Buzz subject: Buzz

We talk a lot about how our buildings need to know us, to anticipate our needs before we even say them. But, how much do we know about our buildings? How much do we know their staff, their owners, and their vendors? How much do we know about who is in a building with us or what condition it is in? The fact of the matter is that we know next to nothing about our buildings except for the small […]

Sensative comment: A lot of the information discussed in this article is actually something that can be retrieved automatically through IoT and published in the building app for the tenant’s benefit. Contact us for a discussion about the possibilities.

Taking the digital leap

Before the crisis, the real estate industry had been moving toward digitizing processes and creating digitally enabled services for tenants and users. Practically overnight, physical distancing and the lockdown of physical spaces have magnified the importance of digitization, particularly by measures such as tenant and customer experience.

Within residential real estate, players that have invested in digital sales and leasing processes—using virtual open houses and showings; augmented and virtual reality; and omnichannel, targeted, ad personalized sales—will more quickly allow their residents to find the right space for themselves.

When an operator may have to keep its amenity spaces closed for months, creating a differentiated experience will necessarily involve a suite of digital-first products and experiences: telehealth, on-demand delivery and concierge services, virtual communities, contactless access for residents, guests, and maintenance staff, and much more.

As more users adopt these digital-first products and services, users’ expectations will be raised, and players that provide a differentiated post-crisis experience will stay ahead of the curve. These digital offerings will pay dividends in the form of superior loyalty and the ability to create brand new revenue streams while better meeting the needs of tenants and end-users.

Sensative comment: Most of these digital-first products involve the efficient use of IoT technologies, well-integrated with legacy systems into a seamless stream of data. A challenge though can be the multiple incompatible environments caused by vendor lock-ins and different technologies of different ages in the multi-property portfolio. This is the reason behind Yggio, our IoT integration middleware platform, or operating system for Smart Buildings.

Tenant engagement has recently taken the commercial real estate industry by storm, grabbing headlines, deploying customer pilots, and raising large amounts of capital to bring the tenant-landlord relationship to the 21st century. They seem to have caught on first with office buildings, places where tenants demand a lot of their surroundings and have had the least amount of control over historically. The story behind tenant engagement technology is quite inspirational: giving a way for tenants to communicate with their landlords, […]

Sensative take: adding new technologies should not be regarded as adding new features. New technologies can and will change your whole business, how your customers will perceive you and your product (building), and what they will be willing to pay for. It is about what your vision is as a company, not just developing new apps.