Working at Planon for the past 20 years, my experience is that the market of corporate real estate and facility management can be extremely dynamic. Especially nowadays, we see that global societal, geopolitical, and economic changes are significantly affecting business. These external influences force organisations, including their corporate real estate management, to be much more agile and responsive than ever before.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to discuss this interesting topic with real estate expert René Buck, founder and CEO of BCI Global – a strategy consulting firm specialised in finding its clients new business locations for manufacturing, distribution, support, software development, and so on. Beginning our conversation (which is available as free podcast), I asked him to share his knowledge on how certain developments – such as Brexit, trading conflicts, risks of IP infringement, and the recent war for talent – are affecting decisions about new business locations. He gave some examples that firmly indicated one cannot sit back, and that these changes need to be anticipated and taken into account when devising a location policy.
An even more interesting question, that I really wanted to put to René, was: “Now that these changes are happening, what is a Corporate Real Estate Manager’s license to act in order to align their expectations with overall business objectives?” In other words: “How do you get the c-level on board with your newly adjusted CRE strategy?”
I don’t want to give away too much of the answer René gave because I want to encourage you to listen to the podcast, but one important realisation is that we are currently experiencing completely different conditions in terms of business development, influencing location policies and hence real estate strategies. After a long-term economic recession, for the last year or two markets have finally been growing again all over the world, including in South-East Asia, China, Europe, and the USA. This has created a war for talent, changing our main concern from “how can we operate most cost effectively?” to “how can we obtain and retain the right people?”. This new paradigm requires CRE to collaborate with human resources (HR), because setting up new operations is now heavily dependent on the available talent in a specific location of the world. René even said that “the upcoming scarcity of talent in whatever skills set the company needs, is becoming one of the most important location factors for any type of operation.”
It is crucial that managers in CRE and HR realise their function is moving from supportive to strategic, and that they should convince the c-level of this too. So how to get their attention?
Besides these specific take-aways, René Buck gave a lot more ‘food for thought’. That is why we are sharing our complete conversation in a podcast. Are you a business leader or real estate professional? Sign up on our website to directly listen to all the detailed insights for free! You will also get access to more upcoming podcasts where we will have conversations with other thought leaders around topics relevant to real estate. We hope to provide you with a multitude of views and perspectives on the business of real estate.
Enjoy!
