All real estate investment firms understand that data is key to decision making. However, a lot of valuable data is trapped inside of PDFs. That means teams either sink hours of time into manual data entry, or that data doesn’t get captured and dies in an inbox. 

Now, with AI Extract, you can automatically capture data from every OM or broker listing that crosses your desk, greatly expanding your firm’s access to data and cutting down on manual work for your team.

The end result is that your business will be able to evaluate more deals and build a proprietary database of market intelligence. And with Dealpath, that data isn’t just being captured—it’s also centralized and standardized, so it can be turned into reports that power insights and smarter investment decisions.

How AI Extract Works 

When you receive an OM or broker listing that you want to capture, simply drag-and-drop the PDF into Dealpath, or forward it to a dedicated email address. AI Extract will then extract data from it using proprietary AI technology developed by our in-house team of engineers based in Silicon Valley. 

When the data extraction is complete, typically in fifteen minutes or less, you can then review the data pulled from the OM, make any necessary updates, and save it as a deal or a comp inside Dealpath.

Market Intelligence, Without the Manual Effort 

AI Extract lets your team capture data from every property or portfolio that crosses your desk—whether you’re interested in pursuing it or not.

Not keen on moving forward? Save that property as a comp inside Dealpath and use it as a reference point when evaluating and underwriting future deals. The larger your database gets, the more precise your decision making. 

When it only takes a few minutes to capture hundreds of data points, you can build out a database without investing significant time in data entry.

Evaluate More Deals & Kickstart Deal Execution

With AI Extract, there’s no limit to the number of deals you can evaluate. You no longer have to hunt through dozens of pages to find the data points that you care about. With the help of AI Extract, you can zero in immediately on the most important information and figure out if a deal is worth pursuing. 

And when you do come across a deal you’re interested in, you can jump straight into the deal execution process. AI Extract allows you to create a deal in Dealpath with all the basic information fleshed out. That means you can go straight into evaluating a deal, speeding up your deal velocity and giving you a better shot at crafting a winning offer.

Preparing for the AI Revolution

For the last few years, we’ve all heard a lot about AI, but it’s hard to separate the hype from the concrete applications that can actually make an impact on your business. 

At Dealpath, we’re committed to bringing the power of AI to the CRE industry. We’ve applied AI to Power Search, our global search engine that lets you search all your data in Dealpath, even inside documents, and now we’re applying that technology to AI Extract. 

No one really knows where AI is going, but if you want to take advantage of this paradigm shift, one thing is certain: your firm’s data needs to be centralized, standardized, and structured in a way that AI can actually make use of it. While flexible enough to accommodate unique workflows, Dealpath’s data structure brings consistent organization to your data so you can leverage it for insight, push it out to the rest of your tech stack, and capitalize on whatever AI developments are coming in the future.

With Dealpath, you can be prepared to seize every opportunity. Schedule a demo to learn more about AI Extract and how Dealpath can prepare your data for future AI innovations.

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The post Introducing AI Extract appeared first on Dealpath.

2023 drove the commercial real estate industry to reconsider their investment strategies by strengthening data-driven decision making, reducing manual work to prioritize impact, and upleveling risk management.

Throughout 2023, we invested tens of millions in product development, orienting our product roadmap and our team of 50+ Silicon Valley engineers to solve for these challenges by helping our customers:

• Elevate firmwide visibility into deal pipeline and investment performance
• Improve operational efficiencies by automating repeatable tasks
• Strengthen underwriting with a clearer view into how market conditions impact performance

Read on to learn about the most impactful new features that make Dealpath the real estate industry’s most trusted deal management solution.

Jump to:

• Newly Enhanced Comps Database
• Streamlined Model Comparison
• Automated Data Ingestion
• Integrated Document Creation
• Tools for Debt and Asset Teams
• Dealpath Mobile
• Approval Tracking
• AI-Powered Search
• Conversations & Reporting Dashboards (Coming Soon)
• AI-Powered Investment Summary & Memo Generation (Coming Soon)
• Supporting Institutional Investors Across the Globe

Looking Back on Innovations and New Releases in 2023

Newly Enhanced Comps Database

Referencing sales comps is an essential part of your deal evaluation process, so it shouldn’t be difficult or time-consuming. The more streamlined your comps sourcing process is, the faster you can underwrite and prioritize the best deals.

We enhanced Comps in Dealpath in 2023, enabling users to leverage existing properties and historical deals to create comps for more informed decisions. Every Comp you create becomes part of a proprietary database aggregating your team’s unique market intelligence for an unrivaled competitive edge. 

Learn how to build a CRE comps database with OMs

Streamlined Model Comparison

Even if your team has financial modeling down to a science, it’s hard to make informed decisions without visibility into how return profiles change with market conditions.

Dealpath’s easy-to-use model comparison tool helps teams quickly identify which deals pencil out, even if the most challenging scenario comes to fruition.

Every model version can be viewed, filtered and sorted by milestone, creator, date and more, making it clear which scenarios are being compared and which information is most up-to-date. Hand-pick the comparison metrics, dashboards and mappings for each property type for a focused and curated underwriting process.

Automated Data Ingestion

Dealpath Data Ingestion (DDI) gives teams a streamlined and effortless way to capture new deals in Dealpath, taking the strain of cumbersome manual data entry off of your already limited resources.

As you receive new listings, DDI eliminates manual, time-consuming work and seamlessly creates new pipeline opportunities. This means you can prioritize deal analysis while building a proprietary deal database to help inform the most important investment decisions. 

In 2023, we introduced a DDI dashboard, giving teams an easy jumping-off point to track and kickstart analysis on all the deals that come across their desk–whether they become viable opportunities or simply market intelligence. A new version of DDI, supercharged by AI, is currently in beta testing with plans for general release to existing customers early next year. 

Schedule a meeting to learn more and join the beta

Integrated Document Creation

Document creation is an essential part of the day-to-day work of commercial real estate teams. Documents must be professional, include company colors and logos and, most importantly, be accurate when presented to internal and external stakeholders. But creating them is time-consuming–especially when you have to enter data points one-by-one.

Dealpath’s add-in for Microsoft Word enables teams to instantly pull Dealpath data like asking price, IRR and more into documents like LOIs, IC memos and PSAs without spending time on manual entry or double-checking accuracy. 

Learn 5 CRE document types you can streamline with Dealpath for Word

Tools for Debt and Asset Teams

We expanded Dealpath’s capabilities for debt investment teams, allowing for further customization, tracking and reporting of various loan types. This provides even deeper insight into your debt pipeline, particularly when various debt instruments are part of the same transaction.

We also introduced more tools to support the transfer of knowledge from deal teams to asset management teams, further breaking down data silos and preserving accurate historical reporting for all transactions.

Learn how to harness proprietary data to inform debt investment decisions

Dealpath Mobile

At the beginning of the year, the newest version of the Dealpath mobile app was released, enabling on-the-go decision making with data at your fingertips. That means no more waiting to get to a computer to enter new deals, make key updates to in-flight projects or pull up valuable market data.

