Creating a Comprehensive PropTech Strategy

Within the Prop Tech space, it’s easy to be confused by the myriad of system and service offerings. While there are hundreds of startup companies providing various services and solutions, institutional owners want and need a unified technology strategy. With a focused and comprehensive strategy, they can:

• Better control the factors that impact the performance of their investments
• Improve cumbersome business processes between investors and partners
• Make sense of the overwhelming array of technology solutions
• Work towards achieving world-class operational capability

So how do you get started?

Get focused

Institutional owners must have technology solutions to cover everything from leasing to occupancy to investor reporting. Rather than searching and shopping for individual point solutions, it’s best to create a technology “road map” under which senior management and the entire organization can get aligned. This strategic road map does not, in itself, drive asset performance, but it can help to:

• Optimize all processes related to commercial real estate investment operations, asset management and portfolio management
• Plan for macro-level strategic optimization and micro-level, system-based process design
• Enable more agile investment with less operational stress
• Provide data transparency intended to support decisions that drive better investor returns

Dive deep

The following four-step process helps develop a deep understanding of what’s currently in place and where the issues and challenges are, so you can create a new path forward and deliver either an executable plan or the solution requirement.

• Define First, confirm objectives, scope, roles, timing and deliverables. Make sure to clarify the business drivers and measurable goals relative to the current initiative. Once resources have been identified and assigned to agreed roles, establish a project work plan.
• Discover Conduct a cross-functional and/or departmentally-facilitated session for each included region/business unit. It’s essential to review the current state environment, tools, protocols, processes, reporting and organization. Then, identify primary system utilizations and key interdependencies.
• Design Perform a detailed analysis on in-scope areas, between the current state assessment and the planned future state. Get a baseline against leading industry methodologies, best practices, tools and processes. Identify cross-process data flows, workflows and dependencies, as well as improvement opportunities. Finally, conduct cross-functional and/or departmental future state design workshops to maximize user input and insight from all levels.
• Deliver Create a deliverable preparation and project team review, presenting the plan for implementation and rollout to both project and executive teams. Establish a plan of actualization for agreed-upon recommendations and finalize any project deliverables (which can include findings, project plans, future state documents, road maps, etc.).

And don’t forget…

A critical component of any project’s success is strong project management—including effective communication, risk management, financial management, and change management. Weekly project status meetings and a monthly steering committee meeting should be attended by all project sponsors and stakeholders.

Work with a leader

With the recent acquisition of Hipercept, RealPage® is now uniquely positioned to provide institutional real estate owners with data services, data analytic solutions, and multi-year operational and technology road maps. Together, RealPage Asset & Investment Management (AIM) and Hipercept plan to expand these service offerings through specialized strategic advisory services (SAS). RealPage’s SAS offerings can be delivered at any point in a company’s growth and development. Our consultants have delivered end-to-end, multi-year technology road maps in partnership with some of the world’s largest real estate investors—businesses that have been able to scale faster and achieve prolific growth and performance in comparison to their peers. Whether a company has just started to think about reviewing their technology strategy, or they are about to implement a strategy and require validation, or they are mid-implementation and need assistance, the team of consultants at RealPage can immediately provide value-added support to help make even the most challenging real estate vision a reality. Learn more about RealPage Asset & Investment Management.