The Office Guide to Tenant Experience Technology
Due to constantly developing tenant and office building needs, the adoption of proptech and technology partnerships has become a necessity in a world adjusting to rapidly evolving work models. Tenant experience technology and office space software not only help landlords and property teams bring new life to the overall building experience, but also reinforce a competitive advantage in a shifting industry. Additionally, many proptech companies are available in the market to help establish a more customer-centric model for the commercial real estate (CRE) industry.
Growing flexibility in working preferences means that the workplace and its community have now officially transcended the four walls of the office building — not only do landlords have to find ways to create great experiences for those who choose to come into the office, but also for those who follow a more hybrid work model approach. It’s also been an important time to focus on making time in the physical office valuable as a way to attract tenants to office spaces as a preferred work location. Thus, the industry has reached a point where technology is needed to bridge the gap between the physical office and the digital workplace to create omnichannel office experiences, while also connecting employees in a way that is both engaging and thoughtful.
The Rise of Tenant Experience: The Future of CRE
When thinking about a typical commercial real estate tenant, many overlook the small details of their day. From their morning commute coffee to post-work activities such as doctor’s appointments or fitness classes, tenant activities are more ingrained in your building community than you may think. Great tenant engagement even incorporates the actions that occur outside of your building, such as tenant commute and transportation needs. These workplace experiences all come together to create what we refer to as the tenant experience (TeX).
Cultivating this ecosystem is critical. Each tenant activity presents a new opportunity to improve the property experience with technology tailored to the individuals who are in the building every day. These opportunities harness the power of a modern, digital tenant experience: helping landlords put relevant technology into the hands of a building’s population that they don’t regularly connect with, and using that technology to improve tenant retention and attraction and to add value to their assets.
Thus, tenant experience technology has become the driving force behind bringing commercial real estate (CRE) leaders and property teams closer to their building occupants than ever before. Tenant experience software can not only be leveraged to create new and exciting engagement opportunities for tenants, but also to collect meaningful data on what building occupants really want, and how they really use a given space. In the modern commercial real estate landscape, it will serve as the biggest differentiator between your building, and everyone else’s.
Thus, a tenant engagement platform that can support the physical and digital workplaces will become the driving force behind bringing commercial real estate (CRE) leaders and property teams closer to their building occupants than ever before. The right tenant management software can not only be leveraged to create new and exciting engagement opportunities for tenants, but also to collect meaningful data on what building occupants really want, and how they really use a given space. In the modern commercial real estate landscape, it will serve as the biggest differentiator between your building and everyone else’s.
Taking a Platform Approach to Tenant Experience Software
Tenant experience software can take many forms — whether it’s an app for tenants, or many different apps you use for various solutions. At HqO, we know that the best approach to tenant experience software is an entire tenant engagement platform that aggregates multiple technologies into one, easy-to-use command center. This holistic, platform approach should also provide solutions for the main pillars of the tenant experience.
In our HqOS Marketplace of best-in-class technology partners, you can activate partners and technologies to meet any building’s needs through the following categories:
- Access Control: Through access control capabilities, owners can enable tenants to gain access to their office buildings with just the tap of a phone.
- Emergency Communications: Another critical tenant experience component is the ability to communicate critical safety information to building occupants in a quick and efficient manner.
- Order Ahead: A smart-enabled technology platform can increase safety and convenience for your tenants, such as integrating with local retailers to allow them to place orders ahead and reduce friction.
- Resource Booking: Even resource booking can be more seamless. Smart building sensors coordinate with your existing software to assist in more efficient room booking management, from conference rooms to event spaces and everything in between, making organizing your day completely frictionless.
- Service Booking: Technologies can also be utilized to activate your building amenities. Tenants can take advantage of easy-to-book services, fitness classes, and more.
- Service Requests: Building and maintenance staff play an essential role in tenant experience. Enter service request solutions, where tenants can communicate with building managers for work orders, cleaning services, and more.
- Shuttle Tracking: Shuttle tracking technologies can help you understand your tenants’ commuting behaviors and determine the best-fit transit solutions for any property.
- Ticketing: Smart ticketing can help grant tenants access to key property experiences and partner services with scannable visuals. The process is quick, convenient, and contactless.
