DATA-CENTRIC CRE: A COMPETITIVE IMPERATIVE

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1 DATA-CENTRIC CRE: A COMPETITIVE IMPERATIVE Corporate Research July x x lbs /X 1 Perspiciatis Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores % x x /X x21.2 x x weight 15 25% kg /X

2 Introducing the JLL CRE Data and Analytics Series This is the first in a thought leadership series exploring the challenges, opportunities and perceptions of data and analytics within corporate real estate (CRE) worldwide. In this report, we link CRE teams ability to drive competitive business advantage to the effective creation, management and use of data. In our second publication, we consider how CRE teams can embrace data and analytics to transform data into actionable insights, and how technology supports this process. Our third piece illustrates how CRE capabilities in data and analytics correspond with their evolution in terms of outsourcing maturity. Finally in partnership with leading business and technology research group, Forrester a global market study explores the depth and potential of data and analytics in the CRE industry. This research provides an unprecedented view into the current state of CRE data and analytics, future opportunities and potential inhibitors to progress. John Forrest Global Director and CEO Corporate Solutions, Americas Jordi Martin Global Director and CEO Corporate Solutions, Asia Pacific Vincent Lottefier Global Director and CEO Corporate Solutions, Europe, Middle East and Africa 2

3 Driving CRE excellence through data The digital world in which we live and work is awash with data, and it is forecast to grow tenfold by As computing power and technology advances at breakneck speed, creating and gathering new data has become both fundamental and transformational for business. Entire industries are being revolutionized by the use of data to make better informed decisions, target prospective clients more accurately and drive revenue. Moving toward a data-centric business model is a competitive imperative. The Harvard Business Review recently stated that companies among the top third in their industry for data-driven decision making are, on average, 5 percent more productive and 6 percent more profitable than their competitors. Companies that embrace internal and external data, manage its flow carefully but efficiently, and structure it to create actionable information and insight have a strong competitive advantage. The era of big data data too large and complex to be processed with standard tools or processes and the Internet of Things data derived from embedded systems is developing quickly and will shape the corporate real estate (CRE) industry in the near term. CRE teams need to embrace data as core to their remit in order to meet the demands for productivity gains identified in our Global CRE Trends report. Rather than Placing better, deeper, more accessible and more relevant data at the heart of everything is the key to addressing the challenges facing CRE. viewing data as a burden another item on an already full agenda CRE teams should push proactively toward data centricity. Placing better, deeper, more accessible and more relevant data at the heart of everything is the key to addressing the challenges facing CRE. While some CRE teams are breaking new ground, many overlook the value of effective data creation, management and application. Our Global CRE Trends report clearly identified an impetus for change, as 78 percent of more than 600 survey respondents said that their ability to extract real estate metrics had improved since Almost a third said the provision of data and insights will be the most important future contribution of CRE within their organization. While there are some leaders in the field, and the momentum is growing, much more will be required for CRE to reap the benefits of a truly data-centric approach (Fig 1). This is a route full of opportunities and will be a feature of best-in-class CRE teams. Figure 1: Six compelling reasons to be data centric Enables smart and reasoned decision making Enhances CRE team productivity and persuasiveness Extends reporting power and influence with senior business leaders and stakeholders Strengthens investment cases and allows success to be measured Allows future scenarios to be developed, modeled and assessed Connects the physical portfolio to operations and wider business strategy Source: JLL Data-centric CRE: A competitive imperative 3

4 Data: Defining principles So how do you become a data-driven, best-in-class CRE team? There are three key questions to address, and the answers will vary from company to company: 1 How is the data created and gathered? 2 How is the data stored and managed? 3 How is the data used? Data creation and gathering Data creation depends on strong governance. It requires clear thinking about what needs to be collected and why, as well as what can be collected and how. The way processes and systems are designed has a huge influence on a company s data culture. Processes that are efficient, simple to follow and enabled by technology have more chance of gaining traction. Unwieldy and inefficient processes will generate tension, resulting in data sets that lack rigor, depth and accuracy. Data gathering needs to bring structure and utility. Much of the data created will be unstructured. A key role in data gathering is to establish a structure that makes the data clear and comparable. Doing this requires a deep understanding and a strong definition of the data being collected. Without this structure, data will be brought together in ways that are inappropriate (apples vs. pears), leading to inaccuracies in reporting and decision making. Data storage and management Data management needs to balance accessibility with control. Storing data is relatively straightforward from a technology standpoint computing and storage capacity today can accommodate deep data sets. The challenge is to maintain data integrity, yet make sure it is accessible to, and understood by, those who need it to make decisions. One solution is to centralize data management processes, restricting editing rights to a small team and providing read-only access to others. A centrally controlled data warehouse becomes a data lake that is accessible to a wider set of users who can dive into the data, but are unable to modify it, thus ensuring long-term data integrity. Data processes and infrastructure must be scalable. Any approach to data management must be grounded in the needs of the future. Exponential increases in the data s volume, velocity and variety mean that processes and architectures need to be future proof and resilient. Many organizations are so focused on their own internal data that they miss the opportunity to incorporate emerging open sources of data. Even if big data is not being faced today, it is important to account for potential future implications. Data utilization Data utilization is influenced by culture and behavior. Data can only be useful and empowering if the culture surrounding it is progressive. Corporate and individual attitudes to data can be placed along a continuum of four stages (Fig 2). While most organizations will display a Figure 2: Four stages on the data culture continuum Data denial Data indifference Data informed Data centric you have a distrust of data and avoid using it you don t care about data and have no need for it you use data only when it supports your opinions or decisions you use data to shape all of your opinions and decisions Source: JLL 4

