TechTalk Live: As property embraces more technology, it cannot lose sight that the industry is “fundamentally a people business”, a panel at EG’s TechTalk Live argued this morning.
Emily Prideaux, head of leasing at Derwent, said “It’s about the occupiers and what they want. One thing that the digital revolution has allowed us to do is make us contactable 24 hours a day.
“But what it’s really done is bring in a fast change in what people expect in office space. It’s somewhere people want to enforce collisions between talent. It’s why we build places like where we’re sitting today,” she said, referring to the event’s venue at the White Collar Factory.
The panel said investors have embraced technological changes because it gives them more access to customers, which affects how they make business decisions.
Lisa Shaforostova, real estate investment director at CBRE, said: “There is a lot of interest in how investors can capture non-traditional data sets, like mobile data if you’re a retailer.”
She said that data analysis has made it easier for investors to understand how customers behave and what their needs are, which is an opportunity to make smarter investment choices.
The development of proptech similarly has to respond to customer needs.
Rob Kniaz, founding partner at Hoxton Ventures, which was one of the original investors in Deliveroo, said: “From the start-up perspective, what customers demand is what drives the market.
“That’s how WeWork started. The market has to demand whatever they’re offering.”
So far, the panel argued, residential proptech has led the charge in the industry with the commercial sector lagging behind, with Dominic Wilson, managing partner at Pi Labs, arguing that commercial proptech is a “difficult nut to crack”.
He said this is partly because the commercial market is run by larger corporates where wholescale strategy changes take more time. However, he said this has changed in the past year as more and more businesses establish digital strategies: “It takes due diligence, but it will happen.”
These changes are likely to continue, the panel heard, because technology companies are starting to broaden their scope. Rob Dagger, investment manager at Beringea, said he has seen continuing overlap between fintech and property.
That evolution, he said, is likely to drive proptech innovation in coming years.
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