smarttechnology
PROPELLING PROPTECH Focus Evolves from Cost Savings to Revenue Generation CANADIAN REAL ESTATE companies lag somewhat behind their global peers in the uptake of the IT and data-based technologies and services collectively labelled as proptech. Analysis of recent survey data from 188 companies worldwide shows Canadian respondents generally in sync with prevailing views of proptech potential, but still at a relatively early stage of recognizing and pursuing the full range of opportunities it could deliver. “Canadian real estate companies are awakening to the digital era, albeit a bit slowly,” concludes Saqib Jawed, Partner and Proptech Lead with KPMG in Canada. “Historically, it’s been a conservative industry, but companies can no longer afford a wait-and-see approach,” asserts Lorne Burns, National Lead with KPMG Canada’s building, construction and real estate group. 30 April 2020 | Canadian Property Management
Those observations are a prelude to a snapshot of Canadian attitudes and proptech initiatives — drawn from and compared against the complete findings of last fall’s global proptech survey from KPMG — which suggests proptech is more piecemeal than strategically deployed in many cases, hindering the capacity to integrate data collection and interpretation. KPMG analysts also urge companies to better harness proptech for tenant services and to more aggressively address cyber-security vulnerability. As an optimistic starting point, Canadian companies boast universal buy-in with 100% of participating companies reporting that they have a staff position dedicated to leading digital transformation and innovation. For more than two-thirds of companies, a senior executive, defined as “C-suite level or equivalent”, fulfills the role.
Yet, progressing to the seemingly logical next step, just 36% of Canadian real estate companies have developed and implemented a formal digital strategy and just 8% have done so enterprise-wide. That’s significantly divergent from the global survey results, which reveal 58% have a digital strategy and 29% of companies have rolled them out across their entire enterprise. Analysts see reverberations in companies’ self-assessment of their degree of systems integration, fulsomeness of there data strategies and their cyber preparedness — noting that companies with a digital strategy are more advanced in all cases. FRAGMENTED SYSTEMS The global average score for systems integration was a rather unimpressive 5.4 out of 10, but Canadian companies scored themselves even more critically. An average of 4.7 out of 10 was lower than other
