App-Based Future

Yardi EU Insight

By Matthias Muench on Apr 10, 2019 in Technology

It’s 2019, and safe to say that the world is fully immersed in the digital age. A recent report from Hootsuite claims that 67% of the world’s population are unique mobile users and 57% are internet users.  There are around 4.38 billion users of the web, and 95% of the population of Western Europe has internet access available.

According to the “Manifest 2018 Consumer App Survey,” around 51% of respondents use apps between once and ten times a day. And as of late 2018, there were approximately 4.1 million apps available from the Google Play and Apple App Store.

Consumers have now come to take it for granted that live in a fully digital world.  There is increasingly a sense of expectation, tinged by frustration, when we cannot find a digital application to accomplish a given task. The new norm is an expectation that, within a matter of seconds, we will instantly be able to access and assess millions of pieces of data on almost any topic.

The Internet, the go-to source to conduct research and answer any question serious or frivolous, delivers the ability to arrange and organise our daily lives. Instantaneous research helps us with personal, informed decision-making as well as educating us and helping us make specific lifestyle choices.

The list of life-altering, or some may say, life-enhancing applications are mind-blowing when put in perspective. Take travel as an example. Researching a holiday destination, finding accommodations, sourcing and booking door to door transportation, researching and building your trip itinerary, where you will visit, where you will eat and even checking out the anticipated weather conditions before you pack means you can organise the perfect trip in a short period of time from anywhere.

The list of examples doesn’t end there and is potentially endless. Managing your bank account, ordering groceries and having them delivered by a robot, controlling your heating, lighting, access and home security, finding a pet or child sitter, communicating with a network of friends from across the globe, getting transportation from place to place; the list goes on and on.  This consumer gratification is ultimately delivered by the availability of and easy access to invaluable data. The providers of these many tech-driven services saw their power before they could become realities and created extremely effective strategies that have brought us to a new economy and changed our lives.

So, while we can obtain satisfaction and gratification by utilising the power of data through technology as a consumer, can the same be said where we work, and specifically, in this case, employees, and the role diversity within the real estate industry.

The same quantity of data that is generated and utilised to benefit both consumers and tech companies is also generated behind the scenes in the real estate industry. This is to the benefit of developers, asset and property managers, investors, analysts and many others. From the individual leases, a whole property or an entire portfolio. The amount of data that is available to the real estate industry is voluminous.

In order to provide the same intuitive, app-based, seamless experience at work as in daily life, we must unleash the power of the data. That means creating a single-source-of-truth by centralising business data, making it easily accessible in real-time.

Once the data is in play, the layering of role-based applications, that seamlessly and intentionally connect, provides individuals more efficiency for day-to-day tasks and delivers tremendous value.

Whether an investment, asset or property manager, property marketer, facility manager or site staff member, utilizing role-based applications improves productivity, provides valuable services to tenants and investors, helps improve strategy, enhances reputation, gives a competitive edge and ultimately delivers greater returns.

All of these of applications are designed specifically with the individual employee role in mind, but perhaps more importantly, are designed to be fully connected to utilise the businesses core operational data. Instead of logging into a system and slogging through multiple databases to find the information required to accomplish their tasks, real estate professionals can log onto to a dashboard that takes them straight to what they need to do – and accomplish their jobs faster than ever before.

The real estate industry needs to change its attitude in this new data-driven era. Rather than trying to digitize our way of working today, we need to consider the possibilities of working in an industry where data is abundantly available. How do we want to be informed about issues of relevance to our professional responsibilities? How will these responsibilities change if data that was not previously considered is relevant or even critical?

So how will business models adapt? There are interesting times ahead of us, starting now. The data and the technology are already available today.

Matthias Muench is Yardi’s account executive, Europe, based in Mainz, Germany.