Top 10 IT Issues for Commerical Real Estate
I ran across an interesting article in this month’s issue of Realcomm Edge regarding the Top 10 IT Issues for Commercial Real Estate in 2008. Realcomm surveyed their 2008 Real Estate CIO advisors on a number of topics from server utilization to staff development and asked where they see there top IT issues in the coming year.
At number one in the list was Document Management. The article states that commercial real estate remains the most paper-intensive industry on the planet and, at the same time, offers the greatest potential for paperless workflows. Document and file versioning, indexing, and retention strategies are among the greatest challenges for IT today.
The explosion of the “Green” movement has been a driving force for Document Management being number one. Under the “Green” movement, it is more common that employers are willing to let employees work from home a couple of days of week resulting in an increased need for automation and anytime access to your leases/contracts. It seems that not only are real estate management systems aligning your real estate strategy with corporate strategy, but are also playing a pivotal role in aligning your real estate strategy with your “Green” strategy. The article goes on to mention other Top 10 concerns include vendor viability, business intelligence, and staffing.
The Top 10 in order are as follows:
1. Document Management
2. Disaster Recovery - If your company suffers a major loss of data, are you prepared?
3. Business Intelligence - Does the “one-size-fits-all” approach really apply for enterprises?
4. Building Automation Strategies - Intelligent, green building technology experts are in short supply.
5. Global Expansion
6. Alignment - Are you maximizing the ROI of IT services by leveraging them across multiple business units?
7. Vendor Viability - How secure is your vendor with companies being acquired at an increasingly frenzied pace.
8. CRM -
9. Staffing
10. Virtualization - Virtual machines offer a significant means to cut IT costs while “greening” IT operations.
To see a detailed list of the Top 10, see this month’s RealcommEdge Magazine.