Dive Brief:
- Innovations in property technology — including in listings, 3D modeling, agent marketing, data management and property maintenance — were recognized Aug. 10 in the 2023 PropTech Breakthrough Awards.
- Facilities management winners include Fyxt, Lula, Mezo, FM:Systems and JLL Technologies, which won overall facilities management platform of the year.
- Larger enterprises have already purchased some of the winning companies as real estate owners, operators and tech providers increasingly look to technology to balance growing tenant demand and sustainability mandates with budget constraints and labor shortages.
Dive Insight:
While the breakthrough awards show the many niche segments of commercial real estate platforms and services, the acquisitions shine a light on a more significant race large enterprise players are running as they attempt to congregate and deploy building technologies across the overarching ecosystem.
Tenant experience platform Equiem acquired top-ranked commercial solution SpaceOS in late May, for example. And building automation and efficiency firm Johnson Controls purchased the facilities management innovation of the year winner, digital workplace management and IoT provider FM:Systems, for $455 million in July following strong adoption of sensor data-driven building control strategies.
JLL Technologies’ award comes on the heels of a busy first half, with the commercial firm’s tech business segment growing fee revenue 18% year over year last quarter, according to Q2 earnings. JLL CEO Christian Ulbrich attributed the growth to strong retention rates and increased usage by large enterprise clients and praised the business line for the significant efficiencies it introduced to the rest of the company’s operations.
In the earnings call Ulbrich named JLL GPT, a tool that offers conversation-based generative insights to facility operators, as one such efficiency-driving innovation. JLLT also has been active in developing and integrating decarbonization- and sustainability-focused tools; examples include its Carbon Pathfinder software, launched in June to help building owners monitor performance on decarbonization goals and forge carbon reduction action plans, and Hank, an artificial intelligence-driven HVAC and energy optimization solution that JLL acquired in early 2022.
It also highlights that although JLLT grew its revenue each quarter this year and was recognized as the year’s best facilities management platform, it has bigger fish to fry as the business unit attempts to sway business away from large, already-established building technology service providers.
“I think the biggest fallacy is that we're competing against other AI companies,” JLL Head of Product Sustainability, and former Hank CEO, Zach Denning told Facilities Dive. “There's a whole slew of them, and they fundraise. They're not small companies, but they're not Johnson Controls, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate. They're not Honeywell, a heavy multi-billion-dollar conglomerate. These are the competitors. The guys that are there now that have a vertically integrated hold on the industry.”
Denning noted that competition is necessary in the ecosystem, all the way from agile proptech startups to publicly traded industry leaders, because it enables further growth for the industry.
“We can't elevate the industry unless multiple people do it. Unless we get real saturation and real competition. If we’re both flirting with 1% of the market, there's no real competition there, and we are misallocated to our competition. That's what we need to get to. We need to elevate together,” Denning said.
Other 2023 Proptech Breakthrough Awards winners in facilities management include Fyxt, named the preventative maintenance solution of the year; Lula, which won best work order management solution; and Mezo for best property maintenance platform.
Key commercial property management winners include VendorPM for platform of the year and SpaceOS for solution of the year. Dottid was named the year’s best CRE asset management system, with lease management platform NTrust taking home the commercial management innovation award.
Additional commercial real estate-focused PropTech Breakthrough award winners include:
- Commercial listing platform: Yardi
- Indoor mapping solution: Cubicasa
- 3-D modeling solution: The Boundary
- Agent marketing solution: Local Logic
- Commercial lease management platform: Occupier
- Overall lease management company: Leasecake
- Document management solution: Propdocs
- Appraisal solution: Apprise by Walker & Dunlop
- Real estate analytics platform: HqO
- Commercial data management platform: DealPath
- Overall data management platform: Cherre
- Overall real estate data solution: BatchService
- Overall real estate data solution provider: DealCloud by Intapp
- InsurTech innovation of the year: Arturo
- CRE data innovation award: Compstak
- Proptech innovation of the year: Swift Connect
- Real estate mobile app of the year: Silverstein Properties
