Business has only Two Functions-Marketing and Innovation

By Sylwia Pędzińska, Senior Partner, Innovation & Knowledge, Colliers International

Sylwia Pędzińska, Senior Partner, Innovation & Knowledge, Colliers International

Tenants' expectations, customers, and employees drive prop-tech trends in real estate markets

Commercial real estate market is typically foreseen as a conservative. Properties have a long life cycle, and their development is costly; thus, implementation and adoption of new technologies take time. However, for the last few years, we have seen an increasing number of innovations in this market. It is a result of changing tenants' expectations, their customers, and employees. At the same time, developers are starting to appreciate the usage of some technologies.

For companies like ours (real estate agencies), it's essential to know what kind of technologies are there. Tenants and landlords are more often asking questions about them to understand how they influence their processes, whether or not they work, their advantages and disadvantages, pricing, and possible options. At the same time as an advisor, our work is based on proper usage and interpretation of data. Thus business intelligent (BI), predictive analysis, geolocation, and in the nearest future, artificial intelligence (AI) is taking a huge role in supporting the everyday businesses. Depending on the sector (industrial, retail, or office), using technologies and their adoption vary.

Innovations and technologies in the development phase

Starting from the beginning of the building cycle.

New buildings are designed using Building Information Modelling (BIM), and Digital Twin is created. It helps to manage not only the development phase but also fully functioning building. As well as exterior design, interior design is changing: a combination of 3D space planning and AR/VR technology helps to prepare new concepts faster than before. In addition, virtual tours are a great marketing tool used to sell office space or location.

“Business intelligent, predictive analysis, geolocation, and in the nearest future, artificial intelligence is taking a huge role in supporting the everyday businesses”

Software and hardware help buildings to be environment-friendly

Some other innovations are influenced by tenants who require buildings to be environment-friendly. It results in the popularity of technologies which can help to save energy consumption. There is a wide variety of software and hardware tackling this issue. Tenants are looking for the one, based on sensors making sure lights are switched off if space is not used, to help save energy. Landlords are searching for systems which can help decrease energy consumption in the building, and its systems. Besides, some of them are also looking for alternative energy sources like photovoltaic panels. The most advanced can provide a big part of the energy the building needs. The other trend driven by changing tenants needs are all technologies which are supposed to offer a better experience of using the building.

Comfortable life in office buildings

The other trend we can observe in the building also driven by the tenant are all technologies which are supposed to make tenants lives more comfortable or help them efficiently run their offices. In this category, we have software which helps understand how employees are using office space, book the room or parking space, or create a community within the building. Beacons or red light cameras are used to check office space usage or to understand shopping centre customers behaviours. Even from Wi-Fi, you can get data-driven insights like occupancy trends, space utilization rates, potential cost savings, and more. It's important to mention that software for office managers, parking space management systems, community creation apps, and geolocation are used to help location decisions in retail, security systems based on face recognition in part replacing humans.

All functionalities in one app?

There are a lot of available software, thus sometimes it’s hard to pick. That's why it's essential to listen to tenants needs. And what we hear more and more continually is that they don't want to have several apps to use. They want all functionalities with easy access. I think that in the nearest future, we will start to see apps using voice recognition technology for tenant apps. The same as we see the adoption of this technology in retail.