Remote control for tenants; Customer renewal platform for owners – Business Observer
The VTS rental and asset management platform allows office owners to manage all aspects of their properties within a single interface. Launched in 2012, VTS has become the fastest growing commercial real estate technology company and the most widely adopted software platform, currently managing 12 billion square feet of commercial real estate across 85,000 assets in 34 countries.
So when VTS announced in March that it had acquired real estate operating and tenant experience company Rise Buildings, with the intention of integrating it into the company’s current platform, the opportunity that it promised homeowners has changed the game.
VTS Rise redefines the tenant experience category by delivering value not only to the occupant, but also to the owner, while digitizing the entire asset lifecycle. VTS CEO Nick Romito said his company made the strategic decision to acquire Rise, due to the obvious need of today’s landlords to increase connectivity with tenants beyond mere negotiation. lease or property management activities.
“Now more than ever, landlords need to offer whatever they can to get tenants back to the office,” Romito said, referring to how office workers have settled into work routines at work. home during the COVID-19 pandemic. “You need to provide tenants with technology that entices them to return to the office by making their day-to-day tasks easier upon return. It’s about automating their entire work experience, making the workplace more functional, and bringing the entire office experience into the 21st century.
VTS Rise adds a much needed level of operational functionality to tenant apps, allowing tenants to do everything on their phones – from summoning an elevator to booking conference space, and even paying rent – transforming the concept of “tenant experience” in a mixture of function and pleasure.
During the planning phase leading up to the acquisition, Romito said VTS saw how other tenant experience technologies misunderstood how to genuinely engage with the people of a building in a way that creates value for all stakeholders.
“Traditional tenant experience apps were meant to help someone buy coffee or find a yoga class. As a result, the adoption of these apps was extremely low: less than 10%, ”Romito said. “Our belief was that the tenant experience should include functional elements, such as: How can I enter my building with my phone? How to book a conference room? How do I automatically send a visitor’s pass to someone who comes into the building? “
Romito sees the functionality of Rise as the key to convincing workers that office life can be conducted efficiently and safely. Among the many features that VTS Rise digitizes are a building’s COVID-19 security protocols, such as notifying users when the conference room was last cleaned or the current occupancy level in the room. sports building.
Some of the technologies used for this also offer other benefits.
“We have patented beacon technology, sensor technology, that tells you what amenities are used in an asset, how often and at what times of the day,” Romito said. “This level of data gives you additional insight into real estate investments. If you’ve spent $ 5 million on a shared amenity floor, for example – whether or not it’s used and by which tenants – then you can answer questions about whether CapEx projects are actually generating value for them. occupants of the building.
For all these reasons, Romito sees Rise as the perfect complement to the rental and asset management features of the long-standing VTS platform and its additional offerings.
“Rise focused on the entire street-to-suite experience for tenants – from entering the building, to taking the elevator up, to entering your space, to operating your space – which was very different from anything on the market, “says Romito.” Rise focused first on the tough things: enabling access, managing visitors, native integrations with all building hardware and systems, then automating the tenant experience everywhere. The integration component of these platforms is important, and the maturity around native integrations of Rise, their technology and technical team was extremely unique, and they made a significant investment that no one else had approached.
From an owner’s perspective, VTS Rise gives rental and asset teams real-time insight into building performance
and tenant engagement. Romito notes that this is the first time that landlords can actually benefit from a tenant experience app, something physically tangible.
“Landlords using VTS Rise will have all the information they need about each tenant’s lease,” Romito said. “At a glance, they can see their team’s latest update with a tenant. They’ll see occupancy data, usage data, survey data, and work order data, all in one view that they couldn’t physically see anywhere else.
Romito stresses that this in-depth functionality will be totally unique to VTS Rise and that, given the turbulent state of the market, functionality has never been more important to office owners.
“It will be a market of renewals for the next 18 to 24 months,” Romito said. “For this reason, it has never been more important to ensure that your tenants are happy and that there are no surprises when it comes to renewing them. Having one of the data points that we track in a silo would make that very difficult. VTS gives your team all the contextual data they need to understand: Are our tenants happy? What is the likelihood of renewal and what should we focus on to make sure they are where they need to be? “
Part of what makes VTS Rise technology unique is that it includes not only software, but also hardware, allowing it to fit into any building, regardless of age or age. its less advanced technology. And, since Rise is now fully integrated with all aspects of the VTS platform, this will include VTS Market, the marketplace and the company’s marketing platform. This means that in addition to building updates or other important communications, tenants in your building can quickly access a new space in the building, experience it from the app, or book a visit with their. broker.
Considering the myriad of challenges that office owners will face as we move through the end of the pandemic.
“Just letting your tenants know that you have respected social distancing is not enough motivation to get them back to work,” Romito said. “They need to feel like you are giving them a remote control for their entire work experience. If owners are not proactive in doing this, it will be very difficult to put employees in their place. We acquired Rise because it was the best technology in the world to deliver this level of sophistication to homeowners and tenants. “