Tim Curran Weighs in on the New Building Operations Software Platform & How it will Impact the Industry
Today is a momentous day at Building Engines, as we announce Prism, our new building operations software platform designed to improve net operating income across all sectors of commercial real estate, from office, retail and industrial, medical office as well as hospitals, stadiums and other mixed-use buildings. Without question, Prism is CRE’s newest, most modern and innovative software platform for building operations.
As the CRE industry continues to see a boom of tech solutions, we believe that we will eventually see the industry coalesce around three main pillars of CRE tech: leasing, accounting and building operations. Prism is the most powerful, innovative and open platform for modern CRE operations – our answer for the building operations piece of the puzzle.
I think about Prism through the lens of Tesla. In an attempt to revolutionize and electrify the automotive industry, Tesla took a step back and completely rethought the approach to building a car. It wasn’t enough to replace the engine with a battery – the entire car needed to be redesigned from the ground up with the present, tech-focused reality in mind. Now, powered by a leading software platform embedded in each of its vehicles, Tesla is leading the race to electrification of vehicles.
Similarly, Prism changes the game for building operations because we’ve built it from the ground up, redesigning what CRE tech looks like. When Building Engines was founded in 2000, the commercial real estate industry was a tech-laggard space. Since then, we’ve led the charge to modernize CRE tech, constantly innovating to show our customers and the broader industry that building operations software can and should be one of the most powerful tools in their toolbox – technology that satisfies the broad range of CRE’s operational needs and drives better tenant experiences and business outcomes.
In our 20+ years, we’ve hit many milestones and “firsts” as we’ve driven the industry forward. We became the industry’s first true SaaS company, built the first mobile application, introduced the first operations analytics program and developed a way to measure tenant satisfaction before the buzz of “tenant experience” emerged. These achievements have been driven by one of our core values—customers always come first.
We’ve consistently delivered valuable tools, innovative concepts and proven technologies to an industry that badly needed and wanted it. So, where are we going next?
Prism is the next step toward Building Engines’ vision of an exceptional experience for everyone, in every building. Now, property teams around the world can confidently look to building operations software to increase their revenue, help deliver the best occupant experiences and reduce their own operating costs. No other CRE software platform dedicated to building operations can do this, as our platform is centered around the following three differentiating factors:
1. An Enterprise-Class Platform
Our platform scales across multiple languages, currencies and time zones as your portfolio grows, both globally and domestically?. Prism is being deployed in 62 countries, in 15 languages using 40 different currencies, as I write this.
Prism is an open platform that supports the rapid integration of multiple applications and the seamless acquisition and analysis of operating and communications data—all with the goal of making it easier for our clients to distinguish themselves and show off their operational strengths, whether they run commercial office buildings, retail stores or industrial complexes.
Now more than ever, it’s imperative to have secure, interoperable systems in place that scale cost-efficiently as a portfolio grows. Prism solves these challenges and is the only cloud-based platform in CRE built with an open, API-first architecture to enable seamless integrations into an existing IT ecosystem. Prism also meets stringent security, data privacy and regulatory requirements, including GDPR, SOC II and CCPA, while also being ADA compliant.
We know that Prism’s open architecture will help our customers, as it’s built to integrate with other tech systems your team needs. It’s designed to be the central hub for all operational needs.
2. Quick Time to Value
With Prism, we’ve drastically reduced the time and effort required to achieve a measurable return on investment (ROI). With a self-service design that enables operators to stand up buildings in just minutes, there’s no professional services required to get you up and running.
You no longer need to worry about taking weeks to train your team and move onto a new tech system. With Prism, the training is minimal as our platform is built with optimal user experience in mind. The interface of our platform may even remind folks of the websites or social media platforms they use in their personal lives. We want to democratize building operations software, making it quickly accessible for everyone.
The cloud capabilities ensure that your entire team, regardless of where they’re located, can operate against globally standardized best practices across your operations teams.
3. The broadest, most powerful building operations software platform in CRE
Our team believes that for a platform to be useful, every member of the building should be able to access what’s most relevant to them. For example, a property manager and an engineer have different jobs and therefore should view and use Prism in different ways. While a property manager may be focused on monitoring work order completion targets with a broad, all-encompassing view of the building as a whole, an engineer’s dashboard would look completely different, set up with the high-priority work orders clearly identified so they can be most effective on execution.
Incorporating cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence, Prism features the virtual assistant Bengie which provides real-time alerts and notifications. With mobile optimization, every tenant, owner and operator can access the platform and communicate seamlessly in real-time – no matter where they are.
With Request for Proposal (RFP) Automation as a part of the platform, owners and operators can reduce costs on vendor and project bidding by 80% using a streamlined process that automates vendor responses with a side-by-side comparison. Now, there’s complete transparency and visibility throughout the entire RFP process allowing teams to select the right vendor for each job. We also offer a national network of CRE vendors that are vetted for quality assurance. Building owners and operators can search for and discover new, quality and certified vendors with full insight into their past performance.
Prism also delivers the industry’s most advanced interactive visualization of building stacks and floor plans to pinpoint operating challenges and opportunities within a single building or across an entire portfolio. Whether it’s a leak or a faulty HVAC system impacting multiple floors of a building, operations teams can access the visualization through Prism to efficiently solve the problem. The same visualization tools can help you maximize your rentable square footage against both BOMA and REMNY standards.
We’re proud of and energized by what we’ve built, and we’re excited for our customers, partners and stakeholders to experience what we’ve put so much time and resources toward. Prism is the latest development from Building Engines that will drive CRE forward as we live up to our commitment to deliver an exceptional experience for everyone, in every building.
