What is the future of your real estate ecosystem?

When the pandemic struck two years ago, almost overnight, office workers switched to remote working and PropTech made the mainstream press, quickly becoming a business imperative. Once the real estate industry overcame the initial disruption and became comfortable mobilising teams to work remotely, attention turned to mitigating future costs and driving efficiencies, with the main objective to work smarter and drive profit.

Senior stakeholders across workplace, operations, and real estate management required a significant shift in how they effectively managed their teams. They began leaving their office doors ajar, encouraging regular feedback from their staff, with the entire workforce striving to come together as a unit with less focus on titles and hierarchy. “Do or die” was the attitude, and it brought about a positive culture, leaving everyone committed to the same cause.

Mission accomplished? Not quite. Whilst everyone may now be focussed on the same goals, the general technology behind these efforts is still not up to speed. Technology continues to move forward at a pace we have all grown used to (Facebook did not exist 20 years ago and now is closing in on two billion active users each day), so why should we as a real estate community not demand the same innovations?

The expectation of having the freedom of choice in ensuring your technology strategy stays aligned with your fluid real estate priorities is being met already, but it is key that your software provider works around you.

Business priorities change constantly – how can my workplace management solution be more flexible?

MRI Software have redefined the traditional IWMS concept to improve long-term, strategic property and portfolio management.

XWMS, our interoperable cloud-based ecosystem, gives you the power to decide how to optimise your business across operations, workplace, and real estate management, and to leverage certain functions or specific solutions suited to your needs.

Take control of your real estate portfolio with technology that enables you to incorporate third-party and partner solutions to create an ecosystem that scales as the business evolves.

Hybrid workforce is key – How do I build a strategy through the adoption of XWMS?

Planning and modifying your hybrid workspaces based on current compliance and trends is business critical, but how well do each of your business units communicate and have oversight on the process?

The XWMS approach provides an ecosystem for your space planners, finance team, and business leads to deliver.

• Space Planners understand the true cost of employees across various locations, considering utilisation of spaces.
• Finance have the ability to perform portfolio benchmarking across your real estate footprint with space utilisation metrics.
• Business leads are able to identify new opportunities to repurpose and sublet space to drive additional revenue streams for the business.

ESG planning is here to stay, but I don’t know where to start – Can XWMS help me?

There is a renewed focus on energy and resource allocation for safety and price control – we all have our part to play.

• Facilities Managers have a focus on sustainability and want to effortlessly collect and analyse key performance metrics (i.e., LEED, GRESP) to help with evaluating and maintaining certification levels.
• Lease Accounting teams are targeting cost savings and want to mitigate the likely growth of energy prices by having oversight on usage and diversifying energy types consumed.
• Business leads crave the strong position to review investment total cost of ownership and overall corporate positioning to determine ROI and access levels to different capital.

Can XWMS support the increased oversight into financial compliance?

New updates to lease compliance standards lead to increased need for coordination. Finance teams and C-suite members have IFRS 16 and ASC 842 fresh in their mind, and there are solutions to help them address that burden.

• Use AI-driven automation of data/onboarding entry processes​ to store critical leasing information for financial compliance.
• Find and correct inaccuracies and meet your obligations, including new lease accounting standards​ utilising the expertise from your software partner of choice.
• Business owners can then rely on the infrastructure in place to identify inaccurate costs of your leases through AI data validation, keeping your landlord accountable to the contract, often saving costs.

2022: Evolving technology and the year XWMS goes mainstream

With 5G networks still being deployed around the world and many areas of the globe still using 4G and even 3G networks, it seems a bit early to throw around the term 6G when considering technology, but it is not too soon to insist on an open and connected infrastructure that reduces your real estate cost and provides an environment for your organisation to drive profit.

By leveraging an interoperable cloud-based solution, your team can better serve the increasingly sophisticated and unique needs of corporate real estate, accounting, workplace and facilities workstreams.

Take control of the technology that manages your real estate portfolio by leveraging MRI’s suite of products, our dedicated partner solutions, or third-party products, and create an ecosystem that scales with your growing business. By taking a fluid approach to your lease, workplace, and operations management, you can use comprehensive technology solutions to make critical decisions for your real estate portfolio. Learn more about XWMS in this webinar.