The Future of CRE: How to Effectively Control, Optimize, and Predict Operational Costs
In our on-demand webinar, CEO of Lobby CRE Anne Hollander discusses using technology to address operational efficiencies with Vic.ai Director of Business Development, Alexandra August, and Mark Corlew, Partner at Grover Corlew – a real estate investment management group. Watch the webinar here to learn more.
The Importance of Operational Efficiency
Operational efficiency is important for CRE organizations who want to improve productivity by reducing time and resources while maintaining quality, consistent output. As operational costs rise due to factors such as inflation, increasing costs of goods, and supply shortages, the need for operational efficiencies is becoming more and more apparent for firms. Factor in hiring and retention hurdles caused by The Great Resignation and it’s clear why businesses need scalability and efficiencies in their processes. When you have a strategic plan in place to help improve your operational efficiency, you can spend less time on the operational side of your organization and focus more time on growing the business and pursuing new deals. If you don’t take the time to identify, address, and fix your operational inefficiencies, you may run into a variety of problems.
Risks and Benefits of Operational Inefficiencies
Without a strategy to address operational inefficiencies, potential business risks include:
- Lack of speed in decision-making (causing a reactive approach to market shifts and changes in the portfolio)
- Data that is tucked away in data silos (limiting access to important information and slowing collaboration)
- Weak data security that could leave your data vulnerable
- Valuable time allocated to manual tasks
Technology can address these challenges, especially when it comes to automating your manual tasks and processes. You can also use that technology to help visualize and compare your data in order to make better informed and even proactive decisions.
Additional benefits of implementing tech to improve business operations include:
- More effectively growing and scaling organization,
- The ability to be more strategic in planning
- Minimizing operational costs
- Having more time to dedicate to higher value activities.
Scaling Your Business with Technology
Using technology solutions to scale your company involves automating processes throughout the business, but knowing which processes you should automate is key. For example, automating data entry, portfolio performance modeling, financial reporting, and data management processes can have a direct impact on the growth of your organization. When you spend less time manually inputting data into spreadsheets, you have more time to leverage the analytics that you draw from that data and act on the insights.
However, automating your processes does not mean entirely removing the human element from your organization. Instead, you can leverage your staff’s skills in the areas that they perform the best, for example: spotting trends, understanding analytics, and interpreting data. Using technology to maximize the growth of your organization means improving your forecasting abilities and using benchmarks to compare your portfolio to others in the industry. It also means optimizing your operational costs and increasing productivity. By implementing technology to help you gain more insight, you can shift your priorities towards pursuing new deals and adding to your portfolio.
How to Get Started with Operational Efficiencies
Now that we know the benefits of implementing technology, the question becomes: “How do I make this happen for my organization?” A good place to begin is gaining an understanding of the competitive landscape of the different technologies available to you and understanding the unique problems your organization faces. The key is not using too many platforms together. Ideally, you want to find a solution with multiple functions that can solve your organization’s most important problems and help you ensure your portfolio’s success. Technology like Lobby CRE enables CRE firms to standardize processes with automated data collection, analysis, and reporting saving time and resources.
Watch our On-Demand Webinar, “The Future of CRE: How to Effectively Control, Optimize, and Predict Operational Costs”, to learn more about how to effectively analyze your data and automate your processes to grow the portfolio and boost operational efficiency. Or request a demo of Lobby CRE today to see how the platform can help your organization improve operational efficiencies.
