The world of modern technology has resulted in an interesting side-effect: more people have a sophisticated view of the interconnected-ness of things.
In CRE organizations across the world and industries there is a growing realization that they exist in the middle of everything their business does and that they are responsible for more than just delivering space. Typically CRE organizations have been responsible for:
- Finding space.
- Fitting out space.
- Maintaining existing space.
More commonly they are becoming responsible for:
- Workplace Strategies: work-from-home, seat sharing, contractor management.
- Business Strategy: identify new markets that could be tapped for customers or employees.
- Business Management: get Business Units to collaborate and coexist in shared space.
- Sourcing and Procurement: manage facility vendors and spend.
- Finance and Tax Strategy: incentives negotiations, FASB rule management, ensure business compliance.
- Risk Management: plan for business growth/change in every single market.
- Benchmarking: show performance of the business/portfolio against competitors and the market.
And people wonder why your typical corporate real estate person works 25 hour days! Real Estate is in the middle of everything. Businesses couldn’t operate without it and they can’t get it without the people who know how to deal with it.
Thus, this is why this is the first driver of change for CRE service providers.
If you cannot help a corporate real estate manager with everything they do you cannot be a long-term solution for them.
Yes, there will be plenty of smaller opportunities to work with them and help them but you will never actually help them do their full job better. A real estate firm of the future must have a comprehensive and consolidated platform in order to provide a full range of services.
The words comprehensive and consolidated are used intentionally. You must be able to do everything. But it must be under one single umbrella (pricing plan) because every company is going to need a custom solution. Some will not need any FM. Others my not need Labor Planning. But every company will need some combination of the services and they don’t want to have 10 contracts and pricing plans – they want 1.
3 years from now real estate organizations will be much better at talking to and providing comprehensive real estate services – or there will be new competitors that can. But this leads to an interesting change because it means that Real Estate organizations will be the most complete and powerful outsourcing organizations on the planet – regardless of industry.
In 3 years there will be at least one CRE firm that is spoken of the same way the Deloitte is (although it could very well be Deloitte or Ernst & Young).