What We Saw at Realcomm 2013

Last month, the 15th annual Realcomm event was held in Orlando, Florida.  The event brings together commercial and corporate real estate professionals each year to explore the latest technology tools and innovations available to our industry.  As an industry leader, we've taken note of the key trends/discussion points from the conference and here is what we see:

Analytics and Data Tracking
Creating more efficient processes, and saving time and money to aggregate data in a way that new insights are unveiled.

Vendor Neutrality
Ensuring broad compatibility and interchangeability of products and technologies while  promoting standardization, non-proprietary design principles and unbiased business practices.

Mobility
With the real estate world going mobile, the need to bring traditional functions into a fast moving anywhere/anytime world is increasing daily. Mobile application development and integration into existing business processes is increasing at a very fast pace, keeping real estate IT departments and third party developers busy just trying to keep up. Developing mobile functionality for corporate staff, property managers, leasing agents, engineers, tenants and visitors requires a careful approach.

Browser Neutrality
The ability to view websites and information without regard to a particular company's browser

Social Monitoring
Social media has shaken up the world of business by offering up valuable raw data.  It is imperative that companies become familiar with and utilize tools that can mine and analyze this data to help them make intelligent business decisions.

Digital Brand Protection
Your brand is the symbol of your company's identity and is associated with the quality of your products and services.  Your brand needs to be protected against misuse and miscommunication by customers, competitors, employees or any other third parties.

Security
Privacy issues are growing more complex. With data aggregation increasing at an exponential rate and technical tools becoming more sophisticated. Browser tracking, social media content, e-mails and audio scanning, video capture and GPS tracking, all create a number of potential privacy issues.

Visualization and Automation

Like every other industry, the commercial real estate industry is dependent on a number of general technologies to keep its organizations running efficiently and effectively, but one thing is for sure, we are ready for it.