When I first started in commercial construction at the age of 20, I was one of the few people in my office that used spreadsheets to estimate job costs and run project budgets. The role of technology intrigued me and I soon began to push the limits of my skills. I started applying Excel to every aspect of the business that I could, in order to better capture and analyze data, thus enhancing decision-making by the company president and helping me do my job quicker, easier, and better. From an enterprise perspective, technology in the real estate management field has graduated from the very first Computer-aided Facility Management (CAFM) systems to the Integrated Work Management Systems (IWMS) that we see today. However, these systems have a single vision of managing transactions in a reactive fashion that relies on centralized access by a few knowledgeable professionals. With the rapid advances in technology that we are now witnessing, I envision a new revolution in the way that real estate is managed at the enterprise level.

Think social media, think user empowerment, think crowd-sourced solutions, think cloud-based and mobile app interfaces that is as intuitive as point-and-click. Letting the user interact with the real estate asset, and capturing the data from that interface will focus on the action, not the transaction, and thus integrate a level of sophistication never before seen in this market.

I will continue to edit this post, brainstorming the ways that new technology can transform the way that real estate is managed. If you are an interested reader, I am looking forward to your thoughts on the topic.