Learn more about on-the-go dealmaking with Dealpath Mobile

Approval Tracking

A streamlined approval process is essential for moving quickly on the right deals and managing risk at scale, so we introduced enhancements that give approvers more contextual data at their fingertips for mission-critical decisions. This includes deal summaries and approval comments that become part of an automated record the moment the approval process is complete, creating a zero-effort audit trail.

Learn how to request, approve and track tasks in Dealpath

AI-Powered Search

First launched in 2022, Power Search in Dealpath leverages machine learning technology to put everything that was once frustratingly unsearchable or difficult to find at your fingertips, with recent AI-powered enhancements. Instantly surface the most accurate results within your deal database, including text within images and PDF documents, to maximize time savings with a smart search interface.

Learn how to surface relevant deals and information with Power Search in Dealpath

Conversations & Reporting Dashboards (Coming Soon)

Arriving early in 2024, conversations will help teams have a focused dialogue about a particular data point or aspect of a given deal, while reporting dashboards will provide even more sophisticated visualizations of pipeline and investment performance.

AI-Powered Investment Summary & Memo Generation (In Development)

Fueled by the contents of an OM or flyer, users will soon be able to generate a clear, concise deal summary highlighting the merits and risks of a deal to rapidly identify if the deal is aligned to the investment strategy.

Schedule a meeting to learn more

Supporting Institutional Investors Across the Globe

Our commitment to ongoing product innovation has yielded demonstrable results, including thousands of new users and expansions across hundreds of accounts. The Dealpath Leadership Team traveled to Dallas, Toronto, London, San Francisco and New York for roundtable discussions on the future of AI-powered real estate investment management to inform our product roadmap.

In addition to innovating new solutions for existing clients like Principal Real Estate, Nuveen Real Estate, Bridge Investment Group, UBS and other top institutional investors, we were proud to welcome a groundswell of new clients. 

In 2023 alone, we completed over 75 unique implementations for institutional clients, including CBRE Investment Management, Gaw Capital, LaSalle Investment Management, DWS, Newmark, Sumitomo, Essex Property Trust, and Centurion, with headquarters ranging from Milan, Italy, to Toronto, Canada, to the U.K., and across over 40 cities in the U.S.

Each client received a bespoke configuration, and included professional consulting services to create alignment with key goals, KPIs and investment strategies. Following this implementation, these customers continue to enjoy white-glove customer service from our team of 20+ customer success professionals based in North America that specialize in CRE. Our post-implementation NPS score was 70.

Dealpath proudly supports 7 of the top 10 institutional investors globally, and is ranked the #1 Real Estate Deal and Portfolio Management Solution for:

• Acquisitions
• Dispositions
• Development
• Loan Origination

Industry Awards & Office Expansions

Over the course of the year, Dealpath and its leadership team continued to receive broad recognition for category-defining solutions that have transformed the real estate investment management industry, including:

• Built In 50 Best Startups to Work for In San Francisco 2023
• Business Insider Hottest Proptech List
• Connect CRE Next Generation Awards 
• Crain’s Notable Leaders in Real Estate
• GlobeSt. Best Places to Work 2023
• GlobeSt. Tech Influencers 2023
• NYREJ Women in Real Estate Spotlight 
• Proptech Breakthrough Awards
• Realcomm Digie Awards 
• San Francisco Business Times Largest Greater Bay Area Proptech Companies

We also opened new, expanded offices in New York, Toronto and Austin, in addition to our San Francisco headquarters.

Schedule a Meeting About the Future of AI-Powered Deal Management

From OM ingestion to portfolio management, Dealpath offers real estate investment managers the most innovative suite of end-to-end tools to build operational efficiencies and supercharge data-driven decision making. To modernize your firm’s processes and maximize value creation in 2024, schedule a meeting.

The post Dealpath’s 2023 Year In Review: AI, Precision & Efficiency appeared first on Dealpath.

As the industry continues to undergo a digital transformation, it begs the question: is that really the most important thing? What would you do if you had an extra ten hours per week to prioritize analytical work? Or, to pursue strategic initiatives that are otherwise sidelined by manual work and urgent requests?

The Deal Management Paradigm Shift: Building Tech-Enabled Efficiencies 

According to a 2022 survey, 48% of CRE CFOs expected tech budgets to increase in 2023. 

Invented in 1985, Excel has historically functioned as a catch-all tool in the tech-averse and change-resistant CRE industry. While it remains the tool of choice for modeling, cloud-based databases and project management tools created by world-class Silicon Valley companies are now table stakes for investment professionals.

As purpose-built software solutions increasingly become the norm for CRE firms, industry leaders of all sizes and strategies look to deal management software as a way to both eliminate manual work and act more strategically, at every level.

From real-time pipeline information, to deal documents, transaction workflows and proprietary data analytics, deal management software has become the institutional investors’ command center. Centralizing this information has eliminated much of the manual work that, previously, took a toll on all professionals, from analysts through CIOs. Leveraging data they can trust, these firms can more nimbly outperform the competition at scale.

Deal teams that continue to expend limited resources on manual report-building and intelligence-gathering risk falling behind tech-enabled competitors. In turn, these stone-age firms could forfeit lucrative deals, close deals at a slower pace, or even miss out on fundraising opportunities.

Eliminate Manual Work with Centralized Institutional Knowledge 

Throughout the corporate ladder and the deal lifecycle, deal management platforms like Dealpath offer the intelligence and efficiency needed to make strategy a top priority–instead of information-gathering and manual inputs.

For example, as you ingest deals and add underwriting models, due diligence documents, on-site photos and more in Dealpath, you’re laying the foundation for deal collateral. When it comes time to create an Investment Committee memo, or a DD finding report, you can simply output a document meeting institutional requirements. Where you might have previously entered information 15 different times, you can build efficiencies and create clarity in one source of truth. 

Consider, in another example, the time required for an analyst to find an underwriting model from a 6-month-old Chicago industrial deal to apply the same rent growth and operating expense assumptions. 

What if the analysts on your team could validate your conservative bias by surfacing that model instantly, or report on 12-month averages? Or, pull market comparables from all deals reviewed in the last two years to support your investment thesis when the Managing Director presents the deal to the Investment Committee?

How would you reallocate that time to sharpen future analyses with data at your fingertips?

Slice and Dice Data to Build Relationships and Fuel Negotiations

Building a proprietary deal database with every new deal you review (and reject) memorializes intelligence, making data your competitive advantage. As you win back your time and bandwidth, data at your fingertips can also fuel negotiations and relationship-building.

Think about the leverage you could gain when negotiating with a new broker by showing the sheer volume of deals a competitor sources for you. Alternatively, consider how a VP of Acquisitions might negotiate PSA terms to mitigate risk. Rather than sifting through files to find preferred language in “that lease”, they can instantly surface any deal information–even within PDFs–utilizing Power Search in Dealpath. 

Swift, strategic negotiations can prove invaluable in accelerating late-stage deal flow, particularly when senior management is eager to close. 

