Importance of communications in delivering tech equity

Giles Barrie, Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting, explains how communications can help achieve tech equity in Locale's 'Tech Equity in Real Estate'. In a former life as editor of Property Week, our team treated technology as an editorial backwater, hidden away at the back of our magazine as a means of
generating classified advertising.

Monthly features titled “Software” or “Technology” were good money-spinners, but it is fair to say that the great issues of the day, like the mid-noughties boom and the subsequent Global Financial Crisis in 2008, dominated our discussions far more. Reporting on the collapse in fortunes of RBS, HBOS and Lehman captivated our writers far more than what none of us would see as another big theme that would unfold through the 2010s and which caught us and many in real estate unawares.

This was the very belated rise through the decade of technology in real estate which has culminated in the last two years with the completion in London of some of the smartest office developments in the world. And it’s not only in office development that technology has asserted itself in real estate: all the big agencies have committed themselves to a digital transformation and there are myriad new entrepreneurs in the sector who have transformed the debate over its future.

People like Pi Labs founder Faisal Butt, who uses venture capital to support the growth of fledgling PropTech businesses, have opened real estate’s eyes to tech’s possibilities and are supported by some of the sector’s most influential companies. Faisal is also a great communicator, and here I want to explain what I see as the power of communications in the establishment of the PropTech sector and, with the help of FTI Consulting, research the direction of travel next.
There is no doubt that by the mid-2010s, the real estate world was looking for something new: maybe it was embarrassment that the rise of the smartphone and the ubiquity of Amazon had changed lives, but the most inquisitive real estate companies wanted a new edge. Cue the rise – in some cases from the United States – of a new breed of PropTech entrepreneurs who looked and acted differently and spoke a different language from many of property’s established players and entranced some of the real estate media straight away.

Some of it was smoke and mirrors—and in PropTech continues to be—but PropTech players succeeded in building their reputations by holding up a mirror to the staid property world and persuading them to update what they do quickly. This has also had the effect of seeing established PropTech players invited into the boardrooms of developers and owners, shaking them out of treating technology as a backwater just as we used to at Property Week.
So far, so good, and the UK real estate world of 2023 is now dramatically different from 2013 when I left Property Week. CRETech itself is a testament
to this. But having established itself as a real estate force, what are the keys to continuing PropTech’s growth through powerful communications? The answer, inevitably, is through digital.

Last month, we published The Power of Communications: Unlocking Growth Through Digital Transformation, based on research conducted in January among C-suite and senior managers of companies with more than seven million workers and generating $1 trillion in global revenue. Our key findings were:

• Businesses who have completed a digital transformation say on average, their turnover is double despite having a similar size
employee base
• Data-powered communications are critical to getting this transformation right
• Positioning the CO as the figurehead of a digital transformation is key to the process
• The ability to use analytics to measure reputational impact and adapt when necessary is crucial
• And having reputational data holds the key to success: if you can’t measure, you can’t succeed
We believe that as companies make their digital transformation, engagement with media and commentators to communicate proactively on the journey is crucial.

Engagement with internal audiences is vital, as is the understanding of the cultural and behavioural changes required for a successful digital
transformation.

Only 31% of the businesses we polled have completed a digital transformation, and I would estimate that the figure is lower in real estate. Never underestimate the power of technology: from personal experience, its impact is always greater than first anticipated – and as you absorb the implications, our advice is always to explain fully and capitalise on tech’s huge inherent advantages.

And in real estate, I cannot agree more with Locale that the concept of tech equity should be paramount. It is crucial that all the UK’s properties become not only fit for purpose but as smart as possible technologically – anything less will hold us back as a sector and as a nation.