- Visitor Registration: Contactless visitor registration can also be easily integrated into a building through a tenant experience platform. Speed up the visitor registration process while also ensuring modern safety and security protocols are met.
HqO: Leading Tenant Experience
At HqO, we’re working to build a substantial foundation for the long-term success of CRE through the tenant experience, which drives unparalleled insights, lasting value, and streamlined operations across assets, portfolios, and geographies.
As we work with best-in-class technologies and grow our partner ecosystem, we want all features — from smart lighting to space management strategies to access solutions — to be available at the click of a button, just like a remote control for your building. Our vision opens up a whole world of functionalities and capabilities to landlords and property teams, who can now start differentiating assets by providing unique and memorable experiences to tenants by leveraging HqOS™ — the only end-to-end tenant experience operating system for CRE — to provide holistic office solutions.
We created an entire tenant experience platform because we know that the key to the successful implementation of tenant experience apps and technologies is managing the processes and complexity that come with new integrations. Whether it powers a mobile device, a laptop, or a server, the prime directive of any operating system is to abstract away the enormous complexities of the underlying system and to provide standard and streamlined methods of user security, user interface, data storage, communications, resource sharing, and most importantly, application execution.
The OS concept also means that the best property management apps aren’t apps at all, but rather a fully integrated platform. End-to-end solutions not only ensure easy processes for building occupants and tenants but also give property teams access to more meaningful, actionable data that can help inform strategic decisions across entire assets or portfolios. However, adopting a data-driven decision-making mindset requires careful thought.
As part of our HqOS operating system, our growing Marketplace of best-in-class technology partners are aggregated within the HqO app for any building. Landlords and property teams can then choose to activate partners and features that meet any building’s specific needs. The HqO platform can also use these new office activations to collect meaningful data on your building and its end-users through the Digital Grid™, our robust analytics offering. These meaningful insights can lend way to real-time feedback, benchmarking opportunities, and enhancements to building performance.
The HqO Valuation: Growing at a Global Speed
As leaders of tenant experience, HqO has been gaining momentum for the office sector around the world. From our headquarters in Boston, MA, to HqO NYC, Dallas, Los Angeles, London, and Paris offices, we’re connecting employees to the communities in and around their buildings and empowering them with tools to control their workday. Here are just a few successes that our dedicated team, customers, partners, and investors have recently fueled:
- The introduction of HqOS™, the end-to-end operating system for CRE. Made up of three layers: the Tenant Experience Platform, Digital Grid™, and Marketplace, HqOS revolutionized the way property teams manage all customer-facing technology tools within their building. Since then, we’ve further enhanced these offerings and launched HqOS Headquarters, our desktop-based command center that allows customers to rapidly deploy and configure data-driven tenant engagement strategies across their portfolio — with absolutely no coding required.
- Since we announced HqOS, we’ve digitally launched our Tenant Experience Platform across 81 new properties. We’ve also integrated 110 developers and 70 vendors within our Marketplace — many of which provide services and tools that are vital to modern safety and health regulations and are shaping the future of work. Alongside those partnerships, we’ve added over 200 assets to the Digital Grid to help make it easier than ever to surface data on building companies, spaces, amenities, and technologies.
- As of 2020, we’re powering 120 million square feet of property technology across North America and Europe. This includes fifteen U.S. Markets, as well as operating in the U.K., Ireland, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Notably, we occupy 3.7 million square feet in the U.K., and over 300,000 square feet in France.
Offices Are Now Powered by Tenant Experience Technology
As was the vision of the HqO founders when we launched 3 years ago, technology is being used to change the office sector (and the world) by establishing more meaningful, valuable experiences. The rapid acceleration of CRE’s digital transformation means it’s time to get on board, and to do it fast.
To learn more about HqO and our end-to-end operating system, schedule a free demo today. If you’re interested in HqO careers, you can check out the HqO Glassdoor page, HqO LinkedIn page, or our official Careers page.
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HqOS — the tenant experience operating system for commercial office buildings — enhances physical spaces with digital experiences, accelerates the implementation of innovative asset strategies, and enables data-driven decision making
- Create rich digital experiences for the people who occupy your buildings with the Tenant Experience Platform
- Find and manage apps in one place with the Marketplace
- Capture & structure all data on how people use your buildings with the Digital Grid™
- Deploy your tenant experience strategy with Headquarters