Reporting in Dealpath can also open new doors when currying favor with investors. Say that your firm, for example, has recently broken into the Texas multifamily market at the request of sponsors, who are now eager to view a report. Tracking every deal you’ve ever reviewed, a deal management platform like Dealpath eliminates the need to manually compile this information, instead outputting a clean, easily digestible report proving your success. 

Saving the time you might’ve spent analyzing this data means you can instead spend that time by, for example, visiting that sponsor to discuss future funding.

Prioritize Work Nimbly and Supercharge Headcount Efficiency

It happens to all deal teams: you’re in the late stages of the best deal you’ve seen in months, and the lead analyst is out sick. Circumstances like these can leave deal teams scrambling to search for institutional knowledge to extinguish fires; but what if the latest updates were visible in real time?

Pivoting from spreadsheets or one-trick-pony solutions to real-time deal management also creates unprecedented accountability, helping teams more effectively allocate resources. If a team member calls out, then a manager can simply run a staffing workload report to see who is handling each deal, then re-prioritize accordingly. Consequently, you can also eliminate time-consuming staffing meetings and burdensome prep work.

Finally, visualizing this information can also help surface process gaps and bottlenecks, like the need for a transaction manager or an additional step in diligence. Real-time visibility into the latest updates supercharges headcount efficiency, whether you’re leading a 5- or 50-person deal team.

Training Homegrown Talent: Make Everyone a Dealmaker with Dealpath

From accelerating onboarding with standardized task checklists to supercharging evaluations with real-time analytics, Dealpath helps team members at all levels build the efficiencies necessary to adopt a more strategic lens. All the while, you can offer superior career development opportunities with best-in-class technology. Whether you choose to spend that time evaluating even more deals, taking a deeper look at your pipeline or even golfing on Friday, you can outperform the competition with a data-driven strategy and world-class execution.

To learn more about how firms of all sizes are weathering a volatile market and pivoting to emerging opportunities, watch our on-demand webinar.

The post From Excel Jockey to Dealmaker: Prioritizing Strategy and Negotiation appeared first on Dealpath.

In a webinar last month, Thomas Byrne, proptech pioneer and Dealpath Executive Director, provided a firsthand look at how institutions are navigating and innovating in this volatile market environment. He also shared how investors are preparing for the inevitable transaction rebound, including strengthening their data-driven competitive edge to outperform the competition. 

The State of the Market in 2023

According to Real Capital Analytics, global CRE transaction volume for 2022 was $1.1 trillion, the second-highest year on record behind 2021. However, nearly all the activity occurred in the first three quarters. Q4 2022 took a sharp decline as global CRE investment volume fell by 60% year-over-year to $226 billion, reported CBRE.

The CRE market is currently logjammed due to sky-high interest rates, economic volatility, rising capital costs and constrained liquidity. Recently, the collapse of Signature Bank and risks among other popular CRE banking institutions has created a new element of turmoil. In the wake of this friction, investors have reset their expectations on returns. There’s significant price dislocation between buyers and sellers, which has driven many buyers to go into pencils-down mode and many sellers to pull properties off the market, bracing for clearer waters.

Despite this chaos, industry experts agree that this slowdown will be short-lived, positioning investors to succeed in a new growth cycle. Dry powder for CRE remains at record highs; investors are ready to deploy this capital when the timing is right.

Honing in on Long-Term Secular CRE Growth Drivers

While the macroeconomic environment for commercial real estate is fraught with challenges, secular trends are shaping unique opportunities in particular asset classes.

The housing/multifamily sector, for example, continues to shine and remains supply constrained. Strong U.S. housing fundamentals should keep occupancy rates above 95% and fuel 4% rent growth in 2023, CBRE reported. Also, construction debt is less accessible and more expensive, driving a slowdown in much-needed new multifamily starts.

E-commerce is booming and will account for a bigger share of overall consumer and business transactions and has a big impact on CRE, including industrial and retail. Industrial real estate is projected to continue its strong performance in 2023. Widespread demand, fueled by logistics firms and retailers, have pushed vacancies to record lows, reported JLL.

In the retail sector, digital-impacted retail sales are forecast to total more than $2.4 trillion and account for more than 58% of total sales by 2023, according to a report from CBRE. As e-Commerce continues to steal the spotlight, investors are looking toward mixed-use strategies as a way to further diversify revenue streams.  

In the office market, the persistent work-from-home trend continues. As many employees continue to push back on requests to return to the office, businesses are downsizing their footprints; vacating older, outdated office space; and pushing up vacancies in major markets. Green Street forecasts that office demand in the U.S. will decrease approximately 15% due to flexible work.

The secular growth trend toward technology and AI (artificial intelligence) will fuel massive change and efficiencies for every sector of the economy, including transportation, housing and education.

As the market continues to react to new tailwinds and obstacles, investors are carefully watching these trends and adapting or re-evaluating their investment strategies. 

Investors Look to Speed Up During the Slowdown

Investors are putting in the effort now to prepare for the imminent rebound, while also working through the current challenges. The “flight to quality” continues, in which some firms are shifting away from evaluating riskier assets toward higher-quality properties. Similarly, in a move to reduce risk further along in the investment process, investors are seeking more signals of stability among partners and tenants. Higher degrees of diligence now equates to lower risk in the long term. Diligence now 

Also, in the current volatile environment, the rising interest rates and growing cost of capital have significantly increased the risk of new deals. As a result of high interest rates, investors with the cash available to do so are allocating more equity, reducing reliance on expensive debt. When it comes to current investments, some investors are looking at reducing or eliminating leverage and putting more equity into their deals to de-risk long term.

Some Investors Capitalize on Pockets of Opportunity

All the while, some investors are looking toward lucrative property types like multifamily to pivot into resilience, while time-tested sectors like office continue to endure headwinds. According to Green Street, multifamily and industrial assets had a significant year of price appreciation in 2022, both experiencing more than 10% growth in asking rents, reaffirming CRE’s role as an excellent hedge against inflation.

Several other asset classes continue to outperform, including self-storage, data centers, lab/life sciences, digital infrastructure, and single-tenant net-leased (STNL) properties. Meanwhile, there are also opportunistic investors looking at the distressed asset category, seeking exposure to attractive properties but at better terms than the pre-downturn.

Organizations are Centralizing Data to Gain a Competitive Edge

Across the industry, firms are searching for simple and scalable ways to mobilize their data assets to strengthen their competitive advantages. The ability to slice and dice this data to more nimbly screen, underwrite and evaluate investments allows organizations to grow their pipelines faster, analyzing opportunities more efficiently and scaling deal flow without relying on new hires.  

Instead of spending valuable time digging through shared spreadsheets, investors have access to boundless deal data at their fingertips. When the market rebounds, firms that placed a greater focus here will be positioned to win.

Beyond pipeline evaluations, centralizing deals in a deal management platform allows organizations to derive stronger insights from dead deals. Looking ahead, that data can inform pipeline strategies, enabling investors to better understand pipeline performance in specific asset classes.

