For today’s employers, getting the most out of their workers matters. With human capital comprising more than 70% of a company’s operating spend, attracting and retaining top talent becomes essential and commercial office tenants are looking to commercial buildings to provide seamless integration of services and amenities that can help to make their workplaces more productive.
CBRE Group, Inc, one of the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firms, has launched a mobile app, CBRE 360, that integrates property services and amenities at the workplace to drive productivity of workers and occupiers in class A multi-tenant office buildings.
“Professional and personal lives are continuing to converge, and higher expectations are being set for the workplace. CBRE 360 will help our clients reimagine the delivery of property services, amenities and enablement technologies to attract and retain top talent and foster collaboration and productivity,” said Mike Lafitte, president of CBRE’s Global Group.
The CBRE 360 mobile app offers tenants, occupiers and property managers a single point of access to building amenities and services focused on achieving occupant experiences which enhance workplace productivity.
The branded mobile apps enable property managers and building occupants to communicate relevant building updates, navigate workplace campuses, reserve workspaces and access concierge services ranging from ordering tickets to coveted events to scheduling dry-cleaning pick-up and delivery and even ordering that morning cup of joe.
An open architecture enables the app to connect to existing frameworks and serves as an ecosystem tool making it easy to deploy.
The app focuses on meeting the three most common tenant-side requests: access to food and beverage, an enhanced visitor management experience and world-class amenities and services that promote worker productivity.
“Proptech is a value technology. Everybody wants an app or mobile platform that connects the occupant’s journey up and down the stack. We look at transactions by volume to identify where we can reduce time waste to optimize employee productivity,” said Brennan McReynolds senior vice president of Business Development and Operations for CBRE 360, in an interview with In-Building Tech.
For example, the app uses geolocation to enable occupants to order their morning coffee and have it five minutes before they walk into the office. Similarly, dry-cleaning and high-end concierge service available through the app are designed to meet the fast-paced requirements for employees.
The app also streamlines and centralizes the visitor management process, which is the second most demanded service from the tenant-side marketplace. The CBRE 360 app saves times for visitors check-in and makes it easier for property managers to accommodate staffing needs based on visitor traffic to offer seamless entry and exit process to enhance the occupant experiences.
Last, but certainly not least, promoting the use of on-site amenities such as fitness classes or equipment, and disseminating event information such as happy hours, roof deck socials and other programs are also equally as important to commercial office tenants. There’s a reason why tech firms like Google and Facebook spend billions to build colossal amenity rich campuses- -they know that if you keep employees on-site longer it increases their productivity and job satisfaction.
While its too soon to use NOI as a metric, one of the ways of measuring success is assessing the utilization of services, said McReynolds.
“The short-term measurement of success is the utilization of services that are installed by tenants and occupants. It’s imperative to assess the app’s use if you want to use it as an immediate feedback tool that can inform future programming,” McReynolds added.
Costs associated with deploying CBRE 360 include a configuration fee, upfront investment in property management and educational services and incentivizing occupants to use the technology through promos or discounts. There is also an annual software-as-a-service expense.
The future for building apps hinges on the ability to remain relevant to the occupants and as the market evolves.
“Three years from now I would say 50% of class A buildings will have both a building app and internal employee productivity tool. The challenge for proptech is making sure they remain worthy of being on a user’s home screen,” McReynolds said.