Nearly two-thirds of corporate occupiers (62 percent) plan to increase their investment in real estate technology over the next three years, most of them in the next year, according to the 2018 EMEA Occupier Survey from CBRE. Companies are intending to invest more heavily in new real estate technologies over the short to medium term in order to enhance the user experience and raise workforce productivity. This represents a clear move away from aiming real estate technology at purely operational goals such as energy management.
The technologies being employed include wayfinding apps, connected sensors, wearables and personal environment control systems. Room or seat reservation systems and sensors are also being increasingly adopted to support improvements in space efficiency.
The wellness agenda has evolved into a core pillar of real estate strategy. Four out of five occupiers have, or plan to introduce, wellness programs and an even higher proportion have some degree of preference for wellness enabled/capable buildings. This is supporting a range of innovative approaches to delivering and measuring wellness, including broadening and adapting the offer and seeking to measure the impacts.
Other findings of the report include:
- 45 percent of businesses expect to have significant use of flexible offices by 2021
- Nearly half of companies (47 percent) will be looking to hire data scientists
- 92 percent of companies have a preference for wellness capable buildings
Richard Holberton, Head of EMEA occupier research at CBRE said: “These changes will place new demands on management of the real estate asset, entailing a shift towards better service levels and more consumerisation. This is effectively a growing fusion of workplace and service, reflected in widespread plans to hire new skills such as data scientists and digital information officers.