The Plan – Integrating AI in a Real Estate Operation
By Mackenzie Cuffe
The organization is a Real Estate investment company, managing assets across North America. They provide investors with access to a professionally managed, income producing portfolio of real estate aimed at providing strong, consistent returns over the long term, protecting wealth and making stable long-term distributions.
The project objective is to integrate Artificial Intelligence throughout the entire Real Estate organization – from the Fund level all the way down to the Property Level – driving efficiencies, lowering costs and providing access to greater information with the objective of making better decisions based on data.
There are 3 divisions of the company – Finance, Asset Management and Acquisitions. All areas of the company will adopt Artificial Intelligence, with Finance being the first department. This will enable a few “quick wins” to be achieved, which will drive adoption and acceptance from employees and management.
The initial phase will involve utilizing Machine Learning and Robotic Process Automation to replace all manual and repetitive accounting tasks – such as processing Accounts Payable, preparing, creating and posting Journal, Bank reconciliations and other time-consuming activities. This should free up time to enable the staff to provide improved analysis and understanding of financial performance and provide better reporting to management.
The second and third phases will be to integrate AI into Asset Management and Acquisitions – utilizing Natural Language Processing to review legal and other documents, such as environmental reports.
The fourth phase will involve embedding Artificial Intelligence within the properties – utilizing NLP and Robotics to assist with tenant enquiries, monitor the properties and provide other services to improve tenant engagement.
The fifth phase will involve analyzing the increase volume of data collected to provide insight and guidance in trying to improve the returns of the underlying assets.
The successful completion of this project will ensure the company is at the forefront of technological advances and able to scale the business in a structured and deliberate manner, having staff that are motivated and enjoy interacting with the technology, whilst ensuring tenants are happier with the service they receive, and the investors achieve better returns, as rents will grow quicker than the market and acquisitions will be more data driven and able to capitalize on previously unidentified trends. This will enable the organization to focus on differentiation compared to other real estate investment companies, while also allowing the company to focus on cost control by reducing the number of staff that will be needed to manage the projected growth of the company.