertise that helped us build something much more scalable and efficient than we could have done on our own."
Real-time visibility across a large, active portfolio
The new solution delivers real-time reporting and automation that has already reduced manual work. Where reporting once required pulling data from multiple systems, it now updates continuously in a single tool. Where individual departments once operated with fragmented views, the framework now supports connecting them into one system of record for the full transition lifecycle.
With the foundation now delivering real-time updates, better visibility, and more consistent processes for the transitions team, Extra Space is expanding the framework across every department that touches the transition lifecycle. Each new department connected brings more of the organization onto a single source of truth without sacrificing the flexibility to handle unique scenarios.
Built to scale with the business
Self-storage is a consolidating industry, and Extra Space has been a major driver of that consolidation. Recent portfolio opportunities have tested the team's capacity, and continued growth is a certainty rather than an aspiration. For a transitions team responsible for standing up hundreds of new locations a year, the ability to scale process without proportionally scaling headcount is a strategic advantage.
That was the design brief from the outset: build for scale now, not scale later. Solve for the partners upstream and downstream in the process. Anticipate the challenges the team will face 12 to 24 months out, not just the ones on the desk today. That approach shaped every configuration decision, from the process type templates to the reporting structure to the automation logic.
The team is already looking ahead to how AI and other newer Smartsheet capabilities can layer on top of the foundation now in place. The value of a scalable architecture is that new features enhance the system rather than requiring a rebuild.
The unexpected value: a smarter team
One outcome Extra Space didn't fully anticipate was how much their own team's Smartsheet capability would grow through the engagement. The build wasn't a handoff. It was a collaboration. By the end of it the internal team was more advanced with the platform, better equipped to maintain the solution, and positioned to continue improving it long after the consultant moved on.
That's a durable form of value. The architecture will scale with the business, and so will the team's ability to keep evolving it.
The value of getting the questions right
The Extra Space engagement worked because both teams did the hard work upstream of the build. Meghan and her team came in having thought deeply about their goals, the challenges the transitions function faces today, and the ones it will face as the business continues to grow. That clarity of intent is what let a technical expert configure a system that fits the actual work, not a generic template.
Bill's advice to peers evaluating a similar path reflects that lesson.
"Take the time to explore all the challenges you might have today and tomorrow. Having scale at the forefront of each decision to help solve for partners upstream and downstream in processes is key to building out your solution. Know what you want Smartsheet to solve. The more clearly you can define your goals and challenges, the more value you'll get out of working with a consultant and a tool like Smartsheet."
Want to go deeper on the solution?
See how Koetke Consulting designs portfolio-wide property transition solutions that scale with your portfolio.