The power of data in commercial real estate

“Data is the game changer,” said Robbie Hobbs, Chief Product Officer of JLL’s Work Dynamics division. “More specifically, quality data is the game changer.”

Hobbs was discussing the power of data in commercial real estate (CRE) with Fortune’s Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh in a recent Washington Post Live interview. Read on for Hobbs’ key insights.

Real estate leaders often start conversations about data with, “I have this cool technology, what can I do with it?”

But a better alternative, Hobbs explains, is to focus first on the challenge first. This sets teams up to correctly find the data that matters most. Here’s the simple problem-insight-data process Hobbs advises:

• Clearly articulate the problem

• Identify the insights needed to solve the problem

• Identify the data required to generate these insights

• Determine the granularity, fidelity, and frequency of the data to trust the insights

This problem-insight-data process allows you to identify the data that matters and solve for that data acquisition in the most cost-effective way.

Quality, reliable data is transforming educated guesses into informed decision making, effectively moving the decision process from “I think” to “I know.”

Combining traditional batch-processed data with real-time data sets helps identify trends, patterns, and behaviors that were impossible to generate even a few years ago. Quality data gives CRE professionals deeper insights into real estate performance and utilization on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis.

Quality data also works across the CRE value chain. It runs from portfolio and capital planning to transaction management, capital works, and facilities management. It ensures you don’t lose your way from strategy to action to optimization. The result is a data-driven process of continuous improvement.

This digital thread allows you to aggregate and analyze traditionally siloed data to solve problems in more sophisticated ways and address multiple goals at once, like cost, net zero carbon, facility condition, health and wellness, and the war for talent.

“In just turning data into insights, there is no value creation,” Hobbs says. “It’s not until you turn those insights into action and measurable impact that value is created.” This is the data-to-impact continuum, which bridges the gap between data and outcomes.

Value is only created when data and insights inform strategies that are then executed with measurable impacts that can be observed whether that’s increased efficiency, cost savings, or improved sustainability performance.

Without quality data, even sophisticated AI algorithms struggle to deliver reliable and accurate insights.

AI, however, can help create quality data by automating data cleansing and normalization. AI assistants trained on CRE data, processes, and industry terminology become always-available CRE experts, giving real-time responses to queries along with additional, relevant outputs that the requester hadn’t thought to ask.

The potential of AI in CRE is not to replace humans but to augment them. AI eliminates mundane, repetitive tasks, freeing up CRE practitioners to focus on higher-value activities that demand uniquely human skills, like creativity, collaboration, and negotiation.

“Commercial real estate will always be a people and relationship business,” said Hobbs. “AI offers the potential to supercharge those people and relationships. Our motto is ‘Better jobs, not fewer jobs.’”

Watch the full Washington Post Live interview with Robbie Hobbs on the power of data in CRE.