Real estate companies are transforming into customer-obsessed operators by embracing proptech, industry experts said during PropertyEU’s panel discussion at the Netherlands' biggest property show, Provada.
Turning chaos into cash was the theme of the debate at the real estate fair held in RAI Amsterdam, discussed by Johnnie Sims, client services director at Coyote, Robbert Heekelaar, VP of IT architecture and emerging technologies at Prologis, Kingma Ma, VC investor of Round Hill Ventures, and Ed Bouterse, entrepreneur and head of Workthere Netherlands.
Moderated by PropertyEU’s editor-in-chief Robin Marriott, an engaged audience heard that a way for real estate companies to win at proptech is to disrupt themselves, by quickly adopting or developing technology, according to Ma. The stereotype of the sector as lagging in adopting proptech is not totally fair, he added.
Heekelaar revealed that industry leader, Prologis, has its own laboratory in San Leandro in California for developing and incubating technology to deliver ‘smart’ warehouses, which produce lots of data that Prologis can turn into useful information for occupiers, he said.
Provada is the biggest annual real estate exhibition in the Netherlands. This year’s show at RAI Amsterdam attracted more than 25,000 visitors and over 270 exhibitors, including big players in the sector such as CBRE Global Investors and Bouwinvest, alongside start-ups.
You can read a detailed report of the discussion in the next issue of PropertyEU.