Some Firms Pivot Into Debt to Fill Vacancies Left by Risk-Averse Banks

As banks have shifted away from lending to now-risky equity investors, some CRE lenders have found opportunity in distressed situations. Investors are moving up the capital stack and investing in more senior securities or trying to secure more favorable terms on debt instruments, in an innovative move to de-risk in this current turbulent environment. They’re looking more at debt options, especially taking advantage of refinancing situations where traditional lenders aren’t as eager. For now, banks remain largely on the sidelines.

Weathering the Storm: How to Win in a Volatile Market Environment

Watch the webinar to learn even more about how industry leaders are weathering the storm and preparing to accelerate as opportunities emerge.

The post The State of the CRE Market in 2023: Webinar Recap appeared first on Dealpath.

It’s no surprise that real estate, as the world’s largest asset class, offers ample opportunity for institutional investors and individuals willing to pursue it. Even as new trends emerge, like the shift to remote and hybrid working, real estate maintains its importance as a fixture in society. According to Future Market Insights, the U.S. proptech market was valued at $18.2B in 2022, and is projected to reach $86.5B by 2032. Statista also reports that executives plan to increase tech budgets by 11%. Proptech, or property technology, will continue to drive the $18 trillion real estate industry’s rapid growth by unlocking new efficiencies for professionals across all verticals.

All capital markets professionals rely on technology to accomplish things in a faster, more accurate and seamless manner. While real estate, and particularly commercial real estate have historically lagged behind adjacent markets when it comes to technology, proptech has propelled the industry forward. Read on to learn more about what proptech is, and how commercial real estate technology continues to shape both the industry and the built world.

Jump to:

• What Is Proptech? (Definition)
• The Proptech Landscape: Business- And Customer-Facing Solutions
• Commercial Real Estate’s Top Proptech Companies
• The Real Estate Proptech Software Industry’s Boom
• Proptech’s Reaction to Market Uncertainty: The Opportunity For Category Leaders
• Understanding Proptech Software’s Impact on the World & Market of the Pandemic
• Collaborating in the Cloud: The Power of Transparency in Proptech Software
• How Do Real Estate Professionals Use Proptech Software?
• Unhinging Data’s Power With Analytics
• Understanding Deal Management’s Role in Your Tech Stack

What Is Proptech? (Definition)

Proptech, or property technology, encompasses all residential and commercial real estate software. Various proptech tools and real estate technology platforms build efficiencies in different phases of the asset lifecycle, from deal management, to portfolio management and beyond.

Simply put, proptech connects people, technology and information to simplify how we own, sell, manage, operate, research, rent, market, buy and invest in residential real estate and commercial properties. From commercial real estate investors to developers, general contractors, building operations managers, brokers, and even legal teams, proptech solutions simplify daily operations and empower holistic decision-making.

In many ways, proptech is similar to its more realized financial services counterpart, fintech. Short for financial technology, fintech has played a significant role in modernizing finance-related industries like banking, payment processing and lending. In the same vein, disruptive proptech trends have uprooted traditional workflows, which were largely based in Excel, to create more efficiencies through cloud-based tools. It overlaps with construction technology, or contech, which relates more to the building process itself.

Proptech has already changed how the real estate world transacts, and will only continue to develop a stronger foothold as firms adopt these digital tools and new technologies emerge.

The Proptech Landscape: Business- And Customer-Facing Solutions

Commercial real estate technology is available in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) forms. VTS, a virtual tenant leasing and asset management platform, is another popular proptech platform that helps landlords and brokers market and lease to tenants with more connectivity and in less time, while also solving a range of other problems. Dealpath, the leading commercial real estate deal management software, is used by institutional investment management teams to streamline workflows, collaborate across teams and simplify reporting.

B2C proptech software helps both businesses, landlords and others to earn additional revenue and conduct more through research. Redfin and Zillow both connect home buyers and sellers or agents, expediting a previously lengthy and disconnected process. Airbnb gives owners another way to monetize their homes, and travelers a convenient, comfortable and fun way to find accommodations.

Proptech software will never eliminate or invalidate the deep industry knowledge required to thrive in the real estate industry. But by purposefully connecting the right dots, commercial real estate technology makes information more accessible and empowers professionals to systematically make data-driven decisions in a faster, more efficient way, driving revenue as a result.

Breaking Down the Property Technology Market By Vertical

Beyond the distinction between customer and business-facing tools, we can also analyze the proptech market based on the solution provider’s audience.

For example, contech, or construction technology encompasses technologies designed to assist general contractors and guide developers and operators toward sustainable, scalable practices. In a similar vein, smart home technology helps owners, operators and tenants monitor, regulate and control appliances, energy usage, and more through the internet of things (IoT). Real estate investment software enables investors to deploy capital strategically and efficiently, a category adjacent to fintech, which involves financial services.

Finally, platforms like AirBnB, WeWork and Clutter have emerged as popular shared economy services in the real estate world.

Together, all of these technologies have simplified operations for businesses and consumers alike.

Commercial Real Estate’s Top Proptech Companies

Following closely behind the earlier and, perhaps more prolific rise of residential real estate tech, commercial real estate proptech has already made a lasting impact on firms’ workflows and bottom lines. Centralizing data, information and people in one platform yields tremendous economies of scale. While new technology solutions are always emerging, these are some of the leading CRE tech solutions: 

• Dealpath: real estate deal management platform for institutional deal teams
• VTS: lease management, tenant experience and building automation
• Yardi & MRI Software: ERP & accounting
• Juniper Square: investor relations
• Argus by AltusGroup: cash flow modeling
• Procore: capital projects and construction management
• Cherre: data warehousing
• NavigatorCRE: business intelligence
• Building Engines: property management

The Real Estate Proptech Software Industry is Booming

As decision makers realize the impact of connectivity, seamless collaboration, and centralized data, proptech news continues to surge in popularity as the market size grows. Between 2013 and 2019, there were over 100 mergers and acquisitions in the proptech space. Proptech deals exceeded $7 billion between 2013 and 2020. Finally, Future Market Insights projected that the proptech market will be valued at $86.5 billion by 2032. Property technology companies continue to set the scene for a digitally connected future with seamless transactions by developing game-changing technologies.

The largest institutional investors are at the forefront of the proptech adoption wave, accelerating growth for players that have garnered significant market share driven by economies of scale. Principal Real Estate, a top 10 global real estate manager, relies on commercial real estate technology like Dealpath to increase deal volume and velocity. Tracking, managing and processing its pipeline in Dealpath allowed the NASDAQ-listed form to streamline deal flow. Consequently, Principal Real Estate evaluated a $250B pipeline in 2021, propelling its business into new sectors like data centers, self-storage and more.

In many ways, proptech has also accelerated growth for lean powerhouse investment management teams of 15. Niche teams have utilized proptech to build a competitive advantage by scaling faster than legacy methods like Excel for data management and email for deal communications allowed. Because commercial real estate technology allows them to collaborate and make decisions more efficiently, they can review more deals with ease. Time and again, firms have realized that data speaks volumes about past performance and future opportunities–part of proptech’s mission is to centralize that data for clear, efficient and actionable takeaways.

