Editors Note: This article was originally featured on Propmodo in October 2024.
The success of any technology initiative–no matter the industry, no matter the outcomes you hope to achieve–boils down to adoption. I’ve seen it time and again. We spent most of our first decade in business transforming how brokers and asset managers manage their deals, taking them from Excel to the cloud and unlocking real-time data to develop asset strategy. To help our customers drive adoption and best outcomes, we spun up a Customer Success team that makes up over one-third of VTS employees. The results are clear–we’re proud to now have 13 billion square feet of assets on the VTS Platform because of our acute focus on helping CRE professionals adopt technology that drives them to work faster, more collaboratively, and more strategically.
The next challenge VTS took on was tenant experience technology. While the technology is different, what drives its success for property teams and the companies they serve is the same we solved before–adoption. Because what makes technology and the office successful for companies is exactly the same. For companies–in other words, tenants–to get the most out of the buildings they inhabit, they need to adopt the office, over and over again. And for tenants to repeatedly adopt the office, they need to stay connected to it. And just like reservation apps connect us to restaurants, or social apps connect us to friends, the office needs technology that connects people to the buildings and spaces where they work.
Over the last 3 plus years, we’ve focused on this very thing–-connecting tenants to the office through an app experience that helps them continuously adopt the office. One that unlocks every space an owner’s portfolio offers and personalizes their connection to their workplace.
VTS Activate offers tenants a mobile app that, among many things, gives them access to every space an owner offers through their phone. It’s not just tap-and-go for entering the building; it also facilitates tap-and-go access to shared spaces, rooms, and amenities, anywhere across an owner’s portfolio.
But we don’t stop there. What makes Activate unique is it’s incredible configurability, which has a powerful impact for tenants. In addition to connecting tenants at the building level, VTS Activate provides tap-and-go access to their suite, and even across their offices. It can also provide every tenant company in a building a branded version of the same app. It’s not two separate apps–it’s one mobile app that gives each tenant a personalized “channel” for their company within the same app that unlocks access to their building. The technology barriers between the building and the suite are now gone.
That’s wonderful! So what?
Earlier this year VTS produced its inaugural Global Workplace Report, which surveyed 400 company executives to pinpoint tenant needs and expectations of the office. Of the many insights collected, a few stand out to me:
- 80% of executives say they want a workplace app to facilitate their experience with building staff and the building itself
- 88% of executives believe an app that’s personalized to their brand and has both building and company-specific information and experiences will boost their employees' office attendance
- According to executives, in-building technology ranks #1 as the workplace experience’s biggest reflection of a company’s brand and culture, whereas building amenities and nearby food & beverage ranked 3rd and 4th, respectively
- Finally, 92% of executives want a secure, mobile access experience for their office suite
If there’s anything (else) we’ve learned in our 12+ years as a proptech company, it’s that technology should be built to solve a real problem, and not built in search of a problem. From the tenant executive’s perspective, providing a workplace experience that reflects and connects their company’s culture to their employees continues to be a challenge whether companies have one or many offices, especially as hybrid work has become the norm. We’ve spoken to tenants and analyzed the data across thousands of buildings–technology is the key (metaphorically and literally) to solve this problem and facilitate connection.
The tenant’s problem is also the owner’s problem.
Here’s what we’ve learned that tenants want – I’m guessing it will sound familiar. Tenant executives are grappling with providing a great experience for their employees across their spaces. Amenities can help but are capital-intensive. Great location is a factor, but not a controllable one. Ultimately, tenant executives need to meet their employee’s basic needs first–think safety, consistent two-way communication with building staff, and easy access to the building and its spaces.
Office owners are confronted with the same challenges. The good news? Technology can not only help solve these problems for owners, but can bridge the gap and help solve the same issues for tenants. Owners can take control – even owners of the most well-amenitized buildings have used technology like VTS Activate to address their tenants’ most important needs.
“Fostering best-in-class communication, engagement, and on-site experience is of the utmost importance for us today, and ensuring we understand our talent is crucial to providing an enticing, collaborative, and productive environment that employees want to be a part of,” said Todd Januzzi, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Paramount Group. “The Paramount Club is a world-class amenity center for tenants in New York, and the technology we selected for our portfolio needed to reflect this level of sophistication. After vetting a number of providers, we felt confident that VTS Activate was the best solution out there, providing the operational functionality, insights, and services needed to understand our teams, meet their needs, and optimize the office experience we create and deliver to them.”
Office tenants and owners need the same thing from property technology
It needs to help people adopt the office, over and over again. For owners, tenant retention means business continuity–and for executives, strengthening their business requires employee retention. Connecting employees to the workplace has never been more essential for both parties to achieve their goals.
With VTS Activate, owners have a new tenant retention and adoption lever. Providing tenants a personalized mobile app experience quite literally unlocks everything the owners offers and is a bridge that connects them to everything their tenants offer in and beyond their suite. And with access and personalization comes stronger individual employee connections to the physical workplace, ultimately, to you.
With VTS Activate, everyone wins.
