When a leading player in the commercial real estate (CRE) industry like Blackrock speaks, the industry tends to listen. Recently, a BlackRock MD highlighted the game-changing potential of the Microsoft Excel ‘Data From Picture’ feature.
His enthusiasm and the positive reactions from fellow investors, brokers (e.g. CBRE et al.) and advisors underscores a significant shift among surveyors towards embracing technology at a leadership level and a clear willingness to streamline manual processes that bedevil common daily tasks. Here’s a closer look at how automating tenancy schedule imports can reclaim time, boost productivity, and deliver substantial financial benefits – to the tune of £3m of opportunity costs.
Reclaiming Time: The Financial Impact of Automating Tenancy Schedules
In today’s fast-paced commercial real estate industry, every minute counts. Not because real estate deals happen quickly, but because every team is resource-constrained, working hard to uncover opportunities and maximise AUM alongside the usual diary filled with meetings and regular reporting.
Yet, many institutions are still bogged down by manual labour processes that consume valuable time and expensive resources. Here’s a closer look at how technology, particularly Dashflow’s complimentary tool, can transform these tasks, reclaim time, and deliver substantial financial benefits.
Breaking Through Skepticism
When we first demonstrated our tenancy schedule import automation tool 6 years ago, a senior Financial Director exclaimed that our demo must be a fraud! It took open minds, collaboration, and frank discussion to ultimately bring on board a fantastic client who saw the immense value of tech in streamlining manual processes. This skepticism wasn’t isolated; it was a sentiment shared by even notable and forward-thinking Proptech Venture Capitalists. They couldn’t fathom how a tiny iPhone could handle tasks they believed required manual typing on a desktop keyboard. Not even technology VCs had recognised how easy importing rentrolls has become.
The Reality of Manual Tenancy Schedules
Let’s face it: manually inputting tenancy schedules is tedious and time-consuming. For some institutional clients, typing up, cross-checking, and formatting a large 2-page schedule can take the best part of 3-5 hours among usual work distractions. Even when work is barely interrupted, handling a few manually inputted rent rolls each month can still eat up 30 minutes and up to an hour per tenancy schedule. While speaking to professionals over the past 8 years: reviewing, typing-up and double-checking detailed tenancy schedules with comments can consume around ~20 mins per 5 tenants.
A Positive Shift: Geoffrey Shaw’s Insight
Blackrock’s MD Geoffrey Shaw’s recent post about the Microsoft Excel ‘Data From Picture’ feature highlights a significant shift in how large firms view technology. His enthusiasm for discovering this feature resonated with users and followers, garnering positive reactions from some of the largest firms in our industry:
This post is a testament to the delight users experience when they realise how much time and effort can be saved. More importantly, when larger brands like BlackRock accept that change is possible, it sends a powerful message to other established brands, encouraging them to embrace technological change.
The Eye-Opening Business Case
Beyond any personal time reclaimed, it is instructive to look at the higher business case available to the team:
- 70-100 Working Days lost annually: In a major office branch handling only 10 property schedules per month, the cumulative time spent on these tasks can equate to 70-100 working days lost each year. This is a significant loss of productivity that could be redirected towards more strategic activities.
- £30,000 Opportunity Cost: For Senior Associate or VP level employees the opportunity cost of these lost days is around £30,000 annually. This is based on the time that could have been spent on higher-value tasks.
- £60,000 Since 2022: Since Microsoft launched the ‘Data From Picture’ feature in 2022, the opportunity cost doubles to £60,000. This highlights the financial impact of not adopting new technologies promptly.
- £180,000 Over Six Years: Dashflow introduced a complimentary import tool and an Optical Character Recognition solution for clients like M&G and Colliers six years ago. The cumulative opportunity cost savings reaches £180,000.
- £2.8 Million ROI: By implementing this efficiency improvement across 210 professionals in 16 offices, the potential tech ROI could be as high as £2.8 million. This explains why Blackstone and its Revantage business are tracking and adopting technologies to avoid these manual bumps in the road for CRE execs. They realise that all their BX portfolio companies can benefit from Revantage-approved solutions, and that tech is a stealth boost for both investment returns and team performance.
Don’t leave tech to mañana, achieve it today.
The adoption of technology in Commercial Real Estate isn’t just about convenience; it’s about making a tangible impact on your bottom line and the way precious time is spent on behalf of investors and pension funds.
By reclaiming time spent on manual data entry –just one small part of what can be automated during the complex human-dependent task of underwriting investment appraisals–, professionals can focus on more strategic, value-added tasks that require expert human judgement which no large language model can replace.
The difference between discovering these tools today versus six years ago makes an arguable case for millions in savings, and investing exceptionally little to create a cogent competitive edge for the business cost centre and its ability to remain one step ahead of the slower-to-adopt competition.
To conclude, early adoption of automation tools like Dashflow can reclaim valuable time, improve productivity, and -more importantly- raise team morale. As per the shared frustration above, many cannot “count the hours wasted”. So don’t wait another six years to make this transformation. 2024 is full of opportunity to digitise your organisation today. The future of efficient workflow management innovation is already available in spades, and it’s time to speak up, embrace it and lead your team towards today’s practical possibilities.
Further reading:
• Stay-tuned to relevant online resources: while many Excel functions and ~6-monthly new releases are often not relevant to Commercial Real Estate professionals, it’s worth following people like Steve Kraynak at the Microsoft blogs for the highlighted features you need to know about for Continued Professional Development.
• For a deep dive into the business risks of clever Optical Character Recognition (OCR), check out Office Watch for a 3rd party opinion: https://office-watch.com/2022/big-weakness-excel-data-from-picture/
• For a selection of articles on OCR approaches, go here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/ocr-extraction/914c0514-ce79-4d78-8520-c38d1daa2274