Proptech’s Reaction to Market Uncertainty: The Opportunity For Category Leaders

Even as commercial real estate firms increasingly rely on proptech to drive growth and digital transformations, recent fluctuations in the markets have presented new challenges.

Economic uncertainty looms across numerous markets, and private markets have followed the lead of public markets. This uncertainty–and the resulting decrease in transactional activity–have caused valuations to compress from 2021 peaks. In select cases, this has led to layoffs. Not all solution providers, though, are equipped to navigate this new environment.

Category leaders historically have an opportunity to thrive in tight market conditions by delivering revenue-driving innovation. Industry leaders seek the certainty of partnering with trusted companies, putting leading solution providers in a strong position to continue growing exponentially–even amidst the backdrop of a potential recession. Dealpath, real estate’s most trusted deal management platform, recently closed a $43 million series C funding round led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.

Building a Digital Deal Advantage to Outperform Competitors as Opportunity Emerges

While deal flow has slowed in today’s high interest-rate environment, many firms have capitalized on this moment in time to systematize data-driven investment decisions—positioning them to win as new opportunities emerge. From acquisitions pipeline management to development projects and debt origination software, the ideal time to shore up processes to prepare for new opportunities is now.

Refining, centralizing and automating investment processes now can create a digital deal advantage. As market tides change, firms that have adopted industry-leading proptech are poised to surface the most profitable opportunities faster, supercharge deal velocity and execute quickly and flawlessly.

Understanding Proptech Software’s Impact on the World & Market of the Pandemic

Before moving to proptech software, many large CRE investment management firms relied on a combination of industry-agnostic tools and proprietary technology solutions. This approach helped them accomplish efficiency-related goals, but ultimately primed the market for commercial real estate technology solutions with more holistic benefits.

Now, proptech presents new opportunities to centralize and gain insight into real-time data, which was previously delayed or disconnected. For example, as the pandemic progressed, it became clear that retail’s role in society had changed. In fact, Jeff Kaplan of GCP noted during a NAIOP panel discussion that their data illustrated the growing importance of eCommerce warehouse distribution centers, long before Amazon’s earnings exposed its massive growth. While multifamily will always be a viable investment as a basic necessity for urban living, real-time data also foretold its shift during the pandemic’s urban exodus.

How Do Real Estate Professionals Use Proptech Software?

Proptech software can fulfill a variety of different needs for professionals in various roles and organizations. For example, building operator can find ways to monitor lighting or occupancy. Conversely, investment managers can gain real-time visibility into their deal pipelines.

These are some of the ways that both businesses and individuals are using proptech:

• Listing Services: Sourcing and managing new deals, from new home rehab projects to multi-million dollar commercial investments
• Real Estate Marketplaces: Connecting buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants, and investment managers and investors via online marketplaces to expedite transactions, including virtual property touring software
• Building Operations: Optimizing operations by saving time and money through new efficiencies and streamlined processes
• Tenant Experience: Delivering a stronger tenant experience with digitally connected homes and buildings and smart building technology
• Deal Management: Aligning companies by providing visibility into upcoming deals, tasks, data, communications and much more, especially on the institutional side
• Data Aggregation: Accessing third-party market data to set a baseline for future decisions
• Real Estate Data Analytics: Gleaning insights from and centralizing data-driven analytics, including simplified reporting
• Property Management: Responding to and tracking maintenance requests in a more organized and timely manner

More generally, proptech serves to:

• Reduce manual data entry and digitize processes
• Empower all professionals to act with greater precision and predictability
• Bolster security in the cloud (for platforms with SOC 2 Type 2 certification)

As the industry continues to evolve, proptech companies will rise to the challenge of providing intuitive solutions for new needs–while balancing powerful functionality with enterprise data security.

Collaborating in the Cloud: The Power of Transparency in Proptech Software

When organizations worked from spreadsheets and other disconnected tools, it took a team member keying in updated information to share updates. In the modern fast-paced workplace, the ability to access up-to-date information instantly is not a luxury–it’s a necessity.

Among many other advantages, commercial real estate technology is largely cloud-based, which means that data updates in real time. Instead of painstakingly updating information through manual means, teams can work from real-time information with up-to-the-minute accuracy. From analysts to VPs to Managing Directors, knowing where a deal stands at any minute is imperative.

It’s easy to take this for granted in today’s world, but this information transparency has far-reaching operational benefits. Instead of emailing around for up-to-date information, stakeholders can act on the information that’s available. Senior leadership can make more accurate projections, and project managers can streamline their communications.

Unhinging Data’s Power With Analytics

Among the many other benefits outlined above, commercial real estate technology has opened new doors to how firms can leverage their data in a scalable manner. Reports and data-driven insights are powerful ways to inform business strategy, but historically, they were time consuming and unreliable. Commercial real estate technology is helping decision makers systematize multi-million dollar investment decisions and find answers faster with powerful data analytics.

While not all tools offer this capability, the right proptech software will programmatically cultivate analytics based on dynamically sourced data. Every deal you review—even those misaligned to your investment strategy—act as vital benchmarks, compounding your competitive intelligence. Unlike unstandardized spreadsheets, which must be mined for answers, analytics tools offer effortless insights.

Data is charting the future across many business verticals, and as commercial real estate technology advances, it will secure its place as a “must-have” for competitive investors.

Understanding Deal Management’s Role in Your Tech Stack

Among other proptech categories, deal management has quickly risen to the top as a necessity for investment management firms as a command center that centralizes their data, empowering them to invest more strategically and simplify their workflows. Download our free white paper to learn how you can strengthen your competitive advantage with a fully integrated, results-driven tech stack.

The post What Is Proptech? Understanding Commercial Real Estate Technology appeared first on Dealpath.

I’m proud to announce that, directly following our Morgan Stanley-led $43M series C closing, we’ve formed a key industry integration partnership with Cherre, real estate’s leading data aggregator. Dealpath customers will be able to more fully leverage their transaction, analysis and underwriting data with Cherre’s market-leading network of information sources. Over time, as we evolve the integration between our two platforms, Dealpath customers will also be able to augment their proprietary data with information provided by Cherre, enabling more contextual information about current or targeted assets to better inform investment decisions. Our mission is simple: enable our customers to execute more deals with greater speed and precision.

Developing a Competitive Edge With Real-Time Investment & Portfolio Data in Cherre

This integration partnership will offer customers already leveraging Cherre’s powerful data aggregation platform the opportunity to hydrate Cherre with data stored in Dealpath. Cherre customers that rely on Dealpath as their system of record for investment activity will now be able to integrate real-time acquisition and disposition pipeline data, underwriting information, financial models, comparables and other key information stored in Dealpath.

Introducing investment deal data into Cherre will empower customers to make more strategic decisions across the asset lifecycle. Dealpath data will further augment data-driven market evaluation, portfolio health monitoring, and allow customers to more readily identify key operational and financial trends affecting their assets and portfolios.

