In today’s fast-paced market, the most lucrative opportunities go to the firms that can identify, vet and execute on them the fastest. Often, that means the firm with the best CRE tech stack will beat the competition. According to Foursquare’s study, 60% of commercial real estate professionals have difficulty making decisions and keeping pace with trends, while 58% use static–not real-time–data.
Read on to learn more about the 9 most essential CRE tech solutions, and the value they carry for real estate institutional investors of all sizes.
The 9 Essential CRE Tech Solutions
Sometimes considered a latecomer alongside tech-forward capital markets like private equity, commercial real estate’s ongoing digital transformation has yielded tremendous progress, eliminating manual work with goal-oriented solutions. From the moment that a firm begins reviewing a new investment deal to the moment they sell it, various solutions automate, simplify and digitize functions like accounting, lease management and more. Together, these technologies form the CRE technology ecosystem, working in sync to provide the right information to the right stakeholders. As a result, owners can manage and monetize their properties faster, easier, and more efficiently.
Jump to:
- Dealpath: Best CRE Tech Solution for Deal Management
- VTS: Best CRE Tech Solution for Lease Management, Tenant Experience & Building Automation
- Yardi & MRI Software: Best CRE Software Solutions for ERP Accounting
- Juniper Square: Best CRE Tech Solution for Investor Reporting
- Argus by AltusGroup: Best Cash Flow Modeling Tool
- ProCore: Best Capital Projects & Construction Management Platform
- Cherre: Best CRE Data Warehousing Solution
- NavigatorCRE: Best Business Intelligence Tool
- Building Engines: Best CRE Property Management Technology
1. Dealpath: Best CRE Tech Solution for Deal Management
Deal management software empowers institutional deal teams to systematize their investment decisions. After finding a new opportunity and learning all corresponding details, inventors add deals to their deal pipelines, where they will undergo thorough screening and evaluation. Deal management software simplifies each leg of this process, ensuring that deals are evaluated thoroughly, yet efficiently.
Dealpath is the industry’s leading deal management platform, serving as a command center from pipeline to portfolio management. Enterprise deal teams rely on Dealpath to make strategic, data-driven decisions, often relying on their historical data through data analytics. By configuring workflows, they can also shorten the deal lifecycle by moving them through the funnel more efficiently. Dealpath Data Ingestion even allows firms to add deals to their pipelines with no data entry.
Six of the top ten real estate institutional investors manage their deals on Dealapth. Since launching in 2014, Dealpath has supported over $10 trillion in transactions.
2. VTS: Best CRE Tech Solution for Lease Management, Tenant Experience & Building Automation
Renting dozens of units or floors out to unique tenants with varying needs is a nearly insurmountable challenge–at least without the right CRE tech. VTS is a lease and asset management platform that centralizes property, tenant, lease and deal data so that landlords can drive optimal asset value.
Many top institutional investors leverage VTS to manage their leases, ensuring that each building, floor or office is either actively generating revenue, or in the works to be rented soon. Property managers can market current lease openings with ease, and even surface opportunities to grow other accounts. Digital marketing tools make marketing these leases a breeze, even when nuances like building structure, floor designs and the surrounding neighborhood could otherwise pose challenges.
Integrating amenities like lighting, air conditioning and more into building technology helps landlords deliver on a great tenant experience. VTS also gives landlords a way to monitor other metrics for adjustment.
3. Yardi & MRI Software: Best CRE Software Solutions for ERP Accounting
Across a given portfolio, all firms will have a never-ending stream of operating costs, as well as revenue generated from rent. To gain full visibility into your firm’s overarching financial footprint, managing these finances from a property management or ERP software is vital.
Yardi and MRI Software are two of the most common CRE tech platforms used by property managers for accounting, compliance, procurement and risk management. Housing both property expenses and income in one platform aids in exposing discrepancies that call for action.
4. Juniper Square: Best CRE Tech Solution for Investor Reporting
Investor reporting is no easy task, especially when funds are spread across numerous deals in different stages of maturity, and not to mention, different asset classes. For this reason, investment managers have turned to Juniper Square for clear, timely investor reporting.
Juniper Square’s dedicated investor platform eliminates the monotony of building complex spreadsheets just to report on returns. Instead, you can use this CRE tech to build tailored reports that detail earnings for each investor from one hub.
5. Argus by AltusGroup: Best Cash Flow Modeling Tool
With countless variables to consider, modeling cash flows for prospective acquisitions or owned assets is time-consuming and error-prone work. The stakes are high, too–even one inaccurate number could lead an investor to make a decision that deviates from their strategy. Argus, a tool created by AltusGroup, is a cash flow modeling software that helps firms to paint a more vivid financial picture based on rent rolls.
Analyzing assets with Argus modeling allows investors to jump past the monotony and potential inaccuracies of cash flow models, helping them forecast intelligently. Argus is critical at both the beginning of the funnel, when deal teams are evaluating a new deal, and at the end of the funnel, when portfolio managers must evaluate whether to hold or sell the asset.
6. ProCore: Best Capital Projects & Construction Management Platform
While they may not have exactly the same financial needs or questions as investors, capital projects and development teams also need visibility into their projects.
ProCore is the leading capital projects and construction management tool used by the real estate world, uniting teams from the field and office in one live CRE tech platform. General contractors, capital projects teams, development teams and other construction leaders rely on ProCore to track costs, supplies, and project progress. From start to finish, capital projects leaders can confidently look to ProCore for real-time updates, benchmarking progress against their initial plans. Historical project data can also serve as a benchmark for future projects.
7. Cherre: Best CRE Data Warehousing Solution
Each day, commercial real estate firms face the challenge of leveraging data streams from disparate sources to achieve the best results. Deriving meaning from this noise can be challenging, but there are ways to break through the noise.
Cherre is one of the best-known data warehousing platforms leveraged by the commercial real estate world. As an aggregator, Cherre ingests data from numerous sources. Once ingested, users can view data in Cherre through different lenses. This gives commercial real estate professionals the unique opportunity to visualize data from different sources, often casting portfolio data in a more holistic light. In turn, professionals across multiple functions use this CRE tech to see and act with greater clarity.
8. NavigatorCRE: Best Business Intelligence Tool
There are always opportunities to take profitable assets to the next level, but maximizing portfolio value can be challenging. NavigatorCRE is a business intelligence tool that aggregates data from multiple sources to answer questions and synthesize insights.
NavigatorCRE is used by asset managers to gain oversight into their portfolios, analyze rent rolls and unearth opportunities to more effectively monetize assets.
9. Building Engines: Best CRE Property Management Technology
Delivering a flawless tenant experience is the best way to retain happy tenants. From minor maintenance requests to daily comforts like HVAC control, equipping tenants with everything they need is no simple task. That’s why building operations and property management tools have become an even more essential part of today’s CRE technology toolkit.
Building Engines, a JLL Company, empowers building operators to seamlessly accommodate tenant needs. From one hub, operators can manage work orders, HVAC requirements, essential communications and more. In turn, owners and operators can earn a higher net operating income from that building.
The CRE Tech You Need to Keep Pace With Today’s Market
To make multi-million dollar investment decisions in today’s market, deal teams can’t rely on emails, spreadsheets and physical documents. Download our e-book to learn how leading real estate institutional investors deploy capital efficiently and grow revenue effectively by managing all their deals from one command center.
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