Six Reasons to Use Real Estate Asset Management Software

By Devon Maresco
Marketing Coordinator
SpaceIQ

The question on every corporate executive’s mind is whether to downsize, scale back, or consolidate the company’s real estate portfolio. This is especially important in a post-coronavirus world as the workplace undergoes yet another change. As real estate managers forecast the future, they need quantifiable data about facilities. Real estate asset management software can provide this data and the insights that contextualize it.

Here’s a look at six of the most important reasons real estate managers need asset management software and the benefits it provides.

1. 1,000-foot view of properties

Asset managers need to understand each property from a cost-benefit standpoint. That means looking from the top down, to see the factors that make up both sides of this equation. It’s easy to look at fixed costs on a balance sheet—asset management software provides additional insights that contextualize those larger figures.

A broad view of facility costs and revenue becomes particularly handy for higher-level decision-making about property-specific changes. What’s the current cost per square foot vs. occupancy vs. revenue? How do maintenance costs factor into total cost of ownership? The answers to these questions and dozens of others provide broad context for facilities, which lends credence to them as assets.

2. Quantifiable financial metrics

In the scope of portfolio decision-making, what does a real estate asset manager do? In simplest terms, they provide quantifiable insights for executives and other stakeholders. That means delivering real estate data and information in the form of key company success metrics. These insights aren’t always easy to come by, which is what makes real estate asset management software so vital.

With the proper infrastructure, asset management reporting software will deliver core company metrics available at a glance. This can include the cost of the lease and annual maintenance, month-over-month spend on facilities, revenue performance by location, and much more. These are the figures decision-makers want to see as they contemplate the future of facilities.

3. Asset-based insights

It’s easy to delineate the many functions of a property. A real estate asset manager faces the task of quantifying these functions and understanding them in the context of an asset. Asset-based insights are what C-suite executives and portfolio managers want as they make decisions about the direction of a company. Asset-based insights and their contribution to financial metrics are what aid in that decision-making.

Each asset-based insight creates an opportunity for asset optimization. Can you cut costs here? Realize new revenue opportunities there? Defining the various monetary contributors to real property’s place on the balance sheet unlocks the potential to modify them.

4. Forecasting, simplified

Real estate asset management software might tell you that a facility is operating far above capacity and generating less profit than a comparable property. Or, it might show that the maintenance costs of an old building make it a drag on the balance sheet. In these situations, available data promotes better forecasting. It’s about using the data you have now to make ROI-driven decisions about real estate for the future.

Forecasting using real estate asset management software can aid in everything from budgeting to asset planning. If companies can see the role of their facilities far into the future, they’re more equipped to make confident decisions about them in the present.

5. Contextualize workforce distribution

Asset management isn’t only about managing the asset itself—it also involves who (or what) interacts with it. In the case of corporate real estate as an asset, that means looking at workforce distribution. Real estate software readily provides this data, including data for capacity, occupation, cost per head, and other workforce-specific costs and figures.

As companies manage assets, they need to do so with the workforce in mind. After all, the core purpose of facilities is to support the people working within them. Treating real estate like an asset means considering ROI from a workforce standpoint, which means contextualizing the workforce across real estate holdings.

6. Generate reports, shareable insights

What is real estate asset management without contextual reports? Just like a securities manager might look at a candlestick chart before acting on a position, asset managers need to compile, organize, and contextualize data. This is a herculean effort without real estate asset management software. Thanks to machine learning and automation, most modern software is smart enough to aggregate and deliver the insights most important to managers—including cross-examining cost data with non-financial metrics.

Rely on the convenience of software insights

These benefits all add up to something invaluable: asset-based insights about real estate. Looking at real estate through an asset evaluation lens can provide crucial insight for portfolio managers, executives, and other stakeholders as they determine the right path forward for their real estate holdings and facilities. The simplest way to get these insights? Real estate asset management software.

Keep reading: How Agile is Your Real Estate?