2025 marks 5 years since the Global Pandemic upended traditional work modes, legacy benchmarks and best practices. It’s time to recognize there is no “return to office”—at least not as it once was—and we need to take a more intentional approach to our evolving real estate organizations ensuring they now operate with greater agility and responsiveness.
In this new reality, Corporate Real Estate teams have one of the most challenging jobs in the organization. They oversee one of the most expensive, yet fixed business costs and are responsible for balancing it with the evolving needs of business and headcount demands of every department. They need to make long term lease commitments and manage costly build outs while the demand side of the equation is considered “at-will”. It’s no wonder, according to CoreNet Global Applied Research, 70% of CRE professionals don’t feel they have they data they need to make critical real estate decisions!
Workplace management is no longer a simple math problem. The new needs of CRE are unique—requiring input from nearly every segment of the business to inform decisions within their realm of responsibility. Data plays a foundational role by enabling everything from smarter space allocation to more personalized employee experiences. CRE teams play a key role by breaking down the silos between HR, IT, Real Estate and Facilities, which is essential to delivering a truly integrated workplace ecosystem. However, too often, data initiatives fail because the essential steps to building a virtuous data foundation are overlooked. There is no more time to waste on establishing agile CRE workflows within your organizations to accommodate the new unique needs of the workplace.
Understanding the 5 critical steps you can’t afford to skip on your Real Estate Data Transformation Journey is the first move toward gaining control of the future of your real estate.
1. Start with the End in Mind for Your Real Estate Data Strategy
The vast amount of data available today can be overwhelming, especially if there isn’t a clear understanding of what we’re trying to solve. Many software vendors captivate us with visually appealing charts and graphs on dashboards, showcasing in numerous ways. While these visuals may be interesting, it’s not until we attempt to use the information that we often realize it’s more “beautiful noise” than actionable insight. That’s when the question inevitably arises: “So what?”
As a corporate real estate leader, making informed decisions begins with knowing the end goal. This means fully understanding the broader business objectives and asking yourself, “What am I trying to solve or answer?” Don’t limit yourself to data you already have. Think bigger. By asking this simple yet crucial question, you can avoid getting distracted by flashy visuals and help ground your decision-making. Starting with the end in mind also means identifying the key metrics and KPIs necessary for informed decision-making, setting you on the right path toward achieving your objectives.
This stage of the journey is critical, setting the course for everything that comes next. To ensure a strategic and informed approach, engaging a real estate and workplace data advisor can bring valuable expertise to the table, and lessen your overall workload. With experience spanning organizations and industries, they can advise on KPIs and potential pitfalls. An experienced partner will provide depth of understanding around workplace behavior and help to uncover patterns and correlations with your data that wouldn’t otherwise be achieved from basic quantitative assessments.
2. Identify Data Sources and Close Gaps in Your CRE Data
By clearly defining the end goals, you can identify both the data already available and any gaps that need to be addressed. The data required to monitor key metrics and KPIs will likely come from a variety of sources, many of which may be outside the control of your department. Be sure to explore applications beyond your immediate scope, leveraging existing tools and data that may already be accessible, such as network traffic, security badging, employee surveys, and conference room reservations. Identifying data gaps can also reveal opportunities to optimize the use of current software, foster collaboration with other departments, or highlight areas where data standards and governance need improvement. By mapping out available data sources and addressing any gaps, you not only maximize the value of existing applications but also encourage cross-departmental collaboration, transparency, and better-informed corporate real estate decisions.
3. Prepare for a Solid Data Foundation
Organizations with a strong data foundation can pivot fast, make smarter moves, and lead the market. If the data isn’t clean, complete, consistent, and current, your real estate strategy is already at risk. No report, dashboard, or AI tool can fix a shaky foundation. In fact, as we explored in our, “The Dirty Truth: The Silent Killer of Your Real Estate Insights” blog dirty data can significantly hinder analysis, lead to misleading insights, skew key metrics, and result in poor business decisions.
Get ruthless about core data: floor plans, square footage, space typology, headcounts, occupancy, lease dates, and addresses. Enforce consistent standards across every site, every drawing, every record. And remember: if you’re missing any segment of demand data — employees, contractors, temps — you’re flying blind.
The data foundation is the clean, structured data inventory you need to start the journey — data governance is how you protect and maintain the investment over time. The data governance strategy will define data ownership, accountability and establish clear standards and policies—including information security.
A strong, well managed data foundation will improve business insights, optimize operations, and enable greater agility and responsiveness to market and business changes.
4. Gain Leadership Buy-in for Your CRE Data Transformation Initiative
All good leaders understand investments are necessary for long-term business success. To obtain leadership support, it’s important to clearly articulate how a data transformation initiative will go beyond operational efficiency goals and transform data into a strategic asset that is optimized to support the goals of the business. Real estate data transformation initiatives can have an impact on employee satisfaction, revenue, cost savings, risk management, and overall business health. Before going to leadership, identify allies and influencers who can help with your messaging. Then be prepared to outline the ROI and a phased approach; including proof of concept. Specifically identify how this will enable forward momentum in your decision-making on behalf of the organization and be sure to call out any possible downstream risks if you don’t move forward.
When leadership stands behind real estate data transformation, it becomes more than a project — it becomes a catalyst for the future. With strong support, your organization can reimagine how they use space, move faster than the market, and make decisions with confidence, not guesswork. It’s not just about managing assets — it’s about building a smarter, more agile business ready for whatever comes next.
5. What’s Next on the Real Estate Portfolio Data Journey
Artificial intelligence (AI) holds significant promise for your corporate real estate team, offering the ability to optimize space utilization, predict needs, and enhance strategic planning through data-driven insights. However, according to data tech firm Fivetran, “Data transformation is essential to building a mature data practice as raw data is impractical for analytics and machine learner.” without a strong foundation of well-organized, accurate, and accessible supply and demand data, these benefits will remain out of reach. Companies that fail to prepare their organizational data—by standardizing formats, breaking down silos, and ensuring data quality—risk falling behind competitors who are better positioned to leverage AI tools effectively. In an increasingly data-driven industry, the ability to harness AI will hinge not on the technology itself, but on the readiness of the data that feeds it.
In today’s fast-paced, data-driven world, the quality of tomorrow’s Real Estate decisions will hinge on the integrity and precision of today’s efforts. You can’t transform your real estate strategy if you can’t trust your data. By following these 5 steps, you can elevate the quality of your real estate decisions for your organization and return rich value through right sized and effective and engaging workplaces.
At Apex42, we have decades of contextual understanding and hands-on experience with the vast array of qualitative and quantitative data inputs and governance strategies leveraged by Corporate Real Estate teams. Once a data transformation strategy is defined, the next step is a supporting system of record. With our solutions, Wisp by Apex42 and Insights by Apex42, we provide corporate real estate facilities leaders and teams with continuous monitoring of key real estate metrics tailored to their organization, allowing for deeper insight into their organization’s largest asset and delivering This allows organizations to quickly understand, react, and predict any changes or opportunities within their real estate portfolio. With deep industry expertise and hands-on advisory support, we help you build — and maintain — the foundation needed to drive real, lasting transformation.
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