A study of the Lucerne University reveals that real estate businesses that miss jumping on the bandwagon of digitization can be threatened in their existence.
National businesses lag behind Compared to international businesses, national businesses do most often not feel this threat and hence, do not make full use of the opportunities that digitization offers in the way international firms do.
Digital opportunities are often grabbed when it comes to gains in efficiency or cost reduction, but rarely when it comes to shaping customer relations. But this will change: More than half of the 1000 interviewed experts expect digitization to change business models in real estate drastically.
Due to the emergence of online channels, customers become more price-sensitive, they compare more. Businesses however, lack knowledge about their customers: 44% do not know which online way customers took to find their offer. This lack in customer analysis makes optimising sales channels a tough task.
And digitization pays off: The “digital survivors” were able to tap into new sectors, target groups and regions and increase turnover and profitability compared to businesses that do not focus digitization actively. But where exactly is the difference between digital leaders and the “latecomers”? For digital leaders data analysis is key: They know their customers and the market, consequently use online channels and recognize the importance of relationship management.
As a leading company in digital real estate, we have been asked to contribute with our experience and share some insights on the digital life in properties and neighborhoods: We present the results of our study where we analysed what tenants want, how an app for a building or neighborhood can enhance the life of its users, and shed some light on how users can be effectively onboarded and activated. If you are interested in the article, just drop us a line and we will send it your way: info@allthings.me.
Interested in the complete study: It is available here https://blog.hslu.ch/immobilienblog/2016/06/07/digitalisierung-der-immobilienbranche-nachzuegler-werden-abgestraft/ for 90 CHF.