You’ve just come through a half-yearly review. A new group strategy has been launched, three departments have moved offices, and a new reporting format will come into effect from next quarter. These are positive developments – the organisation is moving forward. But for you, as the person responsible for the properties, it means yet another round of manual work, coordination and improvisation.
This is everyday life for property departments in large organisations. And it’s rarely talked about.
The systems can’t keep up
Many large organisations have invested in complex, integrated system solutions. These systems can do a great deal, but they are rarely designed with the day-to-day running of the property in mind. Moving a department from floor 3 to floor 5 sounds simple – but in a complex system, it may require you to update objects, reassign cost centres, adjust cleaning schedules and ensure that the areas are correctly recorded in the energy monitoring system. Every step requires time, the right permissions and often help from IT.
The result is that many property departments choose a different approach: they keep track of things in Excel, email each other and create a parallel reality outside the system. It works – until it doesn’t.
New requirements, old documentation
When management decides on a new way of monitoring energy, space efficiency or sustainability targets, the property department is expected to provide the data. But the system isn’t ready yet. Rebuilding a large platform takes time, and in the meantime the figures still need to be produced – often manually, and often with a sense that they’re never quite right.
This is not a sign that the property department is slow. It is a sign that the IT systems are not keeping pace with the organisation’s pace.
Three questions to ask yourself
If this sounds familiar, it might be worth taking a moment to think about it:
How do you deal with change these days? Is there a system in place to support you, or do you rely mainly on internal procedures and personal knowledge?
Where is your true picture of the property portfolio? Is it stored in a system – or in Excel files and email threads that nobody else really understands?
How long does it take to deliver a report? If the answer is ‘it depends on who’s in charge at the moment’, it’s a sign that the underlying data isn’t sufficiently accessible.
There are no easy answers. But asking the questions is a good first step.
