Meeting C-Suite Demand for CRE Digital Transformation

The financial services sector has long since embraced technology for online banking and customer experience, investment insights and decision making, back-office automation, in-store retail banking experience and much more. Yet, financial services corporate real estate (CRE) departments are still lagging behind other support functions in their digital transformation journeys. By creating an integrated technology strategy, however, a CRE team can use data-driven outcomes to reduce a company’s operating costs, optimize existing technology systems, create consumer trust, understand the needs of its workforce and achieve numerous other critical-to-business outcomes.

Several obstacles keep CRE teams from making decisions on technology and business process outsourcing that drive positive change. Data is foundational—but creating a data architecture and governance process seems daunting and expensive when it involves the complicated integration of disparate technologies. “CRE leaders are drawn to advanced technologies and AI as they recognize how fast digital innovation is sweeping across every function of Financial Services, but they often struggle to find the right starting point,” said Mike Sandridge, Head of Technology and Client Solutions, Financial Services Work Dynamics, JLL.

Additionally, the regulatory environment coupled with cybersecurity and data protection risk make this industry’s digital transformation journey particularly nuanced.

Building the business case for investment can be challenging without expert input, whereas other aspects of capital planning —like replacing outdated equipment— are much easier to defend. But without prioritizing technology strategy, “data-driven” is not possible, and the application of advanced artificial intelligence becomes a pipe dream.

All financial services organizations have technology in place, but that technology (and the data it produces) is almost always disconnected and not delivering optimal business value. To achieve transformative data outcomes, it’s critical to pull all the siloed information together, build rigor to make that information completely reliable, and most importantly, align and apply it to clear business objectives.

Start with the ground floor

Because of the vast options available for integrating diverse technology ecosystems and implementing large-scale technology transformations, CRE digital strategy is inherently complex and nuanced. As a starting point, consider the following key steps.

1) Prioritize your desired outcomes. Given the plethora of technology options available, focus on what your CRE team wants to accomplish and how technology can enable that outcome. For instance, you might seek to create more accurate capital plans; reduce your energy costs; identify and pursue relocation, consolidation or expansion opportunities; or reshape your administrative offices to more effectively support hybrid working and shrink your CRE footprint. You may want to determine which assets should be updated versus exited or sold. Or you may be looking beyond the challenges of today and wondering how predictive analytics can help you anticipate the CRE requirements of tomorrow. Most CRE leaders would say, “all of this is important”, but giving priority to the desired outcomes is a critical step that will bring focus to an initial roadmap and business case.

2) Optimize the technology you have. Perhaps your CRE team has implemented a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) or one or two modules of an integrated workplace management system (IWMS)—but you have not fully tapped its potential. CRE team members may not know how to use all the advanced functions of the technology and how they will benefit your business goals. Investing in engagements like system health checks and adoption training helps identify technology underutilization and quickly overcome obstacles to maximize capabilities of existing technology investments.

3) Assess your current technology state and identify gaps. Prioritizing outcomes will, in turn, help you identify and prioritize areas where technology gaps exist in your current state capabilities. For example, if you want to compare energy costs for all assets across your CRE portfolio, you’ll need tools to capture and analyze building performance data. If you want to reshape your administrative workplaces around hybrid work patterns, you’ll need a way to track when and how your workplaces are being used, and identify peak and off-peak days and times. If you want more accurate and effective capital planning, you’ll need a platform and methodology for capturing and ranking maintenance requirements.

4) Future-proof your CRE with a technology roadmap. Having identified priority outcomes and gaps in your current technology ecosystem, you’ll be positioned to create a list of technology needs and a time-based plan or roadmap upon which to meet those needs. The technology roadmap will focus on your priorities and a make a business case for each priority project. Be prepared, as an integrated data platform will be foundational as driving powerful analytics and decision-making means leveraging an ecosystem of data captured by IWMS, smart building management systems, wireless sensors for occupancy data, and much more. A strategic technology roadmap will help make sense of it all from the foundational elements up to application to business process.

Advancing toward new CRE models

Ideally, the new roadmap will not only address today’s priorities, but allow CRE departments to look to the future and make decisions with confidence. For instance, some facilities management (FM) teams are responding to hybrid working by shifting from a traditional to a dynamic service model, driven by real-time data about when, how and where employees are working in the office on any given day. With insights into the days, times and seasons of peak occupancy, an FM team can focus janitorial services on the most active areas, or explore closing one or two elevators, or an entire floor, on low-occupancy Mondays and Fridays.

Many CRE teams lack the internal expertise necessary to navigate numerous technology options and build a technology ecosystem that aligns with their intended objectives. Often, the easiest way to develop a compelling business case for investing in a cohesive technology strategy, is to partner with a technology advisor who understands the unique challenges of Corporate Real Estate and can align your current systems with future integrations. Furthermore, they can assist you not only in building a thorough technology program strategy, but also in successfully implementing and optimizing your CRE systems operationally. Through a holistic technology program, your CRE team can accelerate the pace of transformation.

Contact us to start your integrated technology journey.