Global perspective on the future of workplaces -Podcast, hosted by Antti Pitkänen, offers real-world insights to what the future of workplaces look like and how companies should adapt to an ever-changing situation. In each episode, we address the topic from a different perspective with an international workplace expert.
The second episode of the podcast takes us in the world of real estate and who would be a better guide than Antony Slumbers.
Antony has 25 years of experience as a software technology strategist and commercial real estate expert, real expert on PropTech, and #SpaceAsAService. He has a vision for the future of real estate and what companies should do to survive as winners in a changing situation.
Antony had very interesting insights into the current situation of real estate and where we are heading.
“It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”
Key takeaways of this discussion are:
1. From selling products into offering services.
When it comes to real estate we often tend to misunderstand what we are selling. We are not selling offices, we are offering services. Real estate can make a good company even better by offering the right type of spaces.
2. Real estate is no longer about satisfying needs, it is about creating desire.
In the midst of a pandemic the user experience is even more important. Returning to a normal daily life will not mean returning to the office as before. Instead of spending 5 days a week in the office, we will be there maybe 2-3 days. What will be the reason we are coming to the office? This is something that the winners of the situation are going to understand. We need to be able to create a great user experience. The key to creating a great user experience is to incorporate six areas of the ‘office’ industry that exist today but rarely talk to each other. They are: real estate, networking (IoT), data capture and analytics, workplace, HR and hospitality.
” The workplace should be like software.It’s all about build, measure, learn. The workplace needs to change and adapt together with the company.”
3. Build, measure, adapt.
We need to think of the office as software and treat it like tech companies treat their own software. Build, measure, learn is the golden rule of software development – that rule should also apply to real estate.
We need to understand what it is that our customers get real value out of and offer those things.
Build something, offer it to the users, measure how it gets used and adapt to the results.
” For all corporations, before they do anything, they should get all their data together and work out from there where to go. Almost definitely they will need different space then they have now. ”
And finally, we asked Antony what real estate companies should do when looking to the future?
“Real estate is going to have to start doing what consumer goods companies have been doing for decades. Speaking to customers, understanding their wants, needs and desires and developing products and services based on the quantitative and qualitative data they gather during this process. “
Listen to the Podcast:
You can also find the Podcast on Soundcloud and on Apple Podcasts.
Here you will also find all the materials that were referred to during the discussion. Thank you Antony for the discussion!
- Talent and the Real Estate Company of the Future
- The Redundancy of Real Estate – and how to avoid it
- Sustainability, Coronavirus, and Real Estate
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