On 25th February 2020, our Client Services Director, Johnnie Sims, was invited to appear on a panel discussion at Bisnow’s London Investment Agenda 2020. The subject of Johnnie’s panel was ‘Optimising Property & Portfolio Efficiency’
We were delighted to be invited to take part, not only to share our own unique insights on the subject at hand but also to learn what others are thinking about when it comes to portfolio efficiency in commercial real estate.
We were so pleased to be part of this panel discussion because we knew that we could contribute a slightly different perspective than the other guests, a list which included James Saunders, CEO of Quintain, and Anne Copeland, Fund Manager at Kames Capital, because we’re not making investment decisions; we’re helping acquisition and investment teams to streamline their decision-making process.
It was also really interesting to hear how these investment and portfolio experts are approaching their roles in the age of digital transformation, and the ways in which they hope technology can help create a more transparent, and sustainable portfolio for themselves and their clients.
To offer a very quick overview of the comprehensive discussion, we can look again at one of the very first questions of the day, and then one of the last.
A couple of the most interesting panel questions…
One of the first questions to be asked was: How are tech and smart solutions helping to optimise investment decisions and your strategy?
Judging by the answers which came in from the panel, there are four key ways in which professionals are using tech in their decision-making and strategy.
First, they want their data to be stored in, and accessible from, one central location. This location must be available at all times and from anywhere in the world. This makes Coyote’s cloud-based solution for acquisition and asset managers an ideal solution.
Second, there is a desire among investment professionals to utilise third-party data in order to place their own portfolio with the wider context of local or global real estate investment. Such a context enables managers to work with more relevant and insightful information.
To this end, Coyote integrates with the following data providers, all of which add a little more detail and colour to an asset manager’s picture of their portfolio.
- Radius data exchange (comparable investment transactions & leasing transactions evidence)
- Nimbus Maps (Land Registry data, Ordnance Survey data)
- Infabode (Market news, reports & research)
- WiredScore (Connectivity ratings)
Another much-debated subject on the Bisnow panel was workflow management – the tracking of tasks, workflows, and reporting.
For a long time, these processes required being completed manually, taking up a significant amount of resources. Tech solutions like Coyote, however, are able to semi-automate these manual processes, increasing operational efficiency across acquisition and asset management teams.
In summary, we put all of the important data in one place, provide access to additional contextual data (and insight), and reduce manual tasks throughout the ownership lifecycle.
It was agreed by the panel that this sort of technology application is speeding up the process of investment decisions, as well as reducing the amount of risk involved all around.
One of the final questions given to the panel concerned the availability of tech solutions currently on the market, focussed on commercial real estate.
While there is a lot of tech on the CRE market now, as a consumer, it can be incredibly hard to cut through the noise – that’s one of our biggest takeaways from the panel.
As a company, we have always taken the approach of collaboration-integrating with best-in-class technology providers to offer the features and the tools that most comprehensively meet our clients’ needs by delivering better connectivity and compatibility with existing systems.
