By David Fuller-Watts, CEO, Mallcomm
Property management, particularly within shopping centres, has traditionally been a hands-on, feet-on-the-ground affair. Managers walked around and talked to people face-to-face. Need to get a memo out? That’ll be 4,000 steps to the right store. Need to let people know about an event coming up? That’ll be 10,000 steps and no time to rest on the way.
While upping your step count for property management might be good for your heart health, it’s not actually good for business. Fortunately, the proptech industry is levelling up to promote greater efficiencies in property management.
Changing landscapes
If you’re wondering what happened to those property managers’ health apps during covid, then never fear, I’m sure their step count looked similar, although their walks hopefully were more scenic than the inside of a shopping centre. The pandemic forced the property industry to learn how to better manage estates remotely, both within retail properties and the wider commercial real estate market.
This saw the adoption of software point solutions, procured from the tech start-ups whose propositions met these new demands.
It was a time of innovation across the globe, illustrating the potential of change for a real estate sector that had only really begun investing in, and adopting proptech in earnest a year or two before.
And while early tech adopters were once limited to larger companies with larger budgets, the pandemic prompted (76%) of businesses to increase their use of SaaS applications between 2022 and 2023. Choice became necessity.
The challenges and threats to NOI
While digital transformation is one thing, creating a collection of point solutions that are used only in a vacuum or aren’t even visible to the wider business, is another. When point solutions pop up to solve one particular problem, it’s hard to measure their overall value to the asset or portfolio.
More often than not, multiple stakeholders within commercial properties have similar goals that could be achieved with a solution built for everyone, but point solutions are often focused on one particular fix. What does this mean? Eventually, once a much-needed tech audit is conducted and after the apathy towards inevitable change wears off, these point solutions are retired for true end-to-end solutions. Those that remain can then be easily integrated into a centralised system.
It’s important not to ignore the fact that in the commercial real estate sector, microeconomic challenges are intensifying as stagnant budgets collide with escalating costs of energy, staff and consumables. Property managers and owners face increasingly tough decisions, balancing the need to maintain high-quality services and tenant satisfaction against the backdrop of rising operational expenses. This has a trickle-down effect on tech decision-making.
Duplication and vendor management
It’s not just about not being fit for purpose, either. Point solutions often share the capabilities of other tech platforms. Perhaps even other solutions that already exist within your property’s tech stack.
Unknowingly, duplicate capabilities are procured from multiple platforms and in no time at all something as simple as creating a tenant list in a shopping centre can become dangerously inaccurate. Multiple departments start producing their own lists on their own systems and data duplication becomes a serious bottleneck within overall tenant experience and communication.
The irony is the fix for a data clean-up becomes manual, and just like that you’re out looking for a tech solution again.
If bottlenecks and irony aren’t enough to get you reaching for your Headspace app, then what about the time wasted managing multiple vendor relationships for solutions that aren’t hitting the mark? With (72%) of businesses citing managing software licences as a major challenge, it’s clear that the more technology you gave, the bigger your business’ risk.
Is growth your goal?
So when we think about the drivers for technological innovation, we’d be foolish to sidestep growth, whether it’s on an asset or portfolio level. This means that owners and operators should be thinking about the scalability of their tech solutions and each solution’s ability to integrate with other must-have software for a seamless workflow.
While point solutions can assume that every property’s requirements are the same, each property has its own challenges, nuances, staff skill levels and team sizes.
The ability to connect and activate the community within the property is streamlined by technology’s ability to integrate. Just think; what would your in-store payment experience be like if checkouts didn’t integrate with card machines? Far from seamless. It’s the same for your internal experiences within your retail destination. Integration is a must and it’s helping commercial spaces offer greater experiences to not just their tenants, but their customers too.
The value of this then becomes the ability to make data-led decisions, and get ahead of the trends or risks that ultimately make or break your portfolio success.
How to engage stakeholders in the need for integration
It’s no secret that the real estate industry is traditionally risk-averse, so getting the green light for new technology investments has its challenges.
But it’s important to consider a longer-term approach, with alignment from those trying to drive tenant engagement and those wanting to drive better NOI at an asset or portfolio level.
Both groups can see their goals achieved, and it’s usually the vertical-specific vendors with expertise in the space that help owners, operators and occupiers make the most out of their tech. At the end of an era for nice-to-have technology, the industry is looking at what is needed instead it’s the enterprise tech stacks best placed to deliver greater efficiencies and return.
Integration is easier than ever. Today you can get the best of both worlds – a point solution backed by an integrated enterprise approach that delivers results.
To find out more about how technology can significantly enhance the NOI of your commercial space, access the Technology Takeover Ebook (form free) below