Cherre accomplishes this through a robust data aggregation platform that commingles and standardizes disparate, real-time datasets, including customer data sourced from asset management & ERP platforms. This proprietary data is augmented with third-party information such as public record data, demographics, construction activity, market and economic data and myriad other sources. Cherre marries these data streams, delivering powerful analytics and more insights into owned assets, potential acquisitions and the broader real estate markets.

Surfacing Market and Portfolio Data in Dealpath

As our integration partnership with Cherre evolves, Cherre will hydrate Dealpath with additional third-party datasets, bolstering your investment command center with even more contextual information. When evaluating deals, we anticipate that customers will be able to reference dozens of key data fields about an asset and the surrounding market after simply entering an address, providing numerous competitive & operational advantages.

Dealpath customers will achieve significant operational efficiencies and save valuable time by leveraging data sourced through Cherre’s vast library of information partners directly in Dealpath, eliminating the need to rekey critical asset & market information. This integration will also accelerate the deal evaluation process by minimizing the time normally required to access  external research services, accelerating asset review & underwriting.

Beyond speed and efficiency, integrating data from Cherre into Dealpath will also empower investors to act with greater conviction by validating the accuracy of information provided by sellers in OMs, or surfacing potentially inaccurate data early on. Equipped with market-validated data points that inform key variables, customers will be able to improve the efficacy of underwriting models.

Building the Investment Command Center for Today & Tomorrow

As the pace of transactions accelerates, and market players aim to move faster than ever on the most sought-after opportunities, deal teams must leverage all of the information they can to act quickly and confidently. Structured, centrally available data is the key deal acceleration, systematizing investment processes and, ultimately, scale.

Dealpath continues to expand its capabilities, solidifying our platform as the ‘single source of truth’ used by hundreds of CRE investment firms, including six of the top 10 investment managers globally. We realize that there are ample opportunities to better serve investment professionals on Dealpath with mission-critical data through integrations like the one we proudly announced this week. In 2022 and beyond, we will continue partnering with key proptech players in delivering solutions that unlock maximum portfolio value.

The post Announcing Dealpath’s Strategic Integration Partnership With Cherre appeared first on Dealpath.

Read on to learn more about the 9 most essential CRE tech solutions, and the value they carry for real estate institutional investors of all sizes.

The 9 Essential CRE Tech Solutions

Sometimes considered a latecomer alongside tech-forward capital markets like private equity, commercial real estate’s ongoing digital transformation has yielded tremendous progress, eliminating manual work with goal-oriented solutions. From the moment that a firm begins reviewing a new investment deal to the moment they sell it, various solutions automate, simplify and digitize functions like accounting, lease management and more. Together, these technologies form the CRE technology ecosystem, working in sync to provide the right information to the right stakeholders. As a result, owners can manage and monetize their properties faster, easier, and more efficiently.

Jump to:

• Dealpath: Best CRE Tech Solution for Deal Management
• VTS: Best CRE Tech Solution for Lease Management, Tenant Experience & Building Automation
• Yardi & MRI Software: Best CRE Software Solutions for ERP Accounting
• Juniper Square: Best CRE Tech Solution for Investor Reporting
• Argus by AltusGroup: Best Cash Flow Modeling Tool
• ProCore: Best Capital Projects & Construction Management Platform
• Cherre: Best CRE Data Warehousing Solution
• NavigatorCRE: Best Business Intelligence Tool
• Building Engines: Best CRE Property Management Technology

1. Dealpath: Best CRE Tech Solution for Deal Management

Deal management software empowers institutional deal teams to systematize their investment decisions. After finding a new opportunity and learning all corresponding details, inventors add deals to their deal pipelines, where they will undergo thorough screening and evaluation. Deal management software simplifies each leg of this process, ensuring that deals are evaluated thoroughly, yet efficiently.

Dealpath is the industry’s leading deal management platform, serving as a command center from pipeline to portfolio management. Enterprise deal teams rely on Dealpath to make strategic, data-driven decisions, often relying on their historical data through data analytics. By configuring workflows, they can also shorten the deal lifecycle by moving them through the funnel more efficiently. Dealpath Data Ingestion even allows firms to add deals to their pipelines with no data entry.

Six of the top ten real estate institutional investors manage their deals on Dealapth. Since launching in 2014, Dealpath has supported over $10 trillion in transactions.

2. VTS: Best CRE Tech Solution for Lease Management, Tenant Experience & Building Automation

Renting dozens of units or floors out to unique tenants with varying needs is a nearly insurmountable challenge–at least without the right CRE tech. VTS is a lease and asset management platform that centralizes property, tenant, lease and deal data so that landlords can drive optimal asset value. 

Many top institutional investors leverage VTS to manage their leases, ensuring that each building, floor or office is either actively generating revenue, or in the works to be rented soon. Property managers can market current lease openings with ease, and even surface opportunities to grow other accounts. Digital marketing tools make marketing these leases a breeze, even when nuances like building structure, floor designs and the surrounding neighborhood could otherwise pose challenges.

Integrating amenities like lighting, air conditioning and more into building technology helps landlords deliver on a great tenant experience. VTS also gives landlords a way to monitor other metrics for adjustment.

3. Yardi & MRI Software: Best CRE Software Solutions for ERP Accounting

Across a given portfolio, all firms will have a never-ending stream of operating costs, as well as revenue generated from rent. To gain full visibility into your firm’s overarching financial footprint, managing these finances from a property management or ERP software is vital.

Yardi and MRI Software are two of the most common CRE tech platforms used by property managers for accounting, compliance, procurement and risk management. Housing both property expenses and income in one platform aids in exposing discrepancies that call for action.

4. Juniper Square: Best CRE Tech Solution for Investor Reporting

Investor reporting is no easy task, especially when funds are spread across numerous deals in different stages of maturity, and not to mention, different asset classes. For this reason, investment managers have turned to Juniper Square for clear, timely investor reporting.

Juniper Square’s dedicated investor platform eliminates the monotony of building complex spreadsheets just to report on returns. Instead, you can use this CRE tech to build tailored reports that detail earnings for each investor from one hub.

5. Argus by AltusGroup: Best Cash Flow Modeling Tool

With countless variables to consider, modeling cash flows for prospective acquisitions or owned assets is time-consuming and error-prone work. The stakes are high, too–even one inaccurate number could lead an investor to make a decision that deviates from their strategy. Argus, a tool created by AltusGroup, is a cash flow modeling software that helps firms to paint a more vivid financial picture based on rent rolls.

Analyzing assets with Argus modeling allows investors to jump past the monotony and potential inaccuracies of cash flow models, helping them forecast intelligently. Argus is critical at both the beginning of the funnel, when deal teams are evaluating a new deal, and at the end of the funnel, when portfolio managers must evaluate whether to hold or sell the asset.

6. ProCore: Best Capital Projects & Construction Management Platform

While they may not have exactly the same financial needs or questions as investors, capital projects and development teams also need visibility into their projects.

ProCore is the leading capital projects and construction management tool used by the real estate world, uniting teams from the field and office in one live CRE tech platform. General contractors, capital projects teams, development teams and other construction leaders rely on ProCore to track costs, supplies, and project progress. From start to finish, capital projects leaders can confidently look to ProCore for real-time updates, benchmarking progress against their initial plans. Historical project data can also serve as a benchmark for future projects.

