Tech – The Great Facilitator
A lot has changed since the days of advertising your company’s services in the back of the local newspaper. With the dawn of the internet and the digital new-age, there is an ever-increasing number of resources and channels for service providers to market themselves and their firms.
While the web is often considered to be the single greatest facilitator of business growth, there are many who knowingly continue to operate with less efficiency, opting for a more cumbersome approach. Why? – There are many different reasons why some people choose to avoid technology. Assuming cost isn’t the issue, this antipathy towards innovation generally stems from one of two characteristics:
- Technologically averse & lack of comfortability learning new tools.
- Strong belief in the old school approach – “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
An ever-changing market
In a ‘people’ business such as Commercial Real Estate (CRE), it’s no secret that who you know is often better than what you know. However, in today’s busy business cycle there is an unavoidable focus on streamlining operations and outperforming competitors. Landlords are paying greater attention to project costs than ever before and are extending their lists of preferred suppliers in pursuit of the best deal. For better or worse, The Age of Connectivity has arrived.
As such, contractors in today’s market no longer have the luxury of idling in one of the two above categories. The most efficient and proactive service providers continue to expand their client-bases by embracing technology and adjusting their processes, while the laggards are left trying to make sense of a decline in custom.
Procurement as a service
In CRE, while PropTech is redefining what it means to offer a best-in-class service it is also enabling innovative service providers, who are constantly on the lookout for new ways to boost business and increase returns.
One way contractors are achieving this is by taking advantage of new CRE focused systems which offer procurement as a service, gaining instant exposure to several new, potential clients. The benefits of using such systems as a contractor and maintaining your company’s page are twofold.
- Receive increasingly more invitations to quote for new business.
- Reassurance of a fair and equal, sealed-bid process.
Key benefits for service providers
Contractors are on average, invited to quote for 35% more projects once adopting a portal of this nature. A large majority of these new invitations are from firms that the contractor has not worked for in the past, making this technique a no-brainer for companies trying to win new business.
Perhaps more importantly, most companies specialising in quote requests such as Proprli, are strong advocates of the sealed-bid process. Primarily, this is because the aim of such systems is to provide landlords, technical managers and contractors with a more transparent and collaborative platform, on which to conduct business. However, in the interest of fairness and compliance, sealed-bid processes ensure that each service provider receives the same information to base their quote on and thus has an equal chance of being awarded the contract.
As a result of these benefits we are seeing a shift in CRE. Contractors and landlords alike are rejecting the old-school for a more prosperous, new-way of working. The industry on the whole is waking up to the power of technology as leaders in every field begin to embrace digitisation. The only question remaining – who will be the fastest?
