Key Insights into the Occupier Experience Segment
Kevin Williams, CEO of Core Vision, returned from the USA with his take on the Realcomm Conference, Nashville. Some interesting insights into the occupier experience segment in the property market.
Key Takeaways
The Realcomm experience really did meet our expectations. On the one hand, it was a fantastic learning experience, combined with the fact that it was very exciting for us to exhibit our new Occupier Engagement Platform at the pinnacle Real Estate conference in the USA.
The bottom line is that our offering is as good as anything on the market. In fact, our “pure play” business model which does not rely on affiliate advertising for content or clipping the ticket of retail services is right on the target. Whilst not a mature market yet, the Occupier Experience segment of the property market is rapidly maturing. Owners are realising what it is that they want from these offerings and what is hype versus what is useful. It is not about flooding occupiers with unsolicited content, sometimes even with reputational issues, it is about truly engaging people in a practical, interesting and useful way. Owners are also gaining awareness that the revenue earning potential of these platforms is not in the “clipping” of the ticket but in factors such as tenant retention and stability. There is some direct and acceptable revenue to be made, for example charging for the use of facilities in the building. It is now well accepted that retail service providers are in most cases tenants themselves so the occupier engagement platform should promote their business into the community not look to derive revenue from them.
With our offering we are also right on target in that from the outset we designed myLocus as a true platform with open API’s to other apps that Owners wish to implement. One good example of another specialist app would be space utilisation.
We also came away from Realcom with the knowledge that of all the existing occupier experience systems, the Core Vision system is the only one that offers deep integration to a facilities management system, namely our own myBuildings platform. We are the only ones currently providing this level of integration and hence a seamless experience for occupiers of buildings.
In addition to these learnings it was truly exciting to be in amongst all of the big real estate players at the conference – well worth the trip. Not to mention, Nashville is a must visit!
