Your portfolio and your customers need more than an app: they need a comprehensive operating system that weaves all of your commercial office building technology and data together in one platform.
Thursday, HqO Chief Technology Officer Dr. Jim Butler and Chief Revenue Officer Mark Rosenthal conducted a live webinar discussing HqOS technology, and how it creates connections between people, devices, and the built world.
HqOS is the only operating system for commercial office buildings, and customers across our nearly 100M square foot portfolio are relying on it to create a seamless return to work for their tenants.
In this webinar, we took a closer look at the technology framework behind HqOS, including why the complexity of real estate demands a true operating system, how centralized technology and data on people, systems, and amenities can create real business value, what it means to be an operating system, and how the underlying technology of our operating system is built.
During the live presentation, we identified a few key areas in need of data-driven solutions, and polled attendees to determine what they saw as the most important. Listed below are the questions and the results.
First, we discussed the problems of attracting and retaining tenants, avoiding fragmentation by having a unified suite of amenities and technology, and differentiating your commercial real estate assets from the pack through data-driven solutions.
Of those three main areas (attraction, fragmentation, and differentiation), we asked attendees: which of these issues are you most concerned with?
Their clear answer: differentiation, with 53% of the vote.
This comes as no surprise. In a world where more and more competitors are adopting amenities and technologies as part of their basic service offerings, it’s key to find that “secret sauce” that helps you stand out from the crowd. By utilizing a tool like the Digital Grid, CRE stakeholders can identify trends and patterns that enable data-driven decisions, ultimately spending more efficiently on CapEx and OpEx, while creating a better experience for their tenants in the process.
Next, we discussed the HqOS Marketplace and the ways it brings technologies together, and Dr. Butler went behind the scenes about the vertical integration standards HqO has built for developers. With this knowledge in hand, we asked attendees which of our verticals was of most interest.
Once again, one answer stood out from the pack: Access Control, with 47% of the vote.
Access Control adds clear and consistent day-to-day value for every building occupant, and is an entryway into integrating IoT into your assets’ built environment.
Second and third on the list were Mobile Order Ahead for food and beverage, and Visitor Registration. Like Access Control, Order Ahead and Visitor Registration help us integrate the “new normal” into a post-COVID-19 world by reducing wait times and physical touch points while helping to maintain a safe social distance. As tenants begin returning to work, the health and safety of building occupants will be the top priority, and utilizing technologies like these is one of the best places to start.
Finally, Dr. Butler discussed the importance of data in commercial real estate. Through the HqOS Digital Grid, we’re combining data about a building, its systems, its services, and its users all in one place, which in turn establish benchmarks and enable data-driven decision making.
When asked which data segments attendees saw value in collecting, the answers were clear: benchmarking (43%) and user satisfaction (36%) were the runaway top answers. This indicates the importance of understanding how people feel about your building, a need for a leg up in the retention process, and a desire to invest wisely and efficiently.
None of the responses we received during our live webinar were particularly surprising, and none of the issues we discussed are new. Rather, HqO is taking the lead in providing a customer-centric experience with a solution-oriented product approach. The commercial real estate industry has needs — it’s time to address them.
