FMJ Facilities Management magazine providing industry-specific intelligence to FM and property professionals
New research data from JLL’s 2023 Global Real Estate Technology Survey reveals over 80 per cent of companies are increasing technology budgets despite a challenging operating environment.
Ninety-one per cent of occupier respondents said they are willing to pay a premium for tech-enabled space as they look to technology for strategic value and increased revenue. In fact, real estate tech budgets are set to grow faster than investments in headcount, footprint and operating budgets.
JLL’s research finds that sustainability tools will account for the largest share of increases in technology budgets, underscoring the business and regulatory pressures driving the race to net zero. Respondents expect clean energy solutions to have the greatest impact on real estate over the next three years. For example:
- Forty-five per cent of occupiers plan to adopt energy/emissions management tech in the coming year.
- The adoption rate for data science and modelling tools – used to analyse energy use, occupancy and financial costs across buildings and locations – rose 14 per cent from 2022-2023 (up from 26 per cent to 40 per cent).
Sharad Rastogi, CEO of Work Dynamics Technology commented: “Organisations are shifting their tech priorities from cost reduction to strategically improving their business. Occupiers are looking for technology that helps increase revenue, enhance business decision-making and improve their sustainability metrics.”
Following sustainability tech, respondents pointed to artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI as the technologies expected to have the greatest impact on real estate over the next three years. Surprisingly, most conceded limited understanding of AI despite ranking it highly.
Additionally, JLL’s research found occupier tech priorities are expanding beyond cost reduction and facilitating remote work to include technologies that drive value to their overarching business goals through collaboration, optimising and enhanced decision-making.
According to the survey:
- The focus is shifting from remote working tools to in-office collaboration technology, with adoption rates jumping from 40 per cent to 50 per cent from 2022 to 2023. In fact, the top tech already in place is in-office collaboration technology.
- Health and wellbeing tech solutions rose from 25 per cent to 48 per cent.
- Platforms to enable consolidated insights (47 per cent) and drive predictive management (43 per cent) are among the top adoption priorities.
- Immersive workplace technology, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, is one of the top five technologies companies intend to adopt next (44 per cent).
The JLL 2023 Global Real Estate Technology Survey surveyed 1,006 decision-makers and included over 600 CRE (corporate real estate) leaders at major occupiers and over 400 leaders at real estate investors, landlords and developers. Research respondents are situated in 10 markets globally: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, United Kingdom and the United States.
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