TRANSFORM opened with a lively welcome party at the Yotel Rooftop, overlooking Boston’s Seaport district and city skyline. The excitement was palpable and a fantastic way to kick off a great event. The next morning, we gathered at the Seaport Hotel to kick off a day chock-full of great content, conversation, and collaboration.
After welcoming our guests, and acknowledging our sponsors and partners, CEO, Tim Curran, officially kicked off Transform by reviewing and discussing the “tsunami of change” coming at the CRE industry. His message was to embrace the change and stated unequivocally, that Building Engines would be there to help our customers navigate through anything that came their way.
Daniel Cozza, Chief Product Officer at Building Engines, got things rolling from there with a bold statement: that the CRE industry is in a uniquely advantageous position technologically. – Because of the rapid pace of innovation, CRETech is in a position to move from incremental changes to dramatic ones. He provided several examples of where leapfrog technological advances have done this in other markets.
Daniel went on to explain that we’ve actually used this approach to create new and innovative technology for the industry with products like Bengie™ and sharing the exciting news of the development of our new platform, Prism by Building Engines™, designed to meet the rapidly evolving needs of building owners and managers. Our clients were thrilled to hear about the release of Prism. They jumped at the opportunity to see live demos and test it out in the “Training Zone” and were eager to provide feedback and suggestions on the new design and usability of the product.
Our team of industry veterans, developers, and user-experience experts spent more than a year researching, reimagining, and building Prism based on three recurring themes we’ve observed industry-wide:
1. The Demand for Connectedness
Our clients report being inundated with the amount of siloed point solutions. With the number of CRETech/PropTech tools available today at 4,200 and growing, they are overwhelmed and crave a simpler way to find and use the tools they need. To satisfy this need, systems will have to come and work together logically. – Sharing data and information so that users and organizations can have a single, holistic view of property performance without having to log-in to multiple systems. We developed Prism API-first, to create and deliver exactly that reality for our clients.
2. Tech Built for the Individual
Engineers, property managers, vendors, asset managers, and tenant coordinators, are all individual users of our platform. It is critical for solution providers today to cater to each of these unique users directly and give them the information and experience that maps to their role. Our Prism development teams (product managers, developers, UX-UI, QA, etc.) are each built around and focused on these roles, assuring that the individual’s experience is tightly aligned with what they do, how they work, and the information they need.
3. Enterprise-Class Software for Customers of Any Size
The future of software is tightly connected to data security, privacy, accessibility, and the ability to scale. Where historically, these capabilities were restricted to only the largest firms and ERP-like systems, our connected world and growth mindset demands that all customers have access to software that can provide this. We shared with our customers our commitment to this with details on our investment in SOC II certification as well as GDPR and ADA compliance available in Prism.
We are excited and privileged to continue to work with so many passionate industry experts and power–users to transform property operations by providing a more intelligent perspective on property management. Our last sessions of the day were particularly enlightening. – We had our attendees participate in interactive break–out sessions to brainstorm with each other and share ideas on several important and relevant topics. The energy, collaboration, and ideas from this session were tremendous.
Another interesting session worth mentioning was when I sat down with Minta Kay from Goodwin Law for an interesting discussion about PropTech. Minta is a partner in and chair of Goodwin’s Real Estate Industry group and a member of its Real Estate Joint Ventures. During our chat, she shared why Goodwin started their PropTech practice and how they work with their customers. She also spoke about market trends and observations she’s made; that technology is here to stay and will dramatically change the business in five years. She concluded with helpful advice and guidance to follow technology market leaders and commit to embracing and adopting change.
TRANSFORM 2019 concluded with a cruise of Boston harbor where attendees were able to continue conversations with peers, appreciate beautiful views, and unwind from an exciting, information-packed day.
I want to personally thank all of our clients and attendees who are nothing short of the best in the industry! They are true partners who help us be our best, and we thank them sincerely for that!
One last important shout-out to our amazing partners Aquicore, Genea, myCOI for their presentations, and to our sponsors UG2, and 24 for helping make the day possible. – We can’t thank you enough for being a part of TRANSFORM 2019 and helping to make the event such a great success!
We can’t wait to see what’s in store for TRANSFORM 2020 – stay tuned!
