2003 - Tech is Back! Commercial Real Estate Giants Focusing on Automation

Author: Realcomm Staff Writer

Each week until the conference in June, the Realcomm Advisory will focus on the leaders and innovators in our industry. Best practices, leading-edge ideas and the redefinition of our business processes including design, development, marketing, management, transaction and the use of Commercial Real Estate will be highlighted in this Advisory.

Over the last 4 years, we have seen a tremendous evolution of how Commercial Real Estate firms have used technology to re-engineer our business practices, automate our buildings and bring new meaning to meeting tenant needs and demands.

1999 – The first year of Realcomm we saw a bigger than expected crowd and, for the most part, saw the true visionaries and innovators of our industry. The idea of web-based work order management was first introduced and was, in some cases, scoffed at. While they may not have known it at the time, these forward-thinkers and their visions created the foundation for the re-engineering of our industry.

2000 – Dot.com was starting to heat up and new companies with out-of-the-box ideas were popping up everywhere. The problem was, as we saw with the general tech sector, there were too many ideas with too few good business plans. Everyone wanted to jump on the Dot.com bandwagon, hoping for a piece of the new Commercial Real Estate "Tech" industry.

2001 – The craziness continued, but the warning signs were there. Still no solid business plans, just funding and a great board of directors. By the middle of 2001, the spreadsheet projections were evaporating, adoption predictions imploding and visions of riches were gone. By the end of the year tech was out and old business models were back in favor. At the end of the day, the Commercial Real Estate "Tech" sector lost over 2 billion dollars!

2002 – Post 911 impacts and a struggling economy added to the industry's indifference to automation. Although making progress, most innovation in 2002 was being done by the true believers, the innovators. Perhaps they were inspired by Jack Welch, who suggested that during down times companies should "..reinvest, reinvent, redefine and surprise the competition when good times return."

2003 – This year could prove to be a milestone year in our relatively young industry. Real Estate Technology, or more accurately, Real Estate Automation is poised for accelerated adoption. This will be different than the past, this time it will be more deliberate, based on good business models and delivered by experienced industry professionals.

The reason we know this to be true is because the smartest, most successful companies in our industry never stopped paying attention to the benefits that the Internet and technology solutions promised. Over the last couple of years, companies like Equity Office, Jones Lang LaSalle, GMAC Commercial, Hewlett Packard and Cisco have in fact been quietly reinventing our industry. A great amount of financial and intellectual capital has been invested in the rethinking of everything from signing a lease on-line to connecting a smoke detection system to the Internet.

This Week's Sponsor:

2003 will be known as the year the Commercial Real Estate industry really got serious about the Internet, Business Solutions, Technology and automation in general. The results are real, the return on investment is extraordinary and the feedback from the tenants is favorable.

Click here if you have an Innovative Case Study and are interested in speaking at Realcomm 2003!

Next Week: 21st Century Buildings..Trophy Redefined