Gartner's Top 10 Technology Trends 2017 suggests the overall direction of travel for all industries including the property market, is one of a world that is becoming an intelligent, digitally enabled mesh of people, things and services.

What then might a smart digitally enabled property market look like in 2025 when we have 5G and Connected Homes where IoT devices, and even the home itself, might have Digital Twins receiving tons of data for analysis by AI enabled software?

Is it likely episodic one-off snapshot reports such as EPCs, Home Buyer Surveys and Building Surveys will begin to be replaced by continuous always-on diagnostic, performance and optimisation services that are part of a home’s online profile on a digital-home-pro Digital Platform?   How will we find and access such services?

Might properties for sale or rent appear as notifications and map-pins on a Google Map on your Smart Phone with GEO tagged AR content available to view on a Google Map or on Smart Phone camera displays perhaps in response to a Conversational Interface voice activated command: 

“Siri, show me properties for sale in a 25-mile radius!”

Title deeds indicating property ownership, the history of ownership and even the transfer of title deeds and exchange of contracts might be mediated through public distributed Blockchain technology.

Such a future presents both a tremendous opportunity as well as a devastating and disruptive threat for businesses working in the property market.

Evaluating when and whether to experiment and invest in such technologies or to wait for further maturation is a matter of keeping an eye on Gartner's Annual Hype Cycles which provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities.

A major topic at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year was the Fourth Industrial Revolution, what it means, and how to respond.

I am not convinced by the question mark over the start date in the image above. Personally I feel the Fourth Industrial Revolution started in the early 2000s with the advent of Web2.0, the read/write web or perhaps with the launch of the first iPhone in 2007.

Significant quotes from Davos are:

“A key trend is the development of technology-enabled platforms that combine both demand and supply to disrupt existing industry structures, such as those we see within the “sharing” or “on demand” economy. These technology platforms, rendered easy to use by the smartphone, convene people, assets, and data—thus creating entirely new ways of consuming goods and services in the process. ”

“ On the whole, there are four main effects that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has on business: on customer expectations, on product enhancement, on collaborative innovation, and on organizational forms.”

“ The emergence of global platforms and other new business models, finally, means that talent, culture, and organizational forms will have to be rethought.”

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum

A number of well-known Internet companies already convene people, assets, and data thus enabling peer to peer collaboration across the boundary between supply and demand.

• The world's largest taxi company owns no taxis (Uber)
• The largest provider of accommodation owns no real estate (Airbnb)
• The largest phone companies own no telco infrastructure (Skype, WeChat)
• The world's most valuable retailer has no inventory (Alibaba)
• The most popular media company creates no content (FaceBook)
• One of the fastest growing banks have no actual money (SocietyOne)
• The world's largest movie house owns no cinemas (Netflix)
• The largest software vendors don't write the Apps (Apple and Google)

According to research carried by OpenMatters they are all Network Orchestrators in that they provide a platform and set of APIs that facilitate a network of peers in which the participants interact, share and collaborate thus co-creating value for all participants.

Such companies are more profitable, exhibit faster growth, have lower marginal costs and higher market valuations than traditional companies and are much preferred by investors and VCs.

There are opportunities for innovation, digital transformation and network orchestration in the UK property market, particularly the prospect of a peer to peer collaboration platform for home movers as outlined in the following video: -

This article is a must read for any business leader. The digital imperative for digital transformation in all industries couldn’t be clearer. It is time to act.

Register on our website All The Write Stuff to find out more about how we can help you navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Beyond Gutenberg

“Reading on paper is so much a part of our lives that it is hard to imagine anything could ever replace inky marks on shredded trees.” Bill Gates - 1999

In the article Beyond Gutenberg, Bill Gates predicted the wholesale replacement of pressed wood pulp books by electronic or eBooks. What does digital versus paper media have to do with Smart Homes and Energy Performance Certificates? Read on to find out more ...

Fifteen years on from Gates' prediction, paper retains a comfortable coexistence with eBooks. Nowadays it's not paper-or-pixels but paper-and-pixels. Part of the enduring appeal is the physical experience of paper as well as the lack of device related distractions, but also the fact that you can't easily atomise (break up in to its basic elements or constituent parts) the contents of a book. Be it in pixels or on paper, a story or piece of prose remains a linear experience with a beginning, a middle and an end, all meant to be read from start to finish. However, where information or data can be atomised, then pixels or digital media offer considerable advantages over paper. Let me explain.

Just like a book, a document is a pre-digital information container, an idea that has been around since the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440. For a while the use of digital tools such as PCs, word processors and printers, particularly in the 25 years from the mid-1980s to the end of the 20th century, increased rather than reduced the use of paper documents. However, the tide is on the turn.

