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how quickly Brookfield has and continues to grow, will
enable us to learn from our experiences and move much
faster than we are able to do today.

What were the major technology projects you
started or completed last year?
Last year, Brookfield completed two of the largest real
estate acquisitions in the world when they acquired both
GGP and Forest City. This increased Brookfield’s retail port-
folio by 121 million square feet; and Forest City’s acquisition
included a diverse portfolio of assets including large mixed-
use development assets, over 18,500 multi-family units
and over 10 million square feet of office, life sciences and
retail operating assets. Given these acquisitions, the biggest
focus has been integrating these into the Brookfield world.
For the Retail (GGP) platform, the goal is to consolidate our
U.S. based retail operations into one common technology
platform that includes our IT infrastructure and applications
such as the property management and accounting system
ANNETTE PRATER (JD Edwards), CRM system (Salesforce), digital shopper
EVP, HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY technologies and all of the ancillary systems. Much of this
& INNOVATION work has been completed with the final migration milestone
slated for later this spring. Forest City’s integration is very
BROOKFIELD PROPERTIES different than the Retail integration because that portfolio
has a variety of property types including multi-family, life
sciences, mixed used developments, office buildings, and
Annette Prater, Executive Vice President and Head of retail. Our goal is to move each unique property sector’s
Technology and Innovation at Brookfield Properties, is operations into the relevant Brookfield operating entity and
responsible for technology strategy, data and innovation migrate the technology accordingly. Simply put, it is like four
across Brookfield Properties’ 14 operating companies different integrations in one.
and regions. Her prior roles included three years as CIO
for GGP, a Chicago-based retail REIT that was acquired Another strategic initiative we’re working on for the office
by Brookfield in 2018, and eighteen years at JLL, one of and retail portfolios is a tenant engagement platform to
the world’s largest global real estate services firms. provide tenants with a digital experience in our buildings.
Whether that’s being able to enter and exit the building
Tell us about your role within your organization. using your digital devices as opposed to traditional key
I’ve recently started my new role at Brookfield and I’m cards; arrange food delivery or attend an exercise class;
very excited about the opportunity to collaborate with our find discounts or notices on cultural or art events—it’s a
teams across all of our property sectors around the globe. way for people to interact all day long because they can
literally live, shop and work within our buildings.
This is the first time the company has had someone in
this role across all of the real estate entities. Brookfield For the office portfolio, we’ve been rolling out standards
has always had a very collaborative, entrepreneurial related to property management, accounting, and leas-
spirit within each of our operating companies, which has ing solutions, which included a rollout of Yardi, VTS and
allowed us to respond to trends and change quickly, but Argus Enterprise. We’ve also been working with Honest
in a decentralized manner. There is growing recognition Buildings on capital and budget management. We have
that we need to improve synergies across platforms and seen significant time and development costs savings by
better leverage our scale, specifically around data and being able to see different pricing across the market and
technology innovation—the ability to analyze, consume take advantage of discounts by leveraging our size and
and act on data and trends across our entire platform is scale. There’s been amazing work done to consolidate
very powerful. Building for that future, particularly given systems and run in a more standardized way across

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