What is the Proptech Opportunity?

One of the biggest opportunities at the moment is in making smarter and faster decisions using the huge swathes of data to which real estate organisations have access. The ability to digest, analyse and use Big Data (or even just data) is one of the pain-points that many emerging technology firms are targeting with innovative solutions.

Data-driven decisions allow real estate organisations to improve in areas such as utilisation of space, investment decisions and competitor analysis. However, an opportunity for enormous competitive advantage is in using data to improve customer service to the end users of property – the actual consumers of space.

With efficient and effective data analysis, landlords can respond quickly to their consumers’ rapidly changing needs and deliver superior service. Indeed, they can actually start to predict their consumers’ needs and respond to them before the consumer realises the need themselves. As property increasingly becomes more of a service than a product, this ability will be key to real estate organisations’ survival.

Critically, this doesn’t need to involve large-scale expensive solutions – it’s about taking small steps to understand what data you have, how you can make sense of it, and what information you want it to provide.

Respondents also noted the impact of Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). Arguably, these technologies will make a more significant impact over a five, 10 or 15-year period as they develop. Even though their impact appears to be some way off, organisations ought to consider them now to avoid building obsolescence or expensive retrofitting in future.

In terms of business improvements driven by PropTech, it has greatest emphasis on building performance and costs; and decision-making and customer engagement.

Interestingly given the amount of talk about Blockchain, only 13 percent felt improved speed of transactions due to technological innovation will have the biggest impact on the sector. Whether this is because the industry is yet to get to grips with Blockchain; or is underestimating its impact or feels it simply won’t live up to its hype, remains to be seen.