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dardized our CRM, investor portal, and our transaction track-
ing into a single platform. As Argus Enterprise is replacing
Argus DCF, Dyna and Argus ValCap around the world, we are
standardizing on that platform to allow us to easily share our
forecasting models. As needed regionally, we’ve augmented
these three key systems with other tools such as VTS and
Honest Buildings and we’re working toward integrating these
systems, so our users only have to enter the data once.

You’ve had great success navigating this huge
undertaking. What do you see as the inherent
challenges—the industry gaps that need attention? 222 Exhibition St. in Melbourne, Australia is an award-winning
office building for sustainability.
Probably the biggest area is that we now have this informa-
tion in a nice consolidated form; but how do we provide that
data in a way that is usable by different types of individu- limits, do we need parking garages in the middle of the city
als? Users have different needs and requirements; perhaps anymore?
they even desire a different user interface depending on
their particular function. What tools provide those capa- Another is connectivity at the properties. When everything’s
bilities? People want their information to be accessible to connected via the internet, the information that you can get
them in an easy, intuitive way. out of building operations as well as tenant data is valuable.
The vast majority of Proptech dollars are going towards
What is LaSalle doing to close that gap? tools to be used at the buildings. Many new technologies
We’re leveraging tools like Spreadsheet Server and Workiva in our industry are focused on improving the tenant experi-
Wdesk. Spreadsheet Server is an Excel-based add-on tool ence and making the building operations more sustainable.
that allows you to slice and dice financial data easily. It’s
popular because our people know Excel, and they don’t Another area is Blockchain, which hasn’t taken off in a big
have to rekey data from the operational source system. way yet—but I can see its potential in the near term. It will
They can use Excel and at the same time trust the data. likely prove to be viable at the acquisition and financing level.
Similarly, with Wdesk the data is coming in directly from our In addition, some players are tokenizing assets around the
Yardi system and populates a reporting template that can world. It’s interesting, but still a small market. I believe for
be easily and quickly modified. tokenization to really take off, it’s going to have to be sanc-
tioned by some regulatory authority. Until then, I don’t think
Our next step is to push the data from our various systems institutions are going to feel that the investment is safe.
into a standardized data warehouse and layer on BI tools to
allow us to significantly increase our data analytics capa- Finally, of course, is cybersecurity. I spend more time on
bility. We’ve done a lot of the really heavy lifting in getting cybersecurity than ever before, and that time increases
data centralized and in standardized formats. Now we need every year. Whether it’s security within your company net-
to continuously ensure it’s clean and made available to our work, or in a building, or how a building connects to the
people in a usable format—that’s our number one priority. Internet; these are all huge areas of focus now, especially
as more and more information is put into the cloud.
What are your other technology priorities in 2019?
We’re working on a strategy to identify data needs; both You’ve been in the industry a long time. How has tech-
internal and external. We want to provide demographic, nology affected how you spend your time and focus?
economic, operational and financial data, so that our We’ve actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about this
acquisitions and research teams or our asset and portfolio as an organization. Historically, as an IT professional, most
teams can combine and analyze the findings—helping them of my job was making sure that our people were able to
to make good decisions at both the asset and investment utilize technology to make them more efficient and effec-
levels. That’s a focus for 2019 and beyond. tive in their jobs. That’s been a standard throughout my
career because that’s what technology historically was
What are the trends you see in your industry? meant to do. I think now, in addition to enhancing employee
Obvious trends include autonomous cars, robotics and AI; efficiency, the emphasis is much more on the data being
all of those things are going to have tremendous impact on captured and how to combine that data to help us make
the real estate business. If cars can park outside the city decisions.

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RC19 EDGE Spring All but Covers - final - 19APR.indd 58 4/19/19 3:17 PM