Are you feeling the effects of poor-quality CRE data?
Information has the power to shape the future of your corporate real estate (CRE)—if you’re confident in the story it’s telling. If you trust your data quality, then you can be confident you’re making educated decisions.
In some situations, the difference between working with low-quality and high-quality data can mean the difference between success and failure. Bad data can cost a lot, but good data can help you save even more.
For example, you see an increase in hot/cold calls coming from a specific area of a building, but it’s difficult to tell when these work orders are being placed. You begin to troubleshoot potential problems and beef up maintenance resources. Meanwhile, you don’t realize you’re missing a key piece of information: Employees in that area are flexing their time and working outside normal business hours. The HVAC control system was never adjusted accordingly. Without complete data that also reveals when these work orders are being placed, it may take days (or longer) for this to be uncovered.
Forrester research from 2021 indicates that 70% of CRE organizations maintain multiple data systems and sources to manage their portfolios. In other words, most face hurdles that keep them from the high-quality data they need.
If you’re not confident in the quality of your CRE data, then you could be experiencing these effects:
1. Making poor choices
One of the biggest values of CRE data is its ability to inform decisions. A data-driven decision is only as good as the data behind it. If you rely on poor-quality data, then poor-quality decisions are likely to follow. Decision-making requires accurate information to prevent inaccurate conclusions.
Case in point: On the surface, perhaps your data indicates an excellent facilities experience—but that data is outdated. As a result, employee productivity and satisfaction rates are being impacted, but actions aren’t being taken to prevent it because you may not know it’s happening until it’s too late.
2. Spending valuable time on rework
If you realize you’re working with poor-quality data, then it must be modified before you can extract value from it. The time it takes to fix errors, validate numbers, and search for missing information could be spent on strategic projects and initiatives that generate revenue and boost employee productivity and satisfaction.
Case in point: Let’s say you’re looking at a recent service performance provider report. You know your organization spent more last year on third-party services than what’s listed, so you set out to find the real numbers. This means putting another important project on the backburner to dig through paperwork, make calls, check with various department heads, search through email and the shared drive, and ask coworkers what they know.
3. Missing out on lucrative opportunities
If CRE data isn’t clear or complete, then you may miss the chance to improve revenue, decrease costs, save time, and improve employee productivity and satisfaction.
Case in point: There could be an opportunity to downsize office space while still supporting business objectives—but you can’t come to that conclusion if the data doesn’t point you in that direction. This missed opportunity means you’ll continue to pay for unnecessary space.
Data governance: your plan to ensure high-quality data
One way to protect data quality is with a data governance strategy.
While data management helps you collect, store, organize, and maintain your information, data governance provides guidance on data quality, what and where data can be used, and ensures the trustworthiness of data across the organization. This supports data consistency, repeatability, and reliability.
A data governance strategy should go beyond definitions, standards, and rules by making sure people can measure, manage, learn from, and improve data.
JLL Technologies’ Data Governance and Controls Strategy Advisory services help you develop the skills, controls, and governance you need to ensure high-quality data. We’ll explain the opportunities that come as a result of better governance as well as what you can expect in terms of ROI and actionable insights.
Ready to talk to a real estate analytics expert about your data governance strategy? Contact us.
