Here's the kicker: while 87% of executives are desperate for talent that can use AI, only 30% of employees feel they have the skills to keep up. 

“Leaders who view AI as just another IT project are missing the forest for the trees,” says Srinivasan. “This is about reimagining your entire approach to talent, space, business model optimization and value creation.”

AI impacts all areas of the CRE ecosystem, but we’ve identified three key areas in which CRE leaders should prioritize AI augmentation. 

1.Employee Workplace Experience 

Attracting and retaining top talent is the number one priority for leading organizations—and the workplace experience plays a big role here. AI empowers organizations to transform lackluster employee experiences into seamless, friction-free “peak workplace experiences.” Shifting the focus from traditional workplace experience delivery to a more AI-enabled personalized work experience will yield greater employee satisfaction and engagement.

2. Dynamic Workplace Management

Workplace Management has become much more dynamic and a significant opportunity for improving CRE performance and efficacy. AI-driven analytics can pinpoint inefficiencies in overall workplace operations to help better manage CRE with the optimization of leases, energy usage, footprint and daily operations.

3. Corporate Real Estate Transformation

Real estate leaders are under constant pressure to deliver continuous performance improvement to meet ever-changing business and market conditions. AI-enabled decisioning provides real-time actionable insights that offer agile organizations to propel CRE performance toward operational excellence.

“One way to think about this is if your smart watch can provide real time heart rate data and detect anomalies, should you really need to wait several days, weeks or months to get data about your workspaces? Smart convergence of IoT, BIM, IWMS, and other property data can provide these insights today,” says Srinivasan. “One such example is JLL Serve that combines these technologies in an integrated dashboard where you can literally drill down from portfolio level to HVAC fan level to review your portfolio performance and asset health through digital twins.”

But you don’t need to create your own AI tools from scratch. “Why build when you can partner? Why hire high-cost AI talent when you can borrow? This is the smarter approach,” says Srinivasan. “We are already seeing CIOs dump in-house attempts at AI projects in favor of tried and tested commercial AI.” 

On the other hand, many organizations say there are still skeptics among the key stakeholders at their firms. Decision-makers among IT, legal and other C-suite execs are sometimes reluctant to bring in new AI tools. The key is to share use cases and the expected return on investment, as well as assuage any concerns about data privacy. A reputable real estate consultant will partner with industry experts and innovative organizations to spin up a holistic AI strategy that transforms entire CRE ecosystems with the following processes.