You’ve heard the phrase ‘data is the new oil’ and seen the headlines waxing lyrical about its transformational power and future-proofing potential. However, the industry’s focus on the future is having an impact on its ability to act today.
For many, a question mark remains over how landlords can actually use their data to make everyday leasing and asset management decisions, and what tangible benefits can be achieved.
Aggregating and understanding data can seem daunting. However, once captured, organised and standardised by technologies such as VTS, this information is a powerful business asset, providing actionable insights that drive strategic decisions. And the best part? This data can be deployed now with immediate effect. To demonstrate, let’s walk through two interesting applications: hitting revenue targets and expanding tenant relationships.
For landlords to hit their revenue targets, achieve their portfolio objectives and deliver the returns investors expect, they need to manage their inventory and leasing pipelines strategically and predictably. Yet until now, it’s been impossible to monitor portfolio-wide KPIs and other efficiency metrics required to do this in real time.
Why? Historically, inventory and deal information have been spread across numerous spreadsheets and disconnected systems in an unstandardised way, making real-time analysis impossible and limiting landlords’ visibility of performance.
By using the right technology, this process is greatly simplified. With data tracked centrally and alerts set up to inform you when a critical metric goes off track (for example expiring revenues), you can ensure you meet your revenue targets, predictably and successfully. There is no longer a three-day wait for months-old data – and certainly no need for A3 spreadsheet printouts.
As well as providing essential insight for effective revenue management, data directly affects tenant relationships – one of the most important factors underpinning commercial real estate businesses. Maintaining a positive relationship substantially influences tenants’ decisions to renew, eliminating costly downtime and the additional expense of attracting a new occupier and driving business success.
At present, tenant updates, comments and feedback are delivered directly to property managers or stored in the minds of tenured team members. This valuable information isn’t passed along, or acted on, and businesses risk losing high-value tenants or miss opportunities to optimise the tenant experience.
By effectively managing data points such as tenant sentiment or even one-off interactions, landlords can act on real-time insights to renew the right tenants more proactively and even identify opportunities to accelerate new deals. The list is endless.
It is therefore crucial to understand how to put your data to use today. With software, you can transform how you create new strategies for assets, accelerate leasing cycles and engage with tenants throughout the entire value chain and full lifecycle of a building. The time to tap into your data is now.
Ryan Masiello is co-founder and chief strategy officer at VTS
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