Atomisation of Data

Paper documents are static immutable snapshots of events in time, one-off commitments of information and data to paper. Released from the confines of their physical containers, information and data are free to be discrete fully digital atomic elements with both richness and reach. Free to flow and group, ungroup and then regroup in real time into new and different forms and collections based on value and meaning to the user (the pull metaphor) rather than audience and purpose determined by the author (the push metaphor). For example just as online music has moved beyond the album and CD as the main units of organisation to individual tracks or user-generated or even suggested playlists, so too information and data are moving beyond the document towards the use of databases and animated data visualisation tools, dashboards and charts for real time status updates, map displays for geographical data and timelines for events. The main technological drivers here are ubiquitous Internet connectivity, massive cloud storage capacity, the emergence of the internet of things, and pervasive use of mobile devices so that information and data are available anytime-any-place-anywhere on desktop or mobile devices in real time and in multifarious and flexible forms thus reducing the need for printed documents.

As it is the time of year for predictions, let’s look at a real world property market example to see how this might play out practically in the coming years.

Energy Performance Certificates

An Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) is required by law when a building is constructed, sold or put up for rent. Currently an accredited domestic energy assessor will carry out the assessment and produce the paper certificate together with recommendations on how performance could be further improved.

Smart Home

In the future there will be no requirement for paper Energy Performance Certificates and this will disrupt energy assessors and websites offering EPCs. A smart home, with a smart boiler, smart windows and smart energy meters connected to a smart energy grid and the Internet would throw off energy performance data in real time for display in a dashboard or timeline. Digital agent software will monitor energy usage and manage appliances to use energy more efficiently as well as make recommendations.

Smart Grid

The website at Smart Energy GB says:

“We have to find ways to reduce our carbon emissions through using smarter appliances which make more efficient use of gas and electricity.”

“The smart grid is a whole new way of running our energy networks. It’s made up of new technologies, equipment, computers, automation and controls, all communicating and working together. It’s a bit like an internet for gas and electricity.”

Collaborative Platform for Home Movers

What’s needed to augment Smart Homes on a Smart Grid, is a collaborative platform for home movers and property professionals which would include a property identity to hold and display such data, a kind of Facebook or LinkedIn for the property market. Such a platform might also contain an online service history for your house just like you have for your car. Such data displayed in a timeline could act as a home condition report and might also contain Home Buyer Survey and Building Survey findings rather than the current document based reports. Such a bold digital business model would go some way to meeting the coming generation’s expectations and appetite for seamless online digital services.

Facing the Digital Imperative

Such disruptive technological changes are certainly achievable and this creates threats for incumbents slow to move and opportunities for those with the digital vision, leadership and agility to pursue them. In another 15 years at the end of 2030, we will look back again to see how much of this has materialised and who were the winners and who the losers. In the meantime make sure you are on the winning side. Contact the author Kevin Hopkins, leave a comment below or sign up to be notified of future posts at the foot of this page and finally make sure to visit the Academy of Digital Business Leaders to find out more about the digital leadership necessary to successfully face the Digital Imperative.

Numerous established and hitherto successful industries have been disrupted by new entrants introducing new and bold digital business models. Many well-known companies are now extinct and more will likely to follow. Defining and pursuing a strategy for digital transformation in your business area before someone else does is a top priority for any Managing Director, Senior Management Team or Board of Directors. It demands management action in eight key areas all of which involve fundamental business transformation, operational and implementation risk and significant disruption, but, failure to act, risks a fate far worse than disruption; extinction. This is the digital imperative.

What does this mean for you and what should you do about it?

Ask the right questions

• “How will digital technologies change how we create value for our customers?”
• “How will digital technologies help save costs?”
• “What is the overall task facing our customers?”
• “How will digital technologies better and more fully fulfil and facilitate this overall task?”
• “What business are we really in?”

Disrupt or be disrupted

Asking these questions provides the opportunity to challenge the status quo and disrupt your own business model before others do it to you. Analogue businesses risk attack from new entrants looking to do things in a different way. It follows that you must do things in a different way yourself. Be your own attacker, launch products and services that attack your current offering.

Collaborate, acquire or build

The normalisation of digital lifestyles is changing consumer expectations of what websites offer and do. Digital natives comfortable with and hungry for digital technology and services seek seamless, integrated open and transparent offerings that appear to come from a single provider. This then is about joining up end-to-end business processes so they appear seamless to end users thus enabling them to complete transactions online rather than just access information or do only part of the overall task they are seeking to complete. Rather than focus on a narrow part of a value chain, companies must either, a) secure their position in the broader digital ecosystem of their value chain by cooperating and collaborating via APIs with other digital players in the network. In this way they work together towards a common goal to achieve complete end-to-end alignment of the value chain for customers, or b) they must acquire or build those business to achieve the same ends.