7. Cherre: Best CRE Data Warehousing Solution

Each day, commercial real estate firms face the challenge of leveraging data streams from disparate sources to achieve the best results. Deriving meaning from this noise can be challenging, but there are ways to break through the noise. 

Cherre is one of the best-known data warehousing platforms leveraged by the commercial real estate world. As an aggregator, Cherre ingests data from numerous sources. Once ingested, users can view data in Cherre through different lenses. This gives commercial real estate professionals the unique opportunity to visualize data from different sources, often casting portfolio data in a more holistic light. In turn, professionals across multiple functions use this CRE tech to see and act with greater clarity.

8. NavigatorCRE: Best Business Intelligence Tool

There are always opportunities to take profitable assets to the next level, but maximizing portfolio value can be challenging. NavigatorCRE is a business intelligence tool that aggregates data from multiple sources to answer questions and synthesize insights.

NavigatorCRE is used by asset managers to gain oversight into their portfolios, analyze rent rolls and unearth opportunities to more effectively monetize assets.

9. Building Engines: Best CRE Property Management Technology

Delivering a flawless tenant experience is the best way to retain happy tenants. From minor maintenance requests to daily comforts like HVAC control, equipping tenants with everything they need is no simple task. That’s why building operations and property management tools have become an even more essential part of today’s CRE technology toolkit.

Building Engines, a JLL Company, empowers building operators to seamlessly accommodate tenant needs. From one hub, operators can manage work orders, HVAC requirements, essential communications and more. In turn, owners and operators can earn a higher net operating income from that building.

The CRE Tech You Need to Keep Pace With Today’s Market

To make multi-million dollar investment decisions in today’s market, deal teams can’t rely on emails, spreadsheets and physical documents. Download our e-book to learn how leading real estate institutional investors deploy capital efficiently and grow revenue effectively by managing all their deals from one command center.

The post CRE Tech: 9 Essential Solutions for a Digital Transformation appeared first on Dealpath.

What Is Deal Flow in Commercial Real Estate?

The more deals aligned to your investment strategy that your firm can source, the wider the array of opportunities it can choose from. That’s why leading investment firms have systematized real estate deal flow by driving deal volume and velocity with deal management software. When screening one deal takes hours of manual data-driven analysis in Excel, other opportunities could slip through the cracks.

Driving deal flow with a deal management platform enables you to manage, track, analyze and report on deals all in one place. As a result, your firm can work more strategically and with less effort to identify the right opportunities.

5 Tactics to Scale Deal Flow 

1. Scale Deal Flow By Sourcing More Deals in Your Target Market

Naturally, scaling and streamlining commercial real estate deal flow begins with increasing deal volume. By screening more deals, your firm can work with a larger pipeline, creating a wider pool of options and simultaneously building a larger knowledge base for future investment decisions. 

Industry relationships, particularly with brokers, is one tried-and-true way to source more deals. The more that your firm can build rapport with brokers, the more fruit these relationships will bear. Other connections like property managers, investors and regular collaborators can also become a reliable source for new deals.

2. Crystallize Investment Criteria and Strategy

Scaling deal flow is only productive when your firm develops clear, strategic investment criteria to compare each deal against. To avoid wasting resources, crystallize your investment criteria and concentrate sourcing efforts on deals that meet this profile. Clarifying the target markets, asset classes, and other criteria your firm searches for will enable your team to make faster decisions when deciding whether to reject or pursue new deals.

3. Leverage a Cloud-Based Platform to Manage Deals

Managing your pipeline in an Excel-based spreadsheet can often create more inefficiencies than it solves, particularly when your team is competing for editing access, or when it takes time to track down other information and deliverables. 

The right deal management software will drive deal flow by allowing your team to source, track, manage and report on deals in one platform. This operational efficiency enables investors to find relevant information, whether that might be historical data or an LOI, in seconds. As a result, your team can prioritize value-add work, spend less time and effort communicating internally, and confidently work with accurate data. 

4. Uncover Pipeline Bottlenecks and Refine Deal Workflows

When individual steps in the pipeline process consume significant time, your firm might have an opportunity to streamline deal flow simply by reconsidering workflows to eliminate bottlenecks. Auditing how you screen, review and underwrite deals can often surface latent inefficiencies that could be stopping deals in their tracks. Operational analytics can aid in this discovery process by uncovering bottlenecks, helping you prioritize improvements.

Deal management software like Dealpath empowers firms to operationalize their pipeline process by standardizing real estate deal flow with bespoke workflows. For example, when a deal enters the contract phase, everyone on the acquisitions team could receive new tasks, which are auto-assigned to them through role-based templates. The more polished your workflows are, the faster the team can make an informed, data-driven decision.

5. Leverage Powerful Data-Driven Analytics

Data often speaks the loudest about the viability of an investment, but manually aggregating data and building Excel models takes significant time, and may create more questions than answers. After all, how can your team find comps when data is unstructured and scattered between various folders?

Data-driven real estate analytics can be a powerful tool that allows you to analyze deals based on historical data related to the specific market and asset class. Instead of relying on intuition or potentially outdated data, you can confidently make fast, data-driven decisions. Whether you reject a deal immediately or choose to move forward, data analytics are essential for investors building a competitive portfolio.

8 Features To Look For in a Deal Management Platform

Deal management software can prove invaluable as your firm expedites the pipeline review process. But for firms taking their first foray into deal management, there are many factors to consider, such as workflows, data analytics and real-time visibility. Learn how you can find the right deal management platform by downloading our free guide.

The post 5 Ways to Streamline & Scale Commercial Real Estate Deal Flow appeared first on Dealpath.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss the role of a CRM, how it compares with and complements deal management software, and the best CRM for real estate investors.

How do CRE Investors Use Customer Relationship Management Platforms?

The highest and best use of a CRM for real estate investors should be to manage business contacts. Depending on your firm’s niche, that could mean managing a network of brokers, or, for brokerages, managing a network of investors and other contacts. 

Some CRMs are more robust, but the category’s emphasis on contacts makes them lackluster tools for managing deals. Even commercial real estate CRMs are unequipped to independently manage the complexities of an investor’s day-to-day, such as:

• Creating and managing collaborative, cross-team workflows
• Deal analysis via historical comps and insightful analytics
• Real-time investment deal pipeline tracking

To manage both deals and contacts in an ever-evolving pipeline with precision and efficiency, many leading investment management firms utilize both CRMs and deal management platforms. 

What Makes a Good CRM for CRE?

When considering the top CRM for your commercial real estate investment management firm, keep your goals top of mind. The primary function of a CRM is to aid in managing business contacts and relationships, as well as outreach to and communication with them. While often necessary, a CRM is not an all-encompassing solution for technology needs related to investment deal tracking, analysis and execution.