5 mix of these cultures or attitudes, those that show high levels of consistency are the ones that achieve competitive advantage through data. Data must be viewed as a corporate asset. Organizations that are successful in their use of data value it in much the same way as human capital as a corporate asset. Yet, many organizations still regard data as being the intellectual property of an individual or a specific function. This makes driving data centricity across an organization extremely challenging. Data in itself is of limited utility. The data available to an organization is a means to an end, not the end itself. A strong data foundation enables information, knowledge and insight within an organization (Fig 3). It provides a baseline on which reporting has greater rigor, depth and capability. Analytical techniques, increasingly enabled by technology, bring further meaning and utility to this data. Figure 3: A strong data foundation enables information, knowledge and insight within an organization INSIGHT determines why, if and when to use knowledge to drive decisions and actions that achieve goals Seeking principles Seeking patterns Seeking relationships KNOWLEDGE combines information with experience; applies scientific rigor to business problems to develop hypotheses and predictions INFORMATION adds context to the data by defining relationships; provides historical view of performance based on defined KPIs DATA is a collection of symbolic units representing raw observations and measurements Source: JLL Data-centric CRE: A competitive imperative 5

6 Data in CRE today and tomorrow The data story in CRE is a relatively recent one. Most CRE teams have only really grappled with the challenges of data since the passing of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) or the global financial crisis (GFC) and its immediate aftermath, both of which increased C-suite scrutiny of CRE. Simple questions such as How much do we spend on real estate globally? How many leases do we have across the world? or Which buildings are we able to exit in the next 12 months? all became more urgent. Many CRE teams have been unable to answer these questions quickly or satisfactorily. This has led to increased investment in CRE data platforms and processes. Indeed, 78 percent of survey respondents in our Global CRE Trends report said their ability to extract real estate metrics improved since The factors driving this improvement are shown in Fig 4. Some CRE teams have moved from building early foundations to creating more data-centric approaches to CRE. Members of JLL s Client Advisory Board (CAB) a global peer network of CRE leaders exchanging perspectives and ideas that influence the CRE industry self-assessed their performance against 10 traits of world-class CRE organizations. While performance on data and analytical capabilities was assessed as being relatively weak, a significant increase in this score over a 12-month period shows that it is an important focus area for improvement (Fig 5). Figure 4: Factors driving improvement in ability to extract CRE metrics 73 % 32% 22% 39% Data collection by the CRE team Purchase and populaiton of the database system Source: JLL, Global Corporate Real Estate Trends 2013 Outsourcing of lease administration to a data provider Commitment to spend on datacollection and data systems Figure 5: Increasing importance of data and analytics in the CRE organization Avg-Score 2014 Avg-Score Source: JLL, Great Traits of CRE Organizations Centralized empowered & process oriented Data analyticis/ Business intelligence Internal relationship management Strategic portfolio management Talent Infrastructure management management Innovation Partner management/ leverage Change agents Feedback & continuous improvements 6

