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Real Estate (RE) and Facilities Management (FM) are increasingly becoming integral to the core processes of every company. With the introduction of IFRS standards a few years ago, Lease Management entered the CFO’s area of focus. Now, the upcoming ESG regulations are set to have an even broader impact, requiring companies to adapt processes to meet sustainability goals and maintain compliance with the green ledger. RE and FM need to grow closer to the ERP System.
Additionally, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to play a key role in addressing the challenges posed by an aging population and the resulting pressure on the labour market. As a result, real estate management systems and facilities management platforms must evolve and become more integrated into the broader enterprise information landscape to meet these rapidly approaching challenges.
Strategic Partnership between SAP and Planon
The strategic partnership announced by SAP and Planon in 2023 marks the beginning of an integrated platform designed to prepare Real Estate and Facilities departments for future challenges. Companies will be able to leverage unique capabilities in Real Estate Sustainability, Business Intelligence (BI), and AI.
In our recent e-book we explained the value of combining real estate data with ERP systems. This blog explores three key areas that make the SAP-endorsed Planon app, Real Estate Management for SAP (REM4SAP), unique.
SAP, a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, has set a course for a cloud strategy based on SAP S/4HANA, with a clean core paradigm, paving the way for robust BI, AI, and other developments. Planon, traditionally an IWMS software provider, has transformed over the past five years into an open platform with a growing number of partners, expanding the scope of Real Estate from operational to tactical and strategic management levels. Together, SAP and Planon have extended the SAP One Domain Model to achieve seamless real estate integration.
Let’s have a look at each topic:
ESG – Sustainable Real Estate from sensor-to-ledger
ESG is of growing importance, focusing on the sustainability impact of owned, leased, and operated properties, as well as the overall management of property portfolios. Planon aims to be the central hub, integrating data from smart buildings and various PropTech apps to create a unified view of RE portfolio sustainability. SAP provides the Sustainability Control Tower and green ledger capabilities. Through shared semantics, combined views enable actionable insights for identifying and addressing improvement opportunities. Planon can deliver all relevant sustainability data down to the building and FM activity level to the SAP Datasphere and Sustainability Control Tower, creating a seamless process from sensor-to-ledger, ensuring compliance with ESG regulations
BI – Powerful insights based on shared data
With SAP and Planon, no data mappings, transformations, or translations within data warehouses are needed. The systems already speak the same language and share the same data core, significantly reducing the effort required to create dashboards, lists, and reports. This enables holistic analysis that is difficult to achieve with fragmented systems, resulting in next-level Business Intelligence reporting.
AI – Improved Real Estate decisions based on accurate data
AI continues to revolutionise the real estate and facilities management industry. As a key emerging trend, developments have accelerated exponentially over the past months, with technology, R&D, and investments continuing to boost AI capabilities. While predicting which AI applications and technologies will dominate in five years is uncertain, one thing is clear: AI, like human intelligence, needs proper data and information to function effectively. The better the available information, the better the AI will perform, with less guessing and more accurate, to-the-point results.
SAP integrates Business AI across its enterprise solutions, while Planon develops AI-driven IWMS use cases. The goals are to empower users, improve service to RE customers (office employees, tenants, etc.), support decision-making, and optimise processes. Shared semantics, data, and information are key enablers for AI to have a significant impact across both platforms.
Ready for Tomorrow
In summary, RE and FM processes need deeper integration into system landscapes to prepare companies for the growing demands of the coming years. The collaboration between SAP and Planon makes integrated real estate information available on an unprecedented number of levels, essential for meeting these challenges.
Curious to see how your organisation could benefit? Get in touch with our experts for a personalised demo and discuss how to make your Real Estate and Facilities Management future-proof for tomorrow’s challenges.