Partnerships in any form of business or technology can be hugely important. They can allow the sharing of staff and resources, can open up access to new markets and territories, to share in risk and profits, to offer customers additional and previously unavailable services and much more besides.
This applies as much to PropTech as much as it does to other sectors. Collaboration with other like-minded organizations has been an important part of the Allthings evolution over the past few years. If another firm can help us add value to the owner or property manager and improve the tenant experience, then it’s an obvious step for us to embrace that.
The tenant experience is at the core of what we are trying to achieve and there are a number of like-minded organizations that can help us with that. But that’s not an attitude shared by everyone. Some firms are more suspicious and sceptical about what collaboration can bring them and even regard it as a weakness.
What are the pros and cons of collaboration in real estate and PropTech and what are some of the best recent examples of successful partnerships?
First of all came FinTech, financial technology. This was swiftly followed by RegTech, SupTech, EdTech and many others that sought to address a particular market with technology. One of these was PropTech, the sector that Allthings operates in.
These all followed a broadly similar path of evolution, with startups initially looking to replace and gain market share from traditional providers in the sector, but after a while mostly turning instead to collaborations and partnerships. If a bank wanted to offer a small business credit-checking service for example, it just made more sense to partner with a FinTech offering such a service than to build one from scratch itself.
Yet not everyone is convinced by this model. People are rightly protective about their brand and fear that by partnering with another company, their own brand could be tainted through no fault of their own if something goes awry. If an established real-estate firm offers a new digital service via a collaboration with a PropTech company, and that technology fails for some reason, then there could indeed be repercussions for the brand.
But overall, we believe that the benefits of collaboration outweigh the risks and partnerships are helping to take PropTech to the next level. Here are some of our favourite examples of collaboration between PropTech firms and more established ‘grown-up’ real-estate companies.
Deutsche Wohnen is one of Germany’s leading publicly listed property companies, with a portfolio comprising 168,000 residential and commercial units. Wanting to improve the efficiency of its property management and the overall tenant experience, in 2017 Deutsche Wohnen announced it was to install the KIWI keyless entry system into all of its holdings. It also agreed to acquire a minority shareholding in KIWI.
It is in many ways, the ideal partnership for both organizations. KIWI benefits from Deutsche Wohnen’s vast experience in real estate and has its product and business validated, while Deutsche Wohnen is able to improve the tenant experience across its portfolio and continue on its own path of digitalization.
– this is a slightly different take on collaboration in PropTech. With 400 offices and 70 countries, Cushman Wakefield is a global real estate services firm that aims to deliver exceptional value for real estate occupiers and owners. Understanding the need to continue evolving its services to clients and develop its digital credentials, earlier in 2019 it announced a partnership with Fifth Wall, a venture capital firm focused on real estate tech.
Cushman Wakefield’s PropTech strategy focuses on strategic partnerships across its global platform. This new partnership secures access to many of the latest and most innovative technologies, whilst providing Fifth Wall’s portfolio of PropTech firms with potential access to Cushman Wakefield’s enormous global client base.
WiredScore is a PropTech firm that supplies an internationally-recognised digital connectivity rating scheme for real estate. Regarded as the world’s only certification for digital infrastructure and connectivity, WiredScore empowers landlords to improve, understand and promote connectivity in their assets.
It’s recent funding round included contributions from UK property and investment company, British Land, and pan-European real estate investment firm, Patrizia. This is more than a funding round though – both organizations have worked with WiredScore in the past and this new partnership will see joint collaboration on future products, as well as the continued development of WiredScore. The investors gain access to a valuable technology and have the chance to help shape that to suit their client needs, while WiredScore benefits from the expertise and connections of British Land and Patrizia.
With rising deposits a major issue for renters, Flatfair has a revolutionary approach that allows renters to pay significantly less and for landlords to still feel safe and protected. Renters pay a small membership fee and provide their debit card details, with any charges taken at the end of the tenancy once all parties have agreed the figures.
Hunters is a major UK estate agents, with more than 200 branches and a focus on customer service. The partnership with Flatfair allows Hunters to offer its renters this service across its portfolio and gives Flatfair not only a major contract, but increases its exposure across the entire industry and validates the proposition.
founded in 1956, Union Investment is one of Europe’s top 15 asset management firms. It recently acquired a 13% interest in PropTech firm Architrave, which provides intelligent data management to the real estate sector and aims to make the industry more transparent and efficient by introducing genuinely digital processes.
The partnership involves collaboration between the two firms to develop Architrave’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) component. Both companies will pool resources and expertise as they look to achieve their joint objective of establishing an industry standard for capturing real estate data in an open, digital platform.
Partnerships and collaborations need to provide something that the original organisation can’t offer by itself. In PropTech, this could mean a traditional firm accessing and benefitting from an innovative new technology, and gaining a boost in its digitization journey, while the technology provider gains access to a much greater and broader market than it could have done by itself.
Allthings has always adopted an open and pragmatic approach to partnerships, whether that’s with a more established real-estate firm or another PropTech company. Our customers are a priority to us and if we can improve our offering to them via collaboration with another company, then we will always do so. An overview of our partners can be found here.
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