7 This momentum is encouraging, as is a clear recognition of the need to do more. According to our Global CRE Trends report, almost a third of survey respondents regarded provision of data and insight as the most important future contribution they could make to the wider business. Meanwhile, 61 percent highlighted increasing business requirements to present scenarios and solutions on demand in order to proactively manage both the CRE function and the portfolio. Some CRE teams still have a long way to go before they can be regarded as data centric. Few CRE teams are any further than data informed along the data continuum. To progress, more attention needs to be given to addressing gaps in data quality, application and skills within CRE. Data quality Many CRE teams are narrow in defining and gathering data, focusing on physical portfolio data that relates to size, cost, number of leases, or asset characteristics. This data in itself can be incomplete, inconsistent and poorly managed. As CRE continues to evolve as a strategic function focused on delivering workplace transformation, this preoccupation with physical data begins to look outdated. CRE teams must complement physical portfolio data with more comprehensive data that enables understanding of the workplace how it functions day to day, how it supports employee productivity, how it is perceived by the workforce and the impact of transformations in its design and configuration. CRE teams will also need to relate the contribution of real estate to the wider performance of the business something that will require access and exposure to a much broader set of data from across the organization. Data application CRE teams have typically used data for descriptive reporting. While doing this addresses some fundamental questions asked at the height of the GFC, CRE teams fall short in using data to present future scenarios and make actionable recommendations. As a result, the potential of CRE is limited in a corporate environment that now More attention needs to be given to addressing gaps in data quality, data application and data skills within CRE. requires investment cases to be underpinned by hard data more than ever before. Once CRE teams have access to a broad range of quality data sets, they will need to be able to understand and interpret this data and turn it into business insight. Data skills Our Global CRE Trends report identified a clear skills gap facing CRE as it broadens its strategic remit. A move toward data-centric CRE compounds this challenge. There is no data army residing in CRE today, despite the growing use of external service providers to add capacity in this area. Further, CRE is afflicted by the issues facing many industries a shortage of highly skilled data scientists. Bringing these capabilities into the CRE fold is important, but it will be time consuming and costly. Making steady but measured progress around defining and structuring existing data can yield big advances. So what of the future? We see a twofold challenge in moving to data-centric CRE. First, there is the challenge of better gathering and managing the physical portfolio data characteristic of the CRE function today. Making steady but measured progress around defining and structuring existing data can yield big advances. Doing this requires urgent attention to the construction of better architecture and stronger processes to create robust data sets over the long term. Second, there is the challenge of future proofing the data. Action needs to be taken now to seize the opportunity that will emerge from combining data sets on the portfolio, workplace and business performance with real-time data from embedded systems, as well as data from external sources. Processes need to be defined, or redefined, to be capable of gathering the data that will be required in the future. Lack of preparation could limit the individual and collective impact of CRE teams. Addressing these twin challenges with concerted effort and investment will enable CRE teams to realize the benefits of increased productivity, greater efficiency and stronger decision making. Data-centric CRE: A competitive imperative 7

8 Toward data-centric CRE: A call to action It is clear that becoming a data-centric CRE function is no longer a choice. In our view, there are four key moves that will detetrmine which teams lead the way. Capture to capitalize Start by gathering and managing your data. Make a concerted effort to add structure to existing data, which may be incomplete or inconsistent. Explore ways to create new data internally or draw on relevant external data sets. This process may be painful at first, but the rewards of having this data at your fingertips will be worth it. Don t separate, integrate Do not go it alone. Work with other functions, such as HR, IT and finance, to align and integrate your data. For example, overlay data on recruitment and retention, occupancy and utilization with your physical portfolio data. You may even be able to develop new data sets imagine the power of applying employee satisfaction survey results at the building level! This will provide rich, new insights and integrate CRE into broader corporate data strategies and decision making. Be a change agent (Version 2.0) Take the lead in your organization s mission to become data centric. Our Global CRE Trends report identified an opportunity for CRE teams to become firm-wide change agents, driving cultural change in the workplace and leading the entire company on the journey. The need to create and integrate data presents a further opportunity to act as a change agent version 2.0. By building bridges with other data initiatives across the firm and collaborating on new initiatives, you can establish a stronger context for your own actions within CRE. Embrace analytics Turn data into insights. The challenge does not stop with creating and managing a better flow of data. Those at the leading edge are moving quickly beyond data and harnessing the power of analytics. That means finding new interrelationships between data sets, interpreting the data, presenting it quickly and effectively and, ultimately, generating new insights that drive productivity, cost reduction or operational enhancement for your organization. And finally, as AC Nielsen the founding father of market research noted: The price of light is less than the cost of darkness. 8

9 JLL Data & Analytics Author Matt Hoberg Business Intelligence HoChun Ho Data Management and Governance Dr Lee Elliott Global Lead Corporate Research Contacts Bryan Jacobs Solutions Development Americas Iain Mackenzie Solutions Development Asia Pacific Jeff Schuth Solutions Development Europe, Middle East and Africa +49 (0) Data-centric CRE: A competitive imperative 9

10 About JLL JLL is a professional services and investment management firm offering specialised real estate services to clients seeking increased value by owning, occupying and investing in real estate. With annual revenue of $4 billion, JLL operates in 75 countries worldwide. On behalf of its clients, the firm provides management and real estate outsourcing services for a property portfolio of 3 billion square feet and completed $99 billion in sales, acquisitions and finance transactions in Its investment management business, LaSalle Investment Management, has $47.6 billion of real estate assets under management. About JLL Corporate Solutions A leader in the real estate outsourcing field, JLL s Corporate Solutions business helps corporations improve productivity in the cost, efficiency and performance of their national, regional or global real estate portfolios by creating outsourcing partnerships to manage and execute a range of corporate real estate services. Our platform of transactions, lease administration, project and facility management services is backed by our expertise in consulting, workplace and portfolio strategy to provide an end-to-end service offering. This service delivery capability helps corporations improve business performance, particularly as companies turn to the outsourcing of their real estate activity as a way to manage expenses and enhance profitability. 10

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