4 critical capabilities to put proptech innovation to work

While proptech is essential to support various types of work (hybrid, remote, onsite) and create the workplace of the future, it requires much more than technical capacity. Companies need to nurture four critical capabilities to be successful in using technology and innovation to drive their long-term strategies.

1. Strategic planning

• Business goals
• Technology roadmap
• Metrics for success
• Resource allocation

Developing an actionable strategic roadmap to align the company’s technology and real estate capacities with the short- and long-term business goals they need to support—such as enhanced productivity, talent retention and attraction, and financial performance—is crucial to enabling the success of new working styles and workplace configuration.

The technology roadmap should clearly identify key stakeholders, assess budgets and personnel resources, and maintain the flexibility to handle a constantly changing business and technology landscape. The ability to create a plan that integrates requirements from across the business, including leadership teams, HR, finance, IT, and corporate real estate (CRE), is a core component of successful strategic planning. Organizations also need to identify their metrics for success and make sure they measure and monitor them to ensure they are on track.

2. Collective learning

• Workforce engagement
• Skills training
• Encouraging environment
• Bottom-up innovation

The willingness and ability to leverage technology and data-intensive insights across the organization is a vital element for building an innovation culture and ensuring technologies are fully integrated and used. The as-a-service model empowers frontline business units outside of IT to take the lead in hunting for tech solutions that work best for them. For example, space utility sensing and analytics tools for the CRE division.

This involves a long-term program to build digital proficiency through coaching employees to assimilate new technological skills—and more broadly, nurturing a culture where bottom-up technological innovation and experimentation are encouraged. The latest advancements in workplace technologies can then be proactively monitored and considered with rich domain expertise.

3. Technology management

• Technical architecture
• Solution & data integration
• Flexibility to change
• External expertise

Configuring a robust and dynamic technical architecture to implement, operate, integrate, and optimize technological products, processes, and services lays the foundation for workplace automation and intelligent decision-making. Managing a growing tech stack puts a priority on integrating traditionally siloed real estate data assets, facility management software platforms, and other digital tools.

Building in-house technology expertise at the same time as partnering with external advisory services is an effective way to upgrade technology management capabilities and facilitate successful technology adoption.

4. Organizational innovation

• New managerial model
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Leadership
• Overcome institutional obstacles

The ability to introduce new production or managerial models is a key factor in how resilient a company is when facing changes. The lack of organizational innovation capability is among the top reasons for failed technology adoption.

Organizational innovation creates new roles and new collaborative networks, allowing companies to drive enterprise-wide buy-in to the digital future of the workplace, acquire appropriate capital and talent, form cross-functional collaboration, and remove institutional obstacles.

Are you innovating with proptech? If not, our expert JLLT Advisory Services team can help. Contact us to learn more.