The best CRM for your commercial real estate firm will:

• Manage contacts and customer data with a searchable, filterable interface, based in the cloud
• Record and preserve context across teams about recent communications and deals, helping teams collaborate effectively 
• Provide visibility throughout organizations into who is assigned certain work and/or deals
• Managing a pipeline of sales, ensuring that no communications or leads slips through the cracks
• Simplify administrative tasks like commission payments, invoices and sales reporting 

Leveraged in the right way, the top commercial real estate CRM will allow everyone to communicate with customers and partners seamlessly.

Top 5 CRMs for Commercial Real Estate Investors

1. Salesforce: The Top CRM For Commercial Real Estate Investors & Teams

Salesforce leads the CRM space with optimal flexibility and functionality for contact management, making it the top choice for commercial real estate investors. You can choose to use Salesforce with “out of the box” functionality, or configure it for more precise functionality. Beyond managing contacts, teams can use Salesforce to manage sales, with powerful sales pipeline tracking tools. Executives can also gain a high-level overview of upcoming activity with real-time data. 

2. Hubspot: The Top CRM for Commercial Real Estate With Integrated Marketing Functionality

Hubspot offers commercial real estate investors and brokers a way to manage contacts together with marketing, sales and more. Among top commercial real estate CRMs, Hubspot is the best option when it comes to integrations and automation. It also offers reporting and performance-tracking capabilities, which can prove invaluable for brokers and other sales teams. Your firm can start small with only basic features, incrementally adding other tools as needed. 

3. ClientLook: Best CRM for Brokers to Manage Listings

ClientLook is a robust commercial real estate CRM that enables broker teams to manage contacts, properties, and pipeline sales in one platform. It offers a number of API integrations with Google, MailChimp and other platforms to make brokers’ work simple. ClientLook also streamines data entry and task scheduling, aiding prioritization efforts.

4. Zendesk Sell: Best CRM for Centralizing Emails & Communications

While not purpose-built as a commercial real estate CRM, Zendesk Sell offers CRE teams an intuitive way to centralize communications. As different brokers make calls, send emails, and reach out in other ways, these communications can be logged in Zendesk Sell, showing everyone the latest touchpoints.

5. Apto: Best Salesforce-Based CRM for Brokers

Apto is a commercial real estate CRM built on top of Salesforce. With Apto, commercial real estate brokers can benefit from the configurability of Salesforce and the specificity of a CRE-focused tool. Using Apto, brokers can manage leads, contacts, schedule tasks, and more. 

How Commercial Real Estate CRMs Complement Deal Management Platforms

Because they fulfill different needs, CRE investment teams benefit from utilizing both a CRM and deal management software. CRMs function as the single source of truth for contact-related information, but fall short when it comes to workflow complexity, real-time investment pipeline visibility and deal analytics. Deal management platforms bridge this critical gap, helping investors execute deals with precision and efficiency.

Begin Your Deal Management Platform Search With the Right Framework

Deal management software can help your firm grow top-line revenue by deploying capital efficiently and executing effectively. But, with competing priorities and many options to consider, starting your software search strategically can prove challenging. Download our list of the top 8 essential features for real estate deal management software to launch your discovery process with the right framework.

The post Top 5 Commercial Real Estate CRMs for Investors appeared first on Dealpath.

The Importance of a CRE Software Implementation

Implemented properly, CRE software can offer tremendous, untapped value across analytics, workflows, reporting, and other parts of the business. However, an unsuccessful implementation can be just as dangerous as maintaining dated processes–if not more. During your evaluation, be sure to inquire about the implementation process’ strategies, scope, personnel, steps, and more to confirm that the company is equipped to servicing your needs.

CRE Software Implementations: 5 Factors You Must Look For

1. Early Alignment on Goals, Processes and Desired Outcomes (Prior to Initiating Software Implementation)

As you consider new proptech software to accomplish goals, you shouldn’t need to make fundamental changes to your processes. Even with a straightforward use case, chances are that you have unique ideas about how the platform can drive those goals. Before beginning the commercial real estate software implementation process, the vendor should offer an opportunity to touch base about how you intend to use it, as well as any other specific points that could influence the configuration. 

Aligning early on ensures that the implementation team has the details they need to configure the platform properly, preventing confusion or misaligned expectations down the road. Establishing these expectations will also give your firm the confidence it needs to know that the end product will help you accomplish real business goals, rather than collecting another shiny object.

In the same vein, the kickoff should give your firm an opportunity to provide details about existing processes. Remember: the goal of a CRE software implementation is not to alter your processes, but augment them. If the software company doesn’t request specific details, it could be a red flag that the platform is not bespoke.

2. Dedicated Implementation Team 

To achieve the right outcomes, the CRE software implementation checklist must include extensive communication and iteration. For this reason, the vendor should always put your firm in contact with a dedicated team. Conferring with multiple points of contact can result in confusion, which is why a dedicated implementation manager must oversee the process.

Often, these teams also include other personnel, who may assist in the configuration. Dealpath’s implementation team includes a dedicated implementation manager, who takes the lead, an implementation analyst, who works behind the scenes to help configure the platform, and a customer success manager, who will become your main point of contact post-implementation for ongoing support.

3. Feedback-Driven CRE Software Implementation Process 

Once your particular instance begins to take form, your firm will inevitably have feedback about how the configuration can be modified to best suit its needs. There should be opportunities for you to interface with the implementation team as the CRE software implementation process progresses and provide ongoing input. Valuable feedback about how the software’s configuration aligns with existing processes can dramatically improve adoption, as unfamiliar and unintuitive workflows can become a frustrating challenge that reduces platform usage and limits organizational benefits.

4. A Clear, Achievable, and Deadline-Driven Timeline

CRE software implementations shouldn’t drag on forever, especially when your firm is mobilizing to accomplish timely outcomes. Before signing the dotted line, be sure to inquire about the implementation timeline. While some variables are inevitable, the software implementation company should be able to provide a clear schedule that outlines when specific steps in the configuration process will take place. Otherwise, your firm may end up in an ongoing implementation without a clear end date–holding you back from meeting critical objectives.

5. Guided, Org-Wide Training Sessions for Leadership and Users

Configuration is only the first step of implementing CRE software–the next step is driving platform adoption through guided onboarding and training sessions. While champions and power users can promote best practices, the software company should also deliver a guided training session about how your firm’s particular instance works. Remember, your firm can only gain value from proptech when your team is using it. By launching the software with a guided training session, your firm can ensure that the team is properly trained on how a platform works, especially when complemented by firm-led trainings about internal processes and workflows.

Learn More About Dealpath’s Goal-Oriented Implementation and Configuration

As the leading purpose-built commercial real estate deal management platform, Dealpath empowers firms of all sizes to streamline acquisitions, lending, development and dispositions workflows. Leveraging robust, data-driven analytics, firms can make faster, more efficient decisions to invest at scale, while saving time building efficiencies.

Download the Dealpath implementation guide to learn more about how Dealpath’s timely, goal-oriented implementation process can help your firm accomplish deadline-driven goals.

The post CRE Software Implementation Plans: 5 Factors to Look For appeared first on Dealpath.