Tech entrepreneurs must show greater empathy towards the problems experienced by property companies for the two camps to work more effectively together.
But the onus also rests on property companies to be more open to the solutions that tech can provide.
As key players in both industries set out their stalls this morning at EG’s Proptech Summit, a 200-strong audience heard that one of the biggest failings of the tech industry was to illustrate the value that tech could offer.
“The average agent spends 80% of their day doing admin or marketing chores, rather than negotiating deals, which is what they are best at, but tech can flip that to 20% admin and 80% deals,” said Jon Taylor, head of technology at The Collective.
William Newton, EMEA director of WiredScore urged the property industry to be “open to new ideas, especially where there is a very clear value proposition”.
The upshot was that property companies did not have to disrupt their businesses to add value in technology terms.
This morning’s event, held at U+I’s innovative London headquarters, opened with a keynote from Charlie Farr, property acquisitions manager at Deliveroo, who told the audience how data was driving the expansion of its RooBox concept, considered an exemplar of how tech and property can work together to enable a business opportunity.
Data was a topic raised many times during the conference, with James Morris-Manuel, EMEA sales director at Matterport commenting that “property is not sweating the data they already have” for commercial gain.
Presenting at the event, New-York-based Brandon Weber, chief procurement officer and co-founder of VTS, which recently acquired his startup Hightower, predicted that the tech revolution would broadly transform three key areas in the near future, including how property businesses are run; the tenant experience (“it’s broken, it sucks”); and how buildings are constructed and operated.
Speaking on the property panel, Juliette Morgan, international partner of the global tech group for London at Cushman & Wakefield, said “proptech indigestion” would be a natural by-product of a changing market.
“We are drinking from a firehose,” she said.
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