Yes, but at the expense of how many lost opportunities?
Your customers and clients are the lifeblood of your company. Making sure your Customer Relationship Management system is up to date is imperative to your brand's success. Your inventory of assets, their value, and their status; For Sale, For Lease, 100% Occupied, etc., are where the lifeblood of your business needs to flow. Market changes, like sales, leases, new inventory, new developments brought to-market are the fundamental nerve center -- the brain, and the gathering of this intelligence, its awareness. So, is using a spreadsheet to track all of this knowledge workable? Sure! But ...Is it most efficient?
Today's all-in-one technology stacks take care of tedious data collection and compile work automatically. Thereby reducing time spent, expense, manpower and mistakes. This results in improved efficiency for your company, higher client satisfaction, increased quality leads and more closed transactions, by unclogging the arteries to the heart and brain of your business. This allows you to have more time to concentrate on growing your business instead of wasting time on data management, handling multiple databases by hand, or correcting human error.
Modern Techniques for Impressive Results
With a reliable technology stack in today's fast paced environment, it's easy to see how hard it used to be to keep a new business afloat or to grow an established brand. The first technology stack was very simple— It was literally stacks on a desk in different corners. One to store basic client and property information, and another to store market information, etc, and the real estate professional sitting at the desk aggregating, connecting, and deriving actionable insights from the "stacks". As technology grew, so did the scale, scope, and speed of a real estate professional. Their "stacks" ie; rolodex, clipboard, binder, and excel sheets evolved into Customer Relations Management software, with real-time updates, logs of client engagement, and research and analytics from all points of contact and sources of information, and it's still evolving, too! Each new update brings exciting opportunities to gain more connectivity and competitive advantage, to understand your clients and the market at deeper levels. In short, improving efficiency and productivity for your business.
It has certainly been a long road to get here. Since 2015, I have been writing about the effects of technology in and on the Commercial Real Estate industry; knowing full well that without a paradigm shift, things would be slow to change. It is now 2021 and a paradigm shift was forced upon us. The real estate industry spent a year at home trying to figure out how to do business in this new world…
"Time is always in short supply, and professionals -- in addition with being tasked with finding the right "deals" -- now need to find the right tools to adopt a digital mindset, and on top of everything else, they have to race to find a way to network digitally."
Years have been spent researching, evaluating, and developing all manner of tools; Internet Listing Services, 1st Generation Research, Industry Disintermediation, CRM Management, Public Data Aggregators, Crowd Sourced Data Providers, Workflow Platforms, Retail & Demographic. Marketing, and Transaction Engines, funding platforms, capital raising platforms, sophisticated investment business development tools, syndication sites, and networking tools. As a business owner, you shouldn’t have to spend time connecting them all. That’s what an integrated technology stack does.
So how do you decide on your technology strategies or needs? There are over 8,000 "deal winner" resources available to you and everyone else…
What does history tell us?
In 2015: "Our clients wanted more information, and that need left us with evolving a historically fragmented industry into a network of unified information exchange." The availability of information, coupled with new technology entering the field, made commercial real estate more expansive than ever.
In 2016: Growth continued across the CRETech space with slow adoption by Institutional real estate companies. The focus for growth was on FinTech.
In 2017: There were examples validating our need for a unified information exchange, such as Open architecture, Consolidated MLS, Cherre, RESO and public data sharing initiatives, etc. For example, highlighting the need to aggregate different data sets, such as the merger of Hightower & VTS.
By 2018: The majority of today's platforms are virtual silos, inaccessible to one-another. Hundreds of sensible companies are ceasing to exist, as the CRETech space expands and contracts.
By 2019: We have a large portion of 4.9M Real Estate Professionals no longer asking what technology to use and when to use it. They are asking how do I use it to make their relationships and their businesses more efficient.
“We are in a period of transition …. How do we use technology? What do we do with it? are questions being asked today” Michael Mandel, Co-Founder & CEO, COMPSTAK (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmandel)
“Data has always been separate repositories… all the companies are trying to figure out how to bring them all together” Brian Mascis CRO, Rockport VAL (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-mascis-7ba5b711)
“Why change what has been working? Now people understand we need to aggregate and consolidate our information….Kent Tarrach VP, Asset Management & Global Corporate Development Brookfield Properties (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kent-tarrach-3b518213)
In 2020: Commercial Real Estate practitioners that swore they would not change the way they do business scrambled to set up systems and to get connected and try to stay connected. Zoom became synonymous with meeting, more than WebEx, and companies that had not already begun pivoting their operating models into a digital architecture/structure where left disconnected/disrupted.
“In a period of disruption the need for transparency and trust has never been greater,” says Matthew McAuley, director, global research at JLL. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-mcauley-a76b0675/)
In 2021 and beyond: Businesses with Digital Operating Principles will get faster and better as they grow in size, while traditional firms with traditional operating principals will gain overhead, be burdened by complications at every level, and will struggle with hybrid "return to the office" paradigms. A comprehensive technology stack removes duplicate data entry, provides an aggregate source of truth, and allows for a distributed, but highly effective, network to operate and scale. The fundamentals of the Commercial Real Estate Industry have not changed. Relationships, knowledge, and access to deals are still paramount to success…
If only there were a digital version of "a desk where your Rolodex, offers, binders of market data, contracts, graphs, charts, spreadsheets, and telephone could all be together…
Introducing CRECo.ai from CRE Collaborative
CRE Collaborative (CRECo.ai) Platform acts as a universal connector -- a Real Estate Information Hub -- to Commercial Real Estate companies, platforms, and their data. CRECo.ai is a B2B / B2C platform that aggregates real estate data & technology in one place. We provide an integrated database with an easy to use portal, that enables quick access to all relevant industry data, technology, and real estate networks.
Connect, Research, Execute & Collaborate Online through one simple portal.
Written by:
Andreas Senie
Founder & CEO CRE Collaborative
Broker, Founding Partner EAC Properties at The Higgins Group LLC
Co-Host FriedonTechnology, CRETech Though Leader, Public Speaker