Technology Is Making Business More Efficient
There has never been a better time for getting things done. With new tools, a savvy businessman can do more work, better, faster, and cheaper than ever before. In the real estate business, that means we can find, vet, finance, and manage real estate with greater confidence, shorter lead times, and lower overhead.
Finding and vetting investment opportunities requires a lot of leg work. Now, online public records mean we can easily feed quality data into our analysis spreadsheets. Added to the miracle of spreadsheet software, this data now powers our dashboards, giving us critical insights into potential investments. Whether it is the demographic and economic trends in communities where we invest, or projections of lease revenue and upkeep costs at specific properties, easy access to data is changing the game and giving us a bigger net for investment opportunities.
Video chat, webinar, and conference call software enable us to more deeply connect with our partners and investors. Alliance’s network is now larger and stronger than it has ever been — a real advantage for bringing in new deals — and we’re able to expand our reach without needing constant and expensive business travel to do it.
Satellite and street-level imagery is one of my favorite emerging tool sets for real estate investing. When Alliance investigates a new opportunity, we can thoroughly explore the neighborhood before we ever reach the point of a site visit. Infrastructure quality is a major factor in assessing the growth potential in a location, and with free tools like Google Street View, our team can virtually “walk” or “drive” to properties, experiencing the trip without having to be there. The savings in time and money are already impressive.
New imaging technology is also improving our sales process. Whether we’re seeking tenants to rent our locations, or new owners to buy them, the ability to create immersive visual tours of properties means we can highlight the value of our properties without needing a human touch every time. In coming years, I anticipate integrating even more immersive image technology — like virtual or augmented reality — to help us experience the locations where we invest, as well as show off our properties to investors and tenants.
I am deeply excited by the possibilities of other emerging technological trends. In coming years, we’ll be able to affordably and reliably use street level sensors to track foot traffic and more accurately value the economic potential of a location. Building automation systems will report on the health of critical systems like HVAC. Monitoring systems that integrate internet connected cameras and analysis software will enable effective and affordable security.
Of course, all the technologies listed above are already on the market, in some form. Part of making effective use of tools is knowing when to adopt them. Adopt too early, and the tools will be immature, expensive, and unreliable. Start too late, and other more agile companies will already be eating our lunch. Alliance is eager to use technology, not for its own sake, but to improve our business performance. So, instead of adopting the newest tech at the bleeding edge, we continually monitor new technologies and add to our toolkit as options show their value and effectiveness in the real world.
With technology developing as rapidly as it is today, we must all continually adapt our ways of doing business. This is both a challenge and an opportunity — one that we at Alliance embrace with open arms.