Such seamless, integrated offerings create new opportunities to address unmet consumer needs and pain points and innovate around them. Collaborative platforms and online market places allow customers and providers, devices, applications, data, products and services to work together and collaborate in new ways and this is core to any digital transformation strategy.

Create value from your data

Companies sit on vast amounts of data. Companies need to mine and make better use of data to create new opportunities and achieve cost savings. The use of advanced analytical and predictive tools and technologies helps to change the interaction model with customers from infrequent and random one off encounters and transactions to more targeted personalised digital encounters promoting repeat rather than one-off sales opportunities and more durable open ended customer relationships. Personalised updated offers or services would also take previous online interactions, purchases, and digital product or service usage data into consideration providing a much richer experience and added value for customers.

Adopt an agile strategy

With customer needs and expectations, technology and the competitive environment changing rapidly, it is no longer realistic to plan for the long term. Agile methods borrowed from software development advocate frequent short iterations of creating, testing, refining and adapting. This promotes a learn-by-doing approach. Companies must rapidly and frequently deliver products and services to meet real consumer needs, try these out, scale up what works or pivot fast when they fail and try something else, This requires an organisational culture that supports agile specifically; individual autonomy, risk taking and experimentation, collaboration and self-organising team effort. It needs an organisational culture that encourages and supports its own disruption. Analogue businesses with an industrial era hierarchical command and control management culture will need to change. In an era of digital transformation, making the necessary personal and cultural adjustments are prerequisites for success. The Internet is not just about technology, people and organisations have to change too. See article: A Necessary Adjustment.

Digitise internal processes and back office

It is necessary but not sufficient to digitise your customer offering. You must also digitise your internal processes and back office to ensure to ensure leanness, agility, and lower cost. Remove manual processes and digitise them. This helps improve performance and is enabler for an agile strategy and better use of data to improve customer experience and increase value.

Foster digital leadership

Digital leaders are different from industrial leaders. They network and collaborate rather own and dictate. They participate and share rather than command and control. They ask the right questions, they disrupt before they are disrupted, they collaborate with or acquire other businesses in their digital ecosystems to provide a seamless integrated end-to-end offering for customers. They make best use of their data to cut costs and provide a richer customer experience as well increase sales opportunities and promote more durable open ended customer relationships. They prototype agile strategies learning from their experiences to do more of what works and pivot fast when they fail. They digitize their internal business processes and back offices to facilitate digital transformation across the whole of the business.

Act

To reiterate, companies that respond to the digital imperative take on fundamental business transformation, operational and implementation risk and significant disruption, but failure to respond to the digital imperative risks a fate far worse than disruption; extinction.

Using collaborative technologies to connect people, and assist them in undertaking business transactions with payment portals and structured processes has inevitably reinforced the idea that you don’t need a middle man.'

Logan Hall of MoveBubble

The Internet is a disruptive technology melting and reforming business processes and value chains. The Internet makes things cheaper, more open and transparent. Cutting out the middle man it democratises and disintermediates. This has yet to happen fully in the UK property market but change is coming and innovative websites are emerging to challenge traditional high street estate agents.

The key to success will be providing a Facebook or LinkedIn for property, a virtual meeting place and market, a collaborative platform where sellers or landlords can list their properties and connect directly with prospective buyers and tenants. Such a website would be a facilitator rather than an estate agent. This would not be a free for all but a structured process guiding and prompting sellers and buyers, landlords and tenants through the process as well as providing access to property professionals and other services along the journey with case and account management tools and fulfillment and payment portals.

On such a site, a seller could list their property taking a DIY approach to the valuation, description, photos and videos or find and commission a local property expert (LPE) to assist. On the site there would be price comparison tools to find necessary services, to find LPEs, energy assessors to carry out an EPC, services or online tools to produce floor plans and obtain house signs etc. Sellers could manage their own viewing diaries or ask an LPE to do this for them. They could log on to review and manage offers. Buyers could make appointments to view properties direct with owners or LPEs and make offers online, access tools for mortgage advice and offers, conveyancers and payment transfer mechanisms. There would be price comparison tools, suggestions and prompts to find and commission surveyors for home buyers surveys or structural inspections and other services like removal firms, utilities, broadband, curtains and carpets - all services that are required in the course of house sale and purchase. The site would use a flexible pay-for-what-you-use pay-as-you-go fee structure rather than a flat fee or 1.5% of selling price model thus reducing costs substantially.

Many of the new entrants and websites in the property market, Local Surveyors Direct, Local Property Index, EasyProperty, PurpleBricks, CastleSmart, Veyo, Tepilo, MoveBubble provide parts of this puzzle, but there is no one website or vision putting the whole jigsaw together. The company that does so will likely win the race.