By Ronnie Cook, Senior Vice President of Product Design and Strategy.
A few months ago, my wife and I were packing up our oldest daughter for college. As first-time parents of a college student moving a thousand miles away, we were in a bit of a panic trying to figure out everything she would need.
My wife assigned me the duty of figuring out electronics and tools. I dove into the task with gusto, and soon, deliveries of highly-rated cables and gadgets were arriving daily.
When it came to tools, however, I paused. Should I get her one of those compact, multi-purpose tools that do everything? Or would she be better off with a set of specialized tools? The multi-purpose tool was tempting: one purchase, compact, simple. But I knew from experience that while it could do many things, it rarely did any of them exceptionally well.
This dilemma, it turns out, is a perfect parallel to a challenge I have seen many asset managers and chief financial officers face: choosing technology.
The “all-in-one” real estate platform is the siren song of simplicity. They promise to do everything across the entire asset lifecycle, from deal pipelines and debt tracking to financial modeling and reporting. On the surface, it’s a compelling vision. It eliminates the headaches of integrating systems, managing multiple vendors, and dealing with data silos.
However, many adopters quickly discover the “jack of all trades, master of none” problem. They find that the platform’s modules lack the depth and sophistication they require and witness poor user adoption but only after they are trapped in a multi-year contract.
So, here are 5 tips if you are evaluating software that promises to be a one-stop shop for all your needs.
1. Focus on Business Processes and Outcomes First. Shockingly, many businesses get wowed by “pretty screens” and dashboards during the sales cycle but don’t reflect enough on their current processes or desired outcomes. Sales teams are great at demonstrating features, but they rarely understand an organization’s existing pain points. It’s incumbent on you to envision a “before and after” state. If you can’t see people utilizing a specific feature, it will be a net drag on the overall solution.
Reflection questions might look like:
2. Ask Around. Anytime I speak with Asset, Portfolio Managers, or CFOs, their ears perk up when I provide examples of what other organizations are doing. The real estate world is a small pond. Chances are, colleagues (current or former) have used industry-standard tools at previous companies. Don’t be afraid to network and discover what solutions work and what don’t. If you find that most of your network is familiar with various specialized tools but not with the “all-in-one” solution, that might be a red flag.
3. Ask About Their Focus and Team Structure. A software company that focuses on everything, focuses on nothing. A way to assess a company’s focus is to inquire about their internal team structure. Ask if they have dedicated product managers and engineering teams for each of the core modules they sell. A company with a separate, specialized team for its debt module, for instance, is likely to have a more robust and innovative solution than one where a small, generalist team is responsible for multiple different features. Expect fewer enhancements, less support, and slower innovation from companies that lack this specialized focus.
4. Do They Play Nicely with Others? Software companies have no problem partnering with other solution providers if they augment or solve different parts of a problem. An all-in-one asset management solution will have few, if any, true partnerships with other technology companies due to their competitive and expansive scope. This often means integrations will suffer, requiring significant workarounds. Therefore, inquire about partners and get contact names to find out what they have on their roadmap to bolster capabilities within that partnership.
5. Have an Onboarding and Offboarding Plan. Most multi-purpose asset management tools will have a “big bang” implementation plan due to their overarching feature set. This typically means implementations that take a year or more and impact multiple departments. When considering implementation fees and software licenses, the total cost may significantly exceed what a collection of specialized tools would run. Evaluate the different components of your processes and see what it would take to onboard a specialized tool for just one portion of the business. You may find that the implementation time and cost are significantly reduced as you focus on one problem at a time. And if the solution is not a great fit, offboarding the tool will be far less painful.
So, if you haven’t guessed it, I sent my daughter to college with a small bag of various tools so she would be covered for any situation. 😊
What’s your take on the all-in-one vs. best-of-breed debate for real estate solutions? Have you had an experience where a single platform fell short, or have a specialized asset management tool that you would recommend?
Ronnie Cook is the Senior Vice President of Product Design and Strategy at Cherre, where he leads the company’s product vision and roadmap. As a former executive in Real Estate Engineering at Goldman Sachs and former Head of Product and Services at Pereview, Ronnie brings a proven track record of delivering purpose-built solutions that solve real client challenges and turn complex data into intelligent, actionable insight.
While data scientists and engineers effectively describe AI’s technical capabilities, the message often gets lost on the very people who want it most: the end users who will interact with it daily. As someone who bridges the gap between engineers and the business – and isn’t afraid to make a near-term prediction – here is an example of what a routine exchange between an AI Agent and an Asset Manager could look like in the very near future.
The Cherre Data Mart – a creative installation unveiling this month in Las Vegas at OPTECH – transforms the abstract world of data management into something everyone understands: a grocery store.
The AI Agent Marketplace is a curated library of Work Packages – coordinated teams of AI agents engineered to deliver specific business outcomes in real estate.
