When it comes to PropTech trends, it seems everyone is aware of AI, automation, and virtual interactions. But if you take a step back, there are more up-and-coming trends and technologies apart from these three.
Buxton’s tech experts identified three fundamental technology trends that will help CRE professionals make smarter decisions and use their time more efficiently. Here’s where they see PropTech heading.
PropTech Trend #1: More Data
Today, there is so much data available that simply wasn’t around five, three, or even one year ago. The sheer volume alone is helpful—it gives brokers, owners, and investors more information to work with. Overall, this is where tech is heading: a lot more data.
But having a lot of data can be overwhelming. The challenge then becomes creating tools that turn this plethora of information into something digestible, something actionable. As more and more data becomes available, tools that trim it into meaningful and relevant components will become more important.
For example, Buxton’s Mobilytics is an example of this trend. Using mobile GPS data most people didn’t have access to until recently, Mobilytics helps users understand who came to a property, when, where they went before and after, and more. It uses a lot of data to provide useful insights.
PropTech Trend #2: Optimization
Much technology available now, like Mobilytics, can be compared to a Swiss Army Knife—the tech is flexible and broad enough that almost everyone can get some benefit from it.
This means most of it isn’t optimized for anyone, which brings us to the next trend. In the near future, our experts predict that PropTech will become less broad in scope. Instead of doing everything for everyone, programs will specialize and answer a specific, valuable question.
For instance, Buxton’s Match technology is designed for a single purpose. It answers one question: How strong is the match between this specific property and this specific brand? With technology like this, the user doesn’t have to do much work to get the answer they’re looking for, nor do they have to sift through features and capabilities they don’t need. All in all, optimized programs like this will make CRE professionals more efficient.
PropTech Trend #3: Thresholds
Even once the data has been optimized and organized, not every insight generated is needed. A smoke detector, for example, doesn’t announce when there’s no smoke. It only beeps when a threshold has been crossed—or in other words, when there’s smoke.
Similar to the smoke detector, the final trend our experts anticipate is the use of thresholds to give users only the most relevant information. After setting up a trigger and establishing how often to run the process, a user would only see the data that meets their preset criteria. In other words, the right information would go to the right person at the right time with no background noise.
A potential use case might be setting a threshold that alerts the user when there’s anything over a 10% change in foot traffic compared to a certain point in time. This way, instead of being informed of each minor increase or decrease, the user would only be notified when the data starts to change in interesting ways.
By deciding up front which insights or changes are relevant, CRE professionals would no longer have to look at each one individually and judge which are important. This has the potential to save time for everyone involved.
The Bottom Line
Too often we get wrapped up in the actual technology itself, as opposed to how emerging technology can help us move forward. While some of this technology is closer to adoption than others, all of it is on its way and has the capability to make CRE industry smarter and more efficient.
To learn more about Match and Mobilytics and how they can help you, explore Buxton’s technology